I’m covering Takoma Park and Wheaton for The Gazette. After loving my stint during my senior year as the sports editor of the student newspaper at St. John’s College High School in Washington, D.C., I decided to major in print journalism at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism. I loved — and love — how journalism allows people to share real, funny, heartbreaking, weird and critical stories with others. I grew up in Adelphi, Md., and I’ve always stayed close to my hometown despite numerous (fake) threats to move to Ireland. I will always remember my first drive to move into a UM dorm as a freshman. It was about three minutes long and involved two sets of traffic lights. (“A whole new woooooorld …”) In my four years as a Terp, I wrote for the university’s student-run Capital News Service as the education reporter in the fall of 2010, interned at The Capital newspaper in Annapolis during the summer of 2011, and interned at USA TODAY in the spring of 2012. I love to hike, camp and travel, and the 8-year-old in me who asked for a pony every Christmas has never died. I would love to talk with anyone about animals (especially elephants) and wildlife conservation efforts.