A Change in Perspective

By Claire Partain

cmp160@txstate.edu

 

 Halle Hendry’s trips to Guatemala were an eye-opening experience that drove her to pursue journalism in hopes of educating others on different cultures.

     Hendry, 19, is a sophomore majoring in journalism. Originally from Richardson, a Dallas suburb, she attended Richardson High School. She participated in gymnastics and photography organizations, both of which she began at an early age. She has competed in various photography contests, taking a special interest in chiaroscuro, or the manipulation of light and shadows.

    In high school, Hendry was also involved in the church community. Through the Dallas Bible Church and later, Parks City Baptist Church, she traveled to Guatemala five times on mission trips. Among her trips, Hendry helped build a house for a six-person family living in a one-room tin home. On another, the mission workers built a school. Hendry also assisted at a children’s home and visited a dump in which 13,000 people live, selling and scavenging waste for a living. The trips revealed that she was, to her surprise, allergic to concrete. They also significantly changed her

perspective.

    “When I went to Guatemala, it was like getting hit in the face with a brick,” Hendry said. “I was so aware of every difference in how those people lived. With my journalism, I really want to help others come to that realization as well.”

   Hendry hopes to combine her passions to become both a journalist and photographer, traveling and enlightening others about different walks of life. 

America's Next Top Voice Actress

By: Kayla Darensbourg

Email: kmd130@txstate.edu

Jada Johnson is a fun-loving, carefree girl with a passion for media.

The 19-year-old Texas State student is currently majoring in General Mass Communication and minoring in Theater. She is enrolled as senior and plans on graduating in May. Johnson’s hometown is Cedar Hill, Texas. She is the youngest of three children, and one of her sisters also attends Texas State.

Johnson is a fast learner, and she has many hobbies. She is crafty like her father, but their craftiness differs. Johnson’s father is interested in mechanical, manly hobbies, whereas Johnson enjoys more “girly” crafts. Johnson enjoys listening to music and watching TV. She considers herself a comic book nerd since she knows the difference between Marvel and D.C. comics. Johnson’s favorite type of food is Italian food. She enjoys all types of chocolate, but she dislikes toffee due to the texture and taste. Although she classifies herself as a feminist, her favorite color is pink. Johnson is an introspective person, and she defines herself as an ambivert since she enjoys being around people but also likes to have time to herself.

Johnson hopes to become a voice actress one day. She is interested in this since it requires the person to convey messages solely through voice since you cannot see their face. She also believes this ties into her theater background. She thinks it would be a “cool and quirky” job that fits her personality.

Thank you for the music

By:Bella Lopes

i_l90@txtstate.edu

Cheyenne Young spends a lot of her favorite evenings indulging in her favorite punk bands at local venues.

Young, a journalism major at Texas State University, was first introduced to Brand New, an American rock band, her senior year of high school. A good friend of Young’s, Georgia Wheat, introduced her to a lot of music by writing them all down on a piece of paper.

Young spent the next couple of years finding bands on Spotify, and attending numerous concerts. The first show Young ever attended was Sorority Noise, a punk band. Young enjoys the little high you get from going to these shows. “It’s one thing to listen to music on your own, but it’s a completely different feeling to be surrounded by people who are passionate about the same music as you.”

Young admits that finding this passion for music got her out of a dark time and positively changed her life. As a tribute, Young got her first tattoo, a quote that says, “Thank you for the music.”, on her arm.

Young has spent the last year working as a music journalist for KTSW. Her jobs include reviewing CDs every week and writing an article every two weeks about a band that sticks out to her. Young has even started DJing for the programming department each week. Young hopes to pursue her dream of finding new bands and enjoying concerts by being a music journalist.

First The World, Now Texas State

By Cheyenne Young
coy1@txstate.edu

A world traveler and a free-spirit, Bella Lopes is no stranger to different cultures, customs and communities.

At the age of 19, Lopes, has already seen more of the world than most. Born in Bolivia, but always on the move, her family moved to Venezuela by the time she was just eight-months-old. After about a year and a half, her family uprooted to Brazil where they stayed for four years. They then moved to Ecuador until Lopes was nine years old, at which time they made the move to Houston, Texas where her family has been stationed ever since. Through her years of travel Lopes learned how to speak Portuguese, Spanish and English. Not ready to stop there, she is hoping to also become fluent in Italian, Arabic and French.

A junior at Texas State University, Lopes is hoping to one day write about the world. The desire for constant change she developed young by constantly moving to new places has brought her to pursue journalism. When asked about her aspirations with journalism, Lopes said, "I just want to write about the world, especially since I've gotten to see so much of it." Lopes was constantly reading and writing as a child about the places she went and the people she met. Get ready world, here she comes!

Getting to Know Daniel Richter

By: Colton Henderson

cth49@txstate.edu

Daniel Richter is a Junior at Texas State and his major is Digital Media Innovation. Richter grew up in Fairfax, Virginia and he moved to Spring, Texas a couple years ago. He is 20 years-old and has an older brother who is 22. He is independent, whereas he’ll go do something by himself if he wants to do it, even if no one else decides to go with. He can play one song on the ukulele and his biggest fear is not accomplishing something that he has started.

He loves to travel, having studied abroad in Geneva/London with the school, where he backpacked through Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, Dublin, and Venice. He is excited for his trip to Hawaii this upcoming January. Throughout his life, he has been sky diving twice, scuba diving, fire-walking, and he has been in a hot air balloon (steering it part of the time).

Richter also likes to be involved on campus, where he is a founding father of his fraternity, Lambda Chi Alpha (their focus is ‘feeding America’). He is on the Club Swim Team here, and he has been swimming since he was 6 years-old. In his free time, he has his own art business, where he likes to make candles and paintings. Richter is a creative person who “enjoys thinking up something, bringing it life, and then sharing it with the world.”

Studio Standby

Emily Martin in front of a "Stay Sorta Positive"
wall mural by @LURISSU in Houston, Texas

By: Conner Yarbrough
Email: coy2@txstate.edu

Emily Martin is an electronic media student and KTSW Assistant News Director at Texas State University. The 19-year-old sophomore uses her passion for broadcasting to reach her goal of becoming a TV news anchor.

However, she hasn’t always been involved in the world of mass communications. In fact, she originally dreamed of becoming either a professional actress or a dentist .

Martin's dreams shifted during her sophomore year at Deer Park High School in Deer Park, Texas - an outer suburb of her birth-city, Houston. It was in this year that she, by chance, was introduced to the school’s broadcast teacher, Jared Creel, while working as an office assistant for the counselor’s office. After a short interview, Creel had recruited Martin to the broadcast team that would ultimately point her in her current direction. However, even with this direction, it is her personal drive that has earned her the success she now enjoys. This drive was spurred on by her personal rejection of the Catholic private school system she attended during her elementary school days. When she moved on to middle school, she asked her parents to allow her to begin public school instead.

"Choosing to go to public school, after years in private school, was the first time I really did something for myself," Martin says.

It is this step that Martin claims pushed her to become outgoing and exploratory - two traits she considers key to excelling in broadcasting.

The Perfectly Relatable PR Major

This picture is apart of her birthday photo shoot set.

By: Jada Johnson

Email: jdj141@txstate.edu

This is Kayla Darenbourg. She is a 22-year-old from Houston, Texas who is studying Public Research. She is devoted to her faith and her family.
 Darenbourg is a senior at Texas state and is studying in PR while double minoring in English and Spanish. With her degree she hopes to get an internship at a business and then get hired full time, but for right now she is interning with Chi Alpha, an on-campus ministry, where she is a student leader. Darenbourg also assists her sister with her event planning business back home in Houston. 
When she is not working towards her academic goals, Darenbourg is working to improve her personal brand with her website (faithloveandtravel.com) that she has been working on for over a year. 
In her downtime she enjoys working out, taking pictures, and when given the opportunity, traveling.  Darenbourg has been to several countries outside the US such as Italy and Greece which she visited this summer. In the future, she hopes to travel to Australia. Some of her likes include dogs, Italian food, and hanging out with friends.

Aimee Huckeba and The Jazzy Streets of New Orleans

Aimee Huckeba is an alternative and jazz music lover who will have you wanting to live in New Orleans for eternity.

Huckeba, 20-year-old, is an enthusiast for the city of New Orleans, Louisiana and all its rich, jazzy history. She’s a current junior at Texas State University studying public relations in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. She's originally from Beaumont, Texas, but the rest of her family is from Louisiana; hence the love for New Orleans. 

Huckeba’s love for the city of New Orleans prompted her to acquire a public relations internship this past summer where she worked for Spears Group Strategic Communications Firm. She has a fascination with ghosts, and while living there the house she lived in and restaurant she worked at were both haunted. Huckeba  says “I’m terrified of them, but I love them,” which is an interesting concept. After interning, she's come to the realization that event planning is where she sees herself taking her PR degree after graduation. 

KTSW 89.9 is Texas State University's radio station and Huckeba  is a part of the promotions and music staff. She's “loyal” because she’s been a member of KTSW for two years. Fun fact about Huckeba says that she’s currently going vegetarian for this semester except for Thanksgiving because “I don’t care,” she says. If you’re looking for a great conversation, have any questions about New Orleans, need new music to listen to, or need someone to plan your event Huckeba is the girl for you!

An Artist on The Rise

By: Emily Martin
eam229@txstate.edu

Conner Yarbrough is an Electronic Media Major at Texas State University.  Some of  Yarbrough's biggest accomplishments are working for Fader Magazine in New York and being the assistant music and social media director for KTSW 89.9.

Yarbrough wants to pursue a career as creative editorialist/music journalist in the future. One of the artist's that first impacted Yarbrough's life was Lady Gaga. For him, Lady Gaga was one of the people outside of his family that showed him the value of being different.

"Lady Gaga gave me that acceptance that I needed knowing I lived in a world that didn't always support being different" Says Yarbrough.

In elementary school, Yarbrough wanted to be a marine biologist. For career day, all the students had to dress up but Yarbrough wasn't sure how to dress as a marine biologist. His grandmother had an extra art palette, an apron and an artist hat so he dressed as an artist instead. Yarbrough's grandmother was an artist and influenced Yarbrough's taste for creativity. This incidence is what Yarbrough believes fated him to become an artist.

Music Industry's Next Advertising Member

Being able to see the finish line of college can be an exciting thing. Calm, cool, and collected

22-year-old Joshua Christman is almost there with being close to senior year. Graduating from Austin High School in 2014 and a star football player in high school, Christman was excited to start new at Texas State majoring in Business Marketing.

Having a football background, Christman did have the opportunity to try out for the Texas State football team as a preferred walk on but ultimately decided against it. While business was in his interest, Christman came to conclusion that business marketing was not quite the perfect fit for him and changed his major to advertising with a minor in business. With some struggles that come along with managing college, the cost, and work Christman has continued to pursue his degree no matter the obstacles.

Having attended over 10 music shows including Austin City Limits, Christman and with a love for hip-hop and doing promotions for music festivals such as Mala Luna and Jmblya, Christman hopes to work in the music industry because of his satisfaction of the creative aspect of advertising and there being no doubt he will accomplish that.