We’re all accustomed to our normal classes being offered at various times; it makes scheduling easier and making-up tests simpler. But what happens when that class can only have one type of assignment per student?

This is one of the burdens that Period 8 Journalism has to carry. “Hot off the presses” no long exists for the period later in the day.

“It is kind of frustrating that there is a class before us that automatically has first dibs on topics that can be used in articles that I would also want to write about,” said senior and Period 8 student, Rebecca Jacobs.

Schedules should not dictate what a student can or cannot write about. The Glen Echo’s popularity has recently blown-up.  More articles are being added this year than last year because of the 44 (mostly new) students who chose to take journalism.

Having so many students certainly allows for articles to have a much different perspective and a fresh tone.  Yet although the news is being covered at a quicker rate, it does not compensate for the feeling of rejection after being told your idea has been “taken.”

One would be surprised by how much there is to cover in such a small school: with constant sporting events, theater productions, and overall an active student body, there is definitely no shortage of news. However, sometimes an idea does not strike a reporter as the one she wants to write about (Writing about football? No thanks.). To be fair, sometimes major articles will be saved for Period 8 — such as the infamous Glowcoming article.

“I never think of Period 8 journalism when I think of ideas… I actually completely forgot there was a period 8 class until now,” explained senior Period 5 student Rachel O’Connor. Her thought process embodies the lack of connection between the two periods. Making Period 5 more aware of their Period 8 brethren might just be enough to have article topics be thrown up for a fair game of “dibs.”

Perhaps this is just a bitter perspective from someone who had the luxury of one period last year and a seemingly endless wealth of articles to choose from. There is no solution to this problem — one journalism period would be infeasible. However, could there be a better system to help prevent the constant frustration of Period 8?