Melani is currently a 17-year-old senior at Birmingham. She has attended this school for the past three years and she can say that she would consider it to be a great school for people to learn and evolve. She’s made many great friends over the years she spent in this school and she hopes she can continue to make more. Although she is a little anxious about entering her senior year, she knows that with the right guidance and right mindset, she will be successful and be able to go about the school year well. Overall, she hopes to enjoy her time spent in Birmingham and start to appreciate every moment while it lasts. 

Melani is someone who has always been very passionate about her studies. Studying is probably one of her favorite things to do in her time alone since it puts her mind at ease and makes her feel like she is growing as a person. Melani believes that the most important aspect of human development is growth--whether that means physically, mentally, or emotionally. She believes that we should always be looking to evolve and seek out new experiences to help make this happen. She feels as though she has learned a lot from her friends and classmates who constantly inspire her to chase after their goals and dreams. She hopes to continue growing smarter as she flourishes in life and pursue a career in child psychology or something similar. Psychology is something that Melani has always wanted to study in college and she has a strong desire to work with children in the future so she thinks working in this field will be beneficial to her. However, she’s open to any other career options that life might throw at her and releases any forced expectations. 

When it comes to music, Melani has always been a huge junkie. She is someone who wants to explore every genre of music and every artist possible. For a while, that was all she was doing. Her playlist roams from the famous British singer and songwriter, Blood Orange to corridos from her favorite Mexican music group, Edicion Especial, to songs from famous rapper and producer Lucki. Melani is passionate about music and believes that it is such a beautiful love language with which people can express themselves.  At the time this is written, her current top artists are King Krule, Dean Blunt, Edicion Especial, Blood Orange, and Frank Ocean. She loves the warmth that soul music brings to her and the powerful messages that are hidden in the lyrics. Melani used to resent listening to Mexican music for a long time. It wasn’t until she was 13-14 years old that she started to embrace regional Mexican music and started to dance and enjoy herself at family gatherings instead of being antisocial. She loves listening to banda and corridos with her cousins and feels like she is finally able to express herself more with her family because of this. Melani is so glad that she started embracing music from her culture and started becoming friends with more people because of it as well. She loves and admires the beauty in Mexican culture and hopes her children do the same in the future.

Melani joined journalism because she found it to be an interesting elective that she had not known existed previously. She loves to write so she hopes to have fun in the class and have good experiences. Many of her friends are heavily involved in school programs and extracurricular activities so she hopes to be able to interview them and write about all the wonderful things that they do on campus. She hopes that over time, students will become more passionate about the school newspaper and that it becomes more known to students who aspire to be writers.