EXTRA, EXTRA: PCHS student discusses mentorship at The Pocahontas Times

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Khristian Smith

PCHS Mentorship Program

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Every year, rising seniors at Pocahontas County High School must complete a mentorship program worth half a credit to graduate. This year I spent my mentorship hours with Pamela Pritt at The Pocahontas Times , who gladly offered me time to work with her and the staff during their busy summer months.

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Now, for anyone who doesnﾒt know what exactly goes on at the Times office in Marlinton, here is a small snippet: you are expected to be on time and ready to do your job, you are given articles that must be proof read or written, and of course you have the duty to take notes when required to at meetings and also be responsible for any photographs that go into the making of your assigned article.

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The experience was nothing short of thrilling. With two articles due by Friday, I began to feel that working for a newspaper, no matter the size, would be fully exciting. Something always happened, you could count on it; a big news story happened and it had to be reported in that weekﾒs paper, the scanners went off saying there were accidents, and, of course, there were the days you were lined up against the wall with a table buried in inserts or papers that needed stuffing.

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Overall, Wednesdays were the hype days. The weekﾒs paper would arrive between 10 and 11 and then it was ﾓtagging and baggingﾔ time. We stuffed the papers by hand, and trust me, even though it sounds quite nerve racking, it is a great mental relaxer. So, after the stuffing, you tagged the papers with addresses where they needed to be delivered. After that, we loaded them into mailing crates and packed them up in the trucks and cars of the staff who would then drive them to the post office or up and down the county delivering the weekﾒs news to local vendors.

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For me, the mentorship experience was one I will never forget. I got to experience the real workplace and the triumphs and tribulations that come along with it. It prepared me for the workforce of later life, dealing with deadlines and editorﾒs notes, having to cram everything in before the time crunch, and teaching one how not to procrastinate.

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Overall, the experience made me see that just because I want to be a writer of books, doesnﾒt necessarily mean that I canﾒt broaden my horizons. Journalistic writing is just as much writing as anything else published out there and that is something that I will never forget from this.

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I enjoyed my weeks of work at the Times office and I feel they were well spent. I took with me not published work and graphic artistry but a sackful of memories I will always hold dear.

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From meeting deadlines and getting to mess around with cameras and photoshop, to ﾓtagging and baggingﾔ papers and making future ads for customers, I will always cherish my memories down at the old Pocahontas Times, the countyﾒs oldest, and in my opinion, most cherished business.

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