It seems like I’m never done creating things. I don’t know why I always tell myself I’m done. I’m clearly not! After releasing ascend | a college reflection, I realized I needed to make another. But I didn’t want it to be precisely the same. I want everything I make to have something different about it. After all, every work should be unique in its own way.
Horizons is a personal reflection newspaper for gap year 3.0. Having taken three gap years, I’m treating the rest of my life like my third, eternal gap year full of exploration and memories. I devised the idea to create a newspaper while walking in Prague. I missed writing things for my book, Creative @ Work, and for my magazine, ascend | a college reflection. I told a friend I didn’t want to write in the same medium during the walk. I wanted this project to be different from the others in some way. He recommended a newspaper, a way to share highlights of my trip in Europe and how I decided to move to Hawai’i while on the trip. So, here I am writing a newspaper about my experiences. It’s exciting because this design differs from my book and magazine, so there's a lot of new learning too!
The reason the newspaper is called horizons is because of a sunset. I was trying to come up with names for this project, and I couldn’t come up with something as good as ascend. I sat outside of my cousin's old elementary school in Switzerland trying to brainstorm for a couple hours. I wanted it to be one word. I wanted it to say everything in that word like ascend did. But most of the things I came up with were pretty stale. I walked down the street from my aunt and uncle’s house in Switzerland with my cousin and her friend. As we walked down the hilly street and peered down, I saw one of the prettiest orange sunsets I had seen in Europe. There was something so great about looking out into the horizon. I snapped a quick picture of the sunset with a tall evergreen tree aside it.
There. The name. Horizons. I did a quick Google search to acquaint myself with the word, and I was pleasantly surprised to find the following example of the use: “She wanted to leave home and broaden her horizons.” That was me. Horizons means the line where the earth’s surface and sky meet. It also means the limit of a person’s knowledge, experience, or interest. I like both meanings. And through this work, I’m determined to show that I never want to reach my limit. There will always be more to explore. This is just the beginning of an extraordinary life full of experiences.
Here are a few experiences included in the newspaper:
should drinking water be universally free?
mini coopers
we go out on tuesdays
sex in hostels
"when you join the real world"
my mamma mia summer
5 times i thought i was going to die
Horizons is a personal reflection newspaper for gap year 3.0 with short essays, funny stories, life thoughts, essential questions, media I love, and more! horizons | a gap year 3.0 experience will come out on October 6, 2023 (World Smile Day).
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