I was on top of the world after this story ran. It was my first story to run in the Detroit Free Press. My adviser said she gave it to me because of my ability to make a story sing. Going into writing it I was beaming with confidence. I contacted Brandon Keeler's mother about her son and his accomplishments and set up an interview at a local library for the next day after I recieved the story. Now anyone who has to have $800,000 in scholarship money has to be a nerd. You know, short, glasses, shirt tucked in, pants up high, the typical nerd. I was wrong. Brandon Keeler walks in standing about 6-foot, 180 built like a football player. I had no idea it was him until I heard his mom's voice. So we sat down and I asked him some questions got what I needed and went home. I wrote the story at home and sent it in to the office, only to come into work on Monday with a whole bunch of things I needed to do. My adviser said your story is great, but the Features editor is out of town and the replacement thinks it needs more. On the last day of deadline I had to contact a PR person for Detroit Public Schools, the Principal of Detroit Renaissance High School and a woman from Yale who did not like me at all. I finished the story and it ran on Tuesday, July 8. The next day, I logged onto the computer and opened up my email to find 12 emails congratulating me and saying what a great story it was. It ended up being the third most-emailed on Freep.com. In the last week of my apprenticeship I was sitting talking to someone and the photographer of the story walked by then turned around. He said your the kid that wrote that story on the kid with the scholarships right? I replied with a Yes. He returns, You know that story went National right? Go google your name. So I did and it did. 12 papers around the country picked up my story for their papers and one from the Middle East making my story an international and national publication. Not bad for my first story.
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