Field Notes: The Media School Travel Blog

For 13 Ernie Pyle Scholars, arriving at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies on Tuesday morning in St. Petersburg, Florida, was a first.

For Annie Aguiar, it was a return trip.

“Seeing people who have never been to where you’re from and appreciate it is a really special experience,” Aguiar said.

While the Florida native has spent plenty of time in the St. Petersburg and Tampa areas, the last time she came to Poynter was the summer before her junior year of high school.

“It was a week of workshops,” Aguiar said. “They taught us a lot of digital tools to create personal essays and interactive graphics.”

A lot has changed between that week in the summer of 2015 and today.

“It’s 2019 — you’re not just publishing something and sending it out to the world. You have to be in a conversation with the audience,” she said. “Publishing is a privilege, and you have to understand the effects of that.”

Going into her junior year of high school, she was a year away from being the editor-in-chief of the Red & Black newspaper at Hillsborough High School. Now, Aguiar is the arts editor for the Indiana Daily Student after a semester beat reporting and a semester as the design chief.

After looking back on her two trips to Poynter, what would she tell her high school self?

“You know more than you think you do, but you don’t have to know everything,” Aguiar said. “Places like Poynter are so useful for exposing you to new ideas and new conversations, and each visit is just as useful as the last. You’re luckier than you know.”