Daily Deacon

Rachel Hirsch Profile//Karlee Spirit

Seven year old Rachel Hirsch was destined to be an elementary teacher. She didn’t know it yet, but her experiences during her senior year of high school would prove it to her.

“I decided to shadow a first grade class for my senior project my senior year. There was a little girl struggling so I took her aside and helped her in the right direction. Once she finally got it, it was the most rewarding feeling I had ever felt.”

Hirsch, a resident of Louisville, Kentucky, is a sophomore at Wake Forest University majoring in elementary education and minoring in creative writing. Her focus in creative writing and love for teaching has motivated her to take on the challenge of journalism.

While teaching is an art of thinking on your feet and taking on whatever is thrown at you on that day, Hirsch believes journalism is of paralleled tasks and responsibilities.

A motivation backed by an enjoyment for writing and a challenge for a new angle of writing, she figured being a journalist would allow her to be creative in a different way. She finds journalism as a stepping stone for bettering her skills for down the road, but admitted to her difficulty in being able to fully embrace the art of being a journalist.

“The test for me is going to be able to change from essay style to using the active voice, while being short and to the point and not providing tons of details.”

Hirsch finds numerous similarities in being a journalist and studying journalism to her process in becoming a student teacher, teacher’s assistant, and hopefully one day a teacher.