On June 22-27, Washington D.C. hosted 50 students, one from each state, for the Al Neuharth Free Spirit and Journalism Conference. Rockwood Summit has never had a student selected to attend this convention since it was created in 1999, until senior Mary Corkery. 

Corkery said first semester freshman year, she took Journalism Writing and Reporting. When her teacher told her that Newspaper Production would be a good fit for her, she decided to join. 

“Our old journalism teacher, [Clay] Zigler, told me I really need to join the newspaper because I did pretty well in that class, so that’s why I ended up staying with it,” Corkery said. 

Corkery said she has known of the convention for years, and when it was finally time to apply, she had to give them two essays, three pieces of old writing, two letters of recommendation, and also fill out a resume.

“[The application] was very involved and I put a lot of time into it but I didn’t really expect to get picked because it is one person per state so I was pretty excited when I got picked,” Corkery said. 

While in D.C., Corkery got to listen to reporters from popular news agencies and engage in various activities.

“We would have different panelists come and talk to us about journalism. A lot of them were professional journalists. We talk to people from the Washington Post and New York Times. In the morning and afternoon it was all journalism stuff but in the evening we had time to explore the city and I learned a lot, it was really fun,” Corkery said. 

Corkery said that they talked about a lot of things including politics and the first amendment. 

“They would talk and then the fifty of us would get to ask questions and that was really cool to be able to exchange and get to hear everyone else’s questions because I learned so much from every one of those sessions and we had two or three a day so it was a lot of information,” Corkery said.