Jeanette Thomas is an eighteen-year-old from El Paso, Texas who moved to Lawton, Oklahoma six years ago. During her freshman year at her high school, Macarthur High, she joined Key Club. This helped show Jeanette that she loves to do community work.
From there helping people, as Thomas said, became her passion, because she said she wanted to get involved in school.
” . . . it really humbles me every time I volunteer somewhere because it put me in the other peoples shoes every time.”
Thomas said she thinks journalism is a way to help people. It’s something she is interested in as a career she said.
Thomas is here this week at Oklahoma Institute for Diversity in Journalism (OIDJ) because she said she wants to improve her journalism skills as a writer. She answered a few questions about her current and potential interests.
Q: What do you like about writing?
A: I’ve always like the fact that it’s different from academic writing, it has like a easier format in a way but it’s still fun. I like how the format basically goes by a few sentences of story and then a quote. And it basically like repeats that so there’s not much to basically think about compared to MLA style writing.
Q: Do you believe writing/journalism helps people?
A: Yes. Along with broadcasting and news forecasts, journalism helps get the message out to the public.
Q: Where do you volunteer at in Key Club and in your community?
A: I volunteer in the Ronald McDonald house in the city, and at school events like concession stands at basketball and soccer games. Do trash pickup right outside my school. Volunteer at marathons by cheering on the runners and giving them water while they’re running.
Q: Besides it being your passion, why do you help people?
A: It just felt right in my heart to help others in general. Like it really humbles me every time I volunteer somewhere because it put me in the other peoples shoes every time.
Q: If not journalism what job are you interested in?
A: Being a social worker, because ever since I got involved in Key Club I realized how I want to help children who need help who can’t get help. I understand what it feels like to have nowhere to go and assist them to the light at the end of the tunnel.
Q: You said you understand what it’s like to have no where to go what do you mean?
A: My cousins always came to me with their parental problems because they had bad parents, and I was their only way of support, and if I could have done anything at the time I would have but I couldn’t because I was only 8. I think that now that I have the ability to help children I should take it.
