From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you for reading our final issue as Portola High students. Please feel free to contact us at portolapilot@gmail.com for any comments, questions or concerns. We will never forget the memories and experiences that we were gifted as student journalists, and while we may have played a big role in establishing the Pilot, its legacy does not end with us. Our publication serves as a camera, capturing the news, culture and community in this moment. We want to encourage all Portola High alumni and their families to continue to read portolapilot.com regularly and to always remember the history that we created.
Wishing you all well,
Portola Pilot's Class of 2020
Priscilla Baek will be retiring from her role as your Media Director for the 2019-2020 cycle. An original member of the club, Baek has not only worked hard to reflect Portola’s culture but has made friends with the respectable and talented Portola Pilot staff throughout the four years. As the first co-Editor-In-Chief, she has watched the production grow to the highly reputable paper it is today. Through the production, she has enjoyed serving the school through a variety of multimedia pieces. Though the last issue is bittersweet, she will bring these memories and life skills into her pre-med career at the University of Southern California.
“It’s not every day someone gets the opportunity to start a publication from the ground up, and I was that lucky someone,” Baek said. “ I guess all editors have their deadlines, and this one is mine.”
William Hsieh was your 2019-2020 Front Page Editor for his second year with the Portola Pilot. Known to some as ‘Lime’ or ‘limelego,’ he is the one creating the front pages, editing photos, and writing about a tech product the moment it comes out. This fall, William will be attending University of California, Los Angeles, for aerospace engineering in an attempt to bring Kerbal Space Program to reality, although computer science and engineering is also an option. He spends the majority of his waking time on the computer, either playing games ("Valorant", "Overwatch", "Apex Legends"), creating 3D models in Blender and making memes. William would like to thank his friends in the Melee squad, Science Olympiad, Science Bowl, Math Club, Classline, Portola News Network and (of course) Portola Pilot for the amazing and unforgettable experiences. He would also like to thank his Macbook, his Kuru Toga 0.5mm High Grade mechanical pencil, his TI-36X Pro calculator and Final Cut Pro X for helping him get through high school.
Helena Hu was your 2019-2020 Co-Editor-in-Chief for her third and final year of the Portola Pilot. Helena and her partner Simrat were able to work towards being successful at both the county and state level this year, but it would not have been possible without the other amazing staff members of the Pilot. She hopes that the legacy the seniors worked to build will forever be remembered in Pilot history. While her ending to her high school years has felt incomplete, Helena is looking forward to starting her next chapter of life at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she will pursue a major in psychobiology with a possible future in healthcare. She hopes to find a few glimpses of free time where she will be able to participate in student media for fun and bring her skills from the Pilot to a new team. She would like to thank her mom for being supportive of her high school career, her fellow staff members for always making her laugh, and her friends for always being understanding. She wishes the best of luck to next year’s staff, and cannot wait to read their stories next year.
Nicholas Hung was one of your 2019-2020 business managers for his second year as part of the Portola Pilot. Along with Junhee Ryu and Erin Choi, the #businessgang did its best to get that bacon for the production, and he is sad that school closure halted their plans to make as much profit as they could. Next year, Nicholas will be a freshman(oh no) attending the University of California, Berkeley where he will be majoring in energy engineering. He will definitely try to fit both a guitar and bass in his tiny tiny dorm, although it is unlikely he will have any time to practice. He’ll try to survive at Cal, but doesn’t sleep come after death? As he finishes his time at Portola, he realizes how much he has grown not only as a student, but as a person, thanks to the best friends and teachers he could wish for. He would like to thank the Portola Pilot family for an amazing two years, and the memory of exhausting laser tag at write-offs.
Julia is one of your four-year staff members of the Portola Pilot! This year, she had the honor of serving as the Opinion Editor. As an editor, she has launched the publication’s first ever Editorial Board with her favorite assistant editor, Kate Hayashi. She will forever remember the teachers and students at Portola High School who have helped her get to where she is now. Next year, she will be attending the University of Notre Dame’s undergraduate Mendoza College of Business as a business analytics or management consulting major. Hopefully, you may find her writing for their yearbook, The Dome, in a few years! Her ultimate dream job is to work for the Walt Disney Company as either a member of the capital markets team or their corporate real estate team.
Jordan Lee was the Visual Director for the Portola Pilot for the 2019-2020 school year, and is proud to be finishing up his third year with the publication. His favorite memories from journalism were competing at the OCJEA write-offs, designing front pages for the print publication and singing karaoke during class. He’s had a blast featuring his fellow students and writing articles for the school to enjoy, and is sad that it is time to be moving on. During the past four years, Jordan has enjoyed taking landscape photographs, playing guitar, captaining the cross country team, and spending time outdoors with his friends. He loves watching "The Flash", "Grey’s Anatomy" and all the "Star Wars" movies, and you can find him jamming out to Ariana Grande anytime. Jordan will be attending the University of California, San Diego this fall to study Biochemistry, in hopes of one day becoming a physician. Being a part of the Portola Pilot has been one of the most rewarding experiences of Jordan’s high school career, and he wishes all of our readers and students the best!
thank u, next -Jordan Lee
For her fourth and unfortunately final year of being on the Pilot, Annie had the honor of being your Arts and Entertainment Editor. Along with her wonderful assistant Jenny Won, she worked tirelessly to showcase the bountiful expression of the arts on campus. She is eternally grateful to Portola High’s incredible staff and the teachers who lectured, mentored, and joked around with her until she managed to pull herself together and get to where she is today. In the fall, she will be attending the University of Chicago, where she will pursue a major in history on a pre-med track while furiously consuming the school’s weekly $1 milkshakes. To commemorate her fourth year, she will now break the fourth wall. Thank you so much to the Pilot for giving me a home and for letting me to leave my mark on this school. I will never forget our memories (good and bad), our memes and our frantic attempts at meeting deadlines.
Ajinkya is a four year member of the Pilot, and in his second year as Managing Editor. He has worked to launch the Pilot’s mobile app, and helps with the upkeep and design of the website. While best known for his explanation of SNO badges during leadership team meetings, he can also be found playing sports with his friends, flying his drone, and poorly attempting to learn the guitar. In the fall, he’ll be starting as an undergraduate at Claremont McKenna College under a dual major of neuroscience and public policy. He’d like to thank his parents for their endless support and for allowing him to make a 25 minute commute to Portola every morning. Additionally, he’d like to thank his friends (the bumboyz) for making every day of high school entertaining, all of his teachers for redefining the meaning of learning, and his fellow staff members for ensuring there was never a dull moment in class.
Shawyan Rooein was your Centerspread Editor for the Portola Pilot for the 2019-2020 school year! This was his third year on the Portola Pilot team and he was so happy to be a part of it. His favorite memories from the Portola Pilot was this year’s Orange County write-offs with the Portola Pilot team and the rap battles during class. Outside of the school newspaper, he is an avid tennis fan who competes both on the school team as captain and in tournaments outside of school. Outside of school and sports, he enjoys watching movies, hanging out with friends, eating food(he’s a huge foodie), and binge watching one of his many favorite TV shows including "The Office". In the future, he will be attending the University of California, Berkeley, majoring in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. Thank you to all our readers and the journalism team for an amazing past three years. Signing off, Shawyan Rooein.
For the 2019-2020 cycle, Junhee Ryu was one of your business managers. As his third year being a pilot member and business manager, he worked to raise profits through advertising and make sure that the Pilot never went into any debt. He especially enjoyed making frequent calls with Varsity Driving Academy, carrying heavy insert piles during second period and designing the most creative and original page in each issue. He would like to thank his co-business managers, Nicholas and Erin, for being so cooperative and hardworking throughout the year. He hopes that this year’s power trio made enough surplus to set a good foundation for next year once the new team gets rolling. Next year, he will be attending the University of California, Los Angeles, where he will pursue a major in mathematics. He would like to say his final thank-yous to all the supportive staff members for the guidance, his friends for amazing memories and the readers of the Pilot for always providing feedback and tuning in to the latest stories.
Maya was your 2019-2020 Managing Editor for her last year on the Portola Pilot. She has worked on the production for four years, a member since 2016. She mainly works with page editors and staff writers to help make the crazy process of production as smooth as possible. Since her start on the Pilot, she has had a plethora of different and valuable experiences, from learning how to write in journalistic style to drawing cartoons to using Photoshop and InDesign. This fall, she will be attending USC in the honors program at the Marshall School of Business. She would like to thank her parents and her younger brother for their endless support from the very beginning, from driving her to journalism write-offs on early Saturday mornings to getting ice cream after them. She would also like to thank her friends for making these past four years incredible.
Aaron Sha was your 2019-2020 Features Editor for his third and final year in the Portola Pilot. Often found in the corner of the classroom stressing with his excellent assistant, Akshay, he was able to capture and transcribe the unique perspectives of numerous members of the Portola community onto screen and paper. Pursuing a major in psychology at University of California, San Diego, he will surely reminisce about the (most likely better) days of panicking over deadlines, being bad at laser tag, and forgetting to delete Oxford commas. Though he may no longer be part of the staff in the years to come, he will undoubtedly cherish his time in the Pilot and find time to visit. He would like to thank every member of the Pilot, past and present, for the unforgettable experience, and is ready to make his transition from editor to an avid reader of the Portola Pilot.
Simrat Singh was your 2019-2020 Co-Editor-in-Chief for his third and final year of the Portola Pilot. He truly enjoyed working with an amazing staff and his incredibly talented partner Helena in order to push the production to new heights and continue to further the program. While a bulk of the staff is leaving, he hopes that the foundation that has been set by the seniors can be built upon and pushed to recognition on the state level and beyond in the next year. He is excited to start the next chapter of his life at Purdue University Honors College majoring in data science with plans to pick up a minor in something that he is passionate about and join the Purdue Exponent to continue his work in journalism. While this is the end to Simrat’s journey at Portola and with the Pilot, he hopes to follow the Pilot’s journey through online articles and provide insight when needed. Simrat will be permanently moving to Indiana in June and while the farewell may be less than ideal given the circumstances, he hopes to find a way to visit occasionally and maintain his connection and relationship with those that made his high school experience special.
Farhad Taraporevala was your 2019-2020 Co-News Editor for his fourth year as a part of the Portola Pilot. He enjoyed his time working on the news section and would like to thank all his amazing writers and his great Co-News Editor Tiffany. He loves watching the Pittsburgh Steelers or Boston Bruins with his dog Toni. He is excited for his first year of college at the University of California, San Diego, where he will be majoring in physics and hopefully minoring in music. He hopes to end up with a PhD in physics and a job in academia or research. For fun he plays volleyball, football or trumpet, composes, bikes and enjoys reading. He would like to thank all his teachers for inspiring him every day and friends for making his time in high school amazing. He hopes to come back to Portola in the future to properly say goodbye to all his underclassmen friends and teachers, but for now he hopes they are all staying safe and enjoying their time at home.
Tiffany Wu was your 2019-2020 Co-News Editor for her second year of being on the Pilot! With the year-long help and patience of her co-editor, Farhad, as well as her reluctant right-hand-man (literally), Shawyan, she recorded and memorialized your important campus events onto paper. Throughout her years on the Pilot, she has thoroughly enjoyed embarking upon the search for campus news while simultaneously growing familiar with the richly diverse student bodies on campus. She is extraordinarily grateful to all of her teachers, who have inspired her with their passion for her education and growth as a person. In the fall, she will be attending the Bouvé College of Health Sciences at Northeastern University as a nursing major. She would like to thank the Portola Pilot for giving her an opportunity to cultivate her embarrassing love for fanfiction into meaningful feature articles, for serving as a close-knit family that humored her delight at inserting ads on print days and for producing that one black hoodie she wore practically every day of her senior year. She will always remember frantically running to Room 301 at 8:01 AM with her shoes half on.