Meet Krystal Li: UHMP student journalist and workshop participant
By Aileen Delgado
Krystal Li, a senior at Coral Reef High School in Miami, was one of more than 20 students who participated in UHMP’s “Homesick” spring workshop. She says she jumped at the opportunity.
It was “a good opportunity for me,’’ she says, “because I was relatively new to journalism at the time, and I wanted to learn more about how to write a feature story and also how to publish a meaningful article to spread awareness.”
She joined a team with five classmates that focused on housing affordability in her local immigrant community. Under the guidance of mentor-editor and former USA TODAY correspondent Alan Gomez, the team produced a story about a fellow high school student’s experience with South Florida’s soaring pandemic housing prices.
The student’s name was Arianna, and the story of her family’s housing struggles resonated with Li: “I realized that the people around me, whether I knew it or not, could be dealing with these problems at such a young age.”
Li hopes to use her sharpened journalistic skills immediately in her role as an editor for her school’s newspaper and literary magazine. She also has been a student intern at UHMP and has helped with its reporting “boot camps’’ and workshops.
Working on projects under the supervision of experienced journalists, “you’re really gaining valuable experience in the field,’’ Li says. “That’s not really the same as learning it in a class.”