Joining the Portola Pilot was an integral part of most of our staff’s high school experience, helping them gain insight into what activities they wish to pursue in the future. In particular, Pilot was the very thing that inspired Portola Pilot alumni to pursue journalism in college.
For 2024 Editor-in-Chief and alumna Tara Vatandoust, conducting critical reviews and expressing her inner cinephile while writing for the Arts & Entertainment (A&E) section and being the 2023 A&E editor of the Portola Pilot inspired her to join the University of California, San Diego’s student newspaper, The Guardian, for which she is currently a senior staff writer on the A&E team.
“I’m currently a senior staff writer for the arts and entertainment section, and it’s been a blast,” Vatandoust said. “I have always liked A&E since I first started newspaper in high school, and I’ve had a really great time writing reviews and being able to go to all these events. One thing that’s really cool is we get press passes for things like the San Diego Film Festival or concerts, or on-campus stuff. So I’ve been able to cover a lot of really fun things, and I’ve also been given a lot of leeway to write about whatever I’m interested in.”
2025 Portola Pilot Editor-in-Chief and alumna Ruhi Samudra joined The Daily Californian during her first semester at the University of California, Berkeley. As a biomedical engineering major, Samudra said that she sees writing as an outlet independent from her STEM-heavy coursework. As a previous sports editor, avid sports fan and game coverage writer on the Portola Pilot, she channeled the same passion for sports into her college journalism.
“I have a relatively unique opportunity here at a school that plays Division I sports,” Samudra said. “The fact that we’re up against some of the best collegiate athletes in the country makes the games so exciting to cover. We just wrapped up our fall season, and I was covering field hockey, which is really interesting, because I never really followed field hockey before, but it has so many interesting players and stories.”
Graduating in the spring from Cal Poly Pomona, former 2022 staff writer and alumnus Aadi Mehta said that the Portola Pilot strengthened his time management and communication skills, which he utilizes while writing for Cal Poly Pomona’s Poly Post. The Poly Post opened up more doors for his journalism career than Mehta could have ever imagined.
“If you’re passionate about something, really dig deep into it,” Mehta said. “If journalism is something you really want to do, then go for it and make sure to get started early, so you don’t feel discouraged later. You really get the opportunity to not only do things on campus, but also off campus. The amount of material and the amount of ideas that you’re able to create in college is so much more than the opportunities you get in high school.”
Joining the Portola Pilot was an integral part of most of our staff’s high school experience, helping them gain insight into what activities they wish to pursue in the future. Some former staff members were so impacted by this extracurricular, they decided to continue their journalism journey in college.
