At Hollis Brookline, many students are beginning to publish their creative works online. Some students at HB such as Alex Crupi ‘18, Allie Campbell ‘17, and Nicole Poitras ‘17, quickly got onto the web to create and upload articles and videos to the internet. How many people do you know that publish their own work?

Nicole Poitras has enjoyed reading and writing all of her life. However, creating a blog had remained an unpursued dream for a long time. Poitras originally attempted to start her blog as a freshman, but did not start officially writing until the summer of junior year. Poitras told herself “You know what, I can do this”–and she did.

After much contemplation, Poitras decided that she was going to write her blog on writing, and more specifically her journalism class. Poitras has written many posts about various topics such as book reviews, lists of books to read, poetry, balancing time for school and her internship, and also fun snippets of her life.

Looking back on her first post on Nov. 9, 2014 about economics, Poitras recalls how much her writing has grown and improved. Over the years she has “learned to expand [her] definition of what good content is” and has refined her own writing style. Poitras suggests that lovers of writing should, like her, continue to pursue writing.

Another lover of blogs is student Allie Campbell, who writes a blog surrounding environmental issues. Campbell enjoys helping people be more energy conscious and efficient. Campbell says that, “Issues facing the environment are really important to me”, and because of that, went off to start a plastic film recycling program in Hollis.

Campbell decided to write a blog to help people be more energy efficient. By writing her blog, Campbell became more confident, learned about web design, and has taken steps to improve the world around her. For the future, Campbell plans to major in Environmental Studies and continue to help others improve our environment.

Unlike Poitras and Campbell, Alex Crupi brought his talents to YouTube and created a gaming channel. Crupi is an avid gamer and video editor. Crupi was inspired by other successful YouTubers and their content, and created a gaming channel that mainly features the game Realm of the Mad God. Realm of the Mad God is an eight-bit style, free to play multiplayer game, where the main objective is to fight the Mad God, Oryx, alongside dozens of other players.

Crupi started his channel in Aug. 2011, and “didn’t really expect my channel to grow this much.” Crupi now has over 1,000 subscribers and plans to grow the community he is forming. From Crupi’s experience as a YouTuber, he too has gained confidence in his work and improved time management skills. For the future, Crupi plans to follow a career in YouTube, Web Design, or Computer Science related studies.

All three students have said to gain beneficial experiences from publishing their work online for others to see. For the future, Crupi, Campbell, and Poitras all wish to continue a career in their interests: whether it’s gaming, the environment, or writing.