By Lucas Jackson, Epic Charter Online
You typically hear stories about big voices, but what about smaller ones? The ones that are underrepresented, and would often be muffled from being heard?
Jeremiah McBurrows is looking to lend a mic to these voices that represent unnoticed communities.
Jeremiah is the copy editor for the yearbook of Heritage High School in Frisco, Texas. He started in photojournalism, but his teacher signed him up for yearbook after seeing how he took photos and wrote captions, and thought he’d be a “fantastic addition to the team.”
Jeremiah said his favorite story he’s written was about a junior. The student’s grandmother, who lived in India, had lost her husband and afterward the longtime housewife decided to get five jobs and paid for her son to go to college. She inspired her granddaughter to work hard and pursue a career as an OBGYN. The girl is now on track to graduate early.
Another story Jeremiah shared stemmed from the previous one. The junior’s theater teacher was diagnosed with breast cancer weeks before school started. She didn’t tell anyone at first, and according to Jeremiah, “She was like…I gotta stay strong.” He added she got through the school year, and will come back the next year.
“She’s working through it, and she’s really powerful,” he said.
Long before Jeremiah even got into journalism, he was already a gifted writer.
“Not to brag, but I’ve been told since I was like, 7, I came up boom — a genius.” He could read from the age of 2.
“Funny story…it was preschool right? They took us to the park. And I grew up in not not the best neighborhood. So the park had graffiti and stuff…Someone drew a curse word on the sidewalk. Me being the only kid who could read…I was like, ‘what does this word say? Oh, this, this is an F sound. This is the U sound, this is the C sou- Oh!’ and then I said it and I got in trouble for saying a curse word…because they didn’t know I could read.”
Jeremiah enjoys writing, but says it’s more like a job for now. He says his two biggest passions are video games and working out.
“Like if I’m at home on a Saturday… I’m playing Zelda.”
He clarified, specifically, “Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.” However, according to him, “the best game of all time is Ocarina of Time.”
Jeremiah plans to continue bringing attention to unnoticed groups.
“I found that a lot of little cliques and niches, little groups in our school weren’t covered nearly as much as they should be in the yearbook. So I made it my goal to bring light to those groups. And I want to do that on a bigger scale…my goal is to make people feel seen and appreciated with their work and what they do in their life…I want to make a living with that career.”
