Every Fall, thousands of students involved in their high school’s media staff convene for a weekend of networking, workshops and tours with one goal in mind: to nurture their love of journalism. I was fortunate enough to attend the 2014 National High School Journalism Convention on November 6, where I became more inspired by journalism than I had ever thought possible. The convention, which is sponsored by the Journalism Education Association and the National Scholastic Press Association, was held over the course of four days and featured speakers including the legendary  Bob Woodward and SportsCenter anchor Jay Harris.

The festivities began quickly after junior reporter Sydney Kane, advisor Chrissy Wiedemann and I arrived at D.C.’s Marriott hotel. Once checked in, we waited anxiously to board a bus to go to The Washington Post’s printing plant in Springfield, Virginia. The tour was one of many that convention-goers could sign up for.  I must admit, the plant was not what I expected. I envisioned a chrome building belching out noxious fumes, where we would be handed hardhats and told to proceed into the plant. We would, I thought, emerge hours later coated in ink. The building, however, appeared to be cleaner and not as drenched in ink as I had expected. Once inside, we popped on our safety goggles and began the tour. It boggled my mind to hear about how expensive the printing process is. It costs a business about $32,000 to have a back-page ad on the Sunday paper. I also learned that after each issue is printed, thousands of copies are loaded onto a plane and a bus during the early hours of the morning to be delivered to California and New York City, respectively. The paper never sleeps.

We spent the middle of the day wandering through the expo that had been set up on a lower level of the Marriott hotel. It was fascinating to be able to talk to representatives from the University of Southern California and the Rochester Institute of Technology about journalism at their schools. The real highlight of the day, however, came at the end, when we arrived at the opening ceremony. There, we heard from keynote speaker, and America’s most famous investigative journalist,  Bob Woodward. The Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist is best known for his work on the Watergate scandal, as well as his many books. Woodward talked about his initial failures when he started out at The Washington Post. One occurred when he wrote about a hotel’s coffee shop that had failed a health inspection. The problem was, Woodward hadn’t visited actually the coffee shop, which apparently was not located at the hotel that he originally wrote about. The restaurant experience served him a piping hot lesson: A reporter should always visit the scene.   Woodward also stressed the importance of  in-person interviews. He said that when interviewing others,  it is key to “take others as seriously as they take themselves.”

Here’s the headline: The overall experience inspired me. I left wanting more than ever to bring quality to all publications that I am a part of. The 2015 National High School Journalism Convention will be held in Orlando, Florida. Hopefully, those who attend next year will not be too distracted by the dolphins to get just as much out of the experience as I did.