Two pieces from my summer at OPB were submitted to the Hearst Journalism Awards Competition and placed 6th out of 57 entries from 33 schools across the country, enough to buy me a ticket to the final championship in San Francisco.

Once I touched down in the city, the clock started ticking. I had 2 1/2 days to create a 2-minute audio piece from scratch — no research, no scheduled interviews, no real idea of what my story would end up looking like. All I had was a prompt: Show how one of Trump’s executive orders is affecting life in the Bay Area. Immediately, I thought of immigration, a topic I had been wanting to pursue throughout my journalistic career.