Student story: Piazza delivery

By Garrett Jacobson

Flint Hills Publications Workshop attracted Leah Piazza from St. Louis where she attends Lindbergh High School.

That’s Leah Piazza. Not Leah Pizza.

“In elementary, I got called Pepperoni Pizza quite a bit. I don’t understand why,” she said, her voice rising. “The pronunciation isn’t even close! It’s pronounced Pee-ahh-zuh.”

Leah is no ordinary slice of pizza. The drive from St. Louis to Manhattan was one of the smaller notches in the belt of her travel résumé.

“I love to travel, because it’s always great to get out,” she said. “My favorite place I’ve visited was Greece. I’ve been all over Europe, to Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Turkey and Vatican City”

That’s a lot of air miles.

Despite everywhere Piazza has been, she claims to be the normal one.

“You guys have the accents,” she said. “Word pronunciations? It’s like two worlds. You guys say things like Taco Bell incorrectly.”

Make that “Tack-O” Bell. Or something like that.

“Our teacher highly recommended this camp to me because I’m going to be a features editor,” Piazza said.

Piazza will be in her third and final year on The Pilot, her newspaper staff. She has been a reporter for two years. Piazza was a feature editor simultaneously her junior year. She loves to write leads.

She also likes to make friends, no matter who’s got the right accent.

“It’s easy to make friends when they are in the same class,” Piazza said. “I have a new best friend in Jacob Pruitt.”

Though Piazza and Pruitt have grown on each other, their friendship may be short lived.

“Me and Leah have become the best of friends here at camp, but we will probably not continue to talk after camp because she lives in St. Louis, and I live in Kansas,” said Pruitt. “Leah’s accent is a running joke in our class, but I don’t really notice it too much.”

Camp is coming to a close, but Piazza still has high hopes for the remaining time.

“I feel as if I’ve been re-learning the basics in my class,” she said. “I hope that I can learn more about what to bring back to my own newspaper, rather than all the basics we’ve already learned.”

Garrett Jacobson is a sophomore at Wichita Southeast High School and a student in the advanced writing class at the Flint Hills Publications Workshop.