Carrying on with a tradition I started in 2013 and continued in 2014, I’ve decided to point out some of my professional highlights of 2015.

Over the year, I’ve continued contributing to the Austin Chronicle, covering news and even writing two cover stories for them this year (my two longest articles ever). I wrote more articles for The Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Observer this year, but I also wrote for The Chicago Tribune and The Houston Chronicle, two of the biggest papers in the country, for the first time this year. At the 2015 Central Texas Colloquium on Religion in February, I presented an academic paper “MCs & Marx: Examining Rap from a Historical Materialist Perspective,” which I will expand into my honors thesis.

With just a semester and my thesis left, if all goes as planned, I will be graduating in May from The University of Texas at Austin with a Plan II Honors, Religious Studies Honors, and History triple-major, with a minor in American Studies. This summer, I will be interning full-time with The Dallas Morning News‘ editorial board.

Below, in chronological order, I’ve included ten of my articles that I’m most proud of from this year.

After hearing of a young socialists club at my high school, I was reminded of my own history of high school activism, and decided to write in support of those of us who fall outside of the political mainstream.

While lots of people are now familiar with UT Student Government President Xavier Rotnofsky and Vice President Rohit Mandalapu, they first made national news when they campaigned to take over the student government. I wrote about RotMan for the first time following their electoral victory, though at the time, I wasn’t expecting to write so much more about the duo over the year.

After reporting on incidents of racism in the UT campus community, I talked with Dr. Richard Reddick, a UT alum and professor, and looked into some of the reasons why the Greek community can often seem hostile toward racial minorities.

Finally putting my history degree to use, I wrote my first solo cover story (and my longest story ever) in May about the history of racism at UT-Austin and how its physical landscape reflects that.

After reporting in my cover story about the long legacy of racism at UT, I wrote an opinion column in my hometown paper urging UT President Greg Fenves to remove the Jefferson Davis statue from our campus.

Following my column advocating the removal of the Jefferson Davis statue from campus and after Dylann Roof murdered nine people in a historic black church, I wanted to make clear that there’s nothing wrong with ‘Southern Pride,’ but that there’s a whole lot wrong with the South’s history of racism, especially during the Confederacy.

After first advocating the removal of UT’s Jefferson Davis statue back in 2013 and after all the time I had spent covering the controversy and history of the statues, it was a special moment for me to be there live to cover the removal of the statue.

Originally a longer research paper for my “Constitutional Design” class at UT, I wrote about some of the Electoral College’s flaws, particularly its role in enabling and arguably encouraging racial inequality for the newly-created Scalawag Magazine, which covers the culture of the American South.

Unfortunately, my “pointless screed,” as one unhappy commenter described it, might be behind a paywall for some. Still, it was an honor to have my thoughts about campus carry published in one of the largest papers in the country.

My third cover story ever, this article was one of the most entertaining pieces I’ve ever written, and almost certainly the most absurd.