Everyone knows of Harker’s student-run magazines Horizon and Harker Eclectic Literature and Media (HELM), but junior Andrew Lu has added a third magazine to this list: the Herald, a history journal that will celebrate student excellence in history and act as a model to student research essays. 

The Herald was specifically created to showcase the multitude of outstanding history essays that have been written by Harker students. It also will provide examples of good research essays to Harker students and to serve as a teaching resource for both history teachers and librarians. The student editorial board of the Herald, which includes Andrew, will edit and review essays submitted for publication in order to ensure the best versions are used as models. 

“When it comes to writing research papers, looking to previous students’ papers is a good model, and it’s a good way to share with them different perspectives,” Andrew said. 

The Herald will be available on the Harker LibGuides in early December, giving current freshmen ample time to peruse it before writing their research papers in the spring. Unlike both HELM and Horizon, copies of the Herald will not be available for sale to the general student body. Instead, the limited run of hard copies will be distributed to the library and History Department. When students need to use the journal, they can access it in any of their history teachers’ classrooms or check out a copy in the library. 

In the future, the editorial board of the Herald plans to release a new copy every year around December or January. New members of the board will be chosen through an interview and voting process, and they may expand from the journal itself to also offering workshops and mentorships to student researchers as they write their essays. The Herald also plans to expand to sophomore and junior model essays in the future.

Over the summer, Andrew realized the absence of history publications that Harker offers and went to Byron Stevens, his AP European History teacher, with a solution: the Herald. Many on the editorial board, including Lauren Liu (9), agree with the lack of support for history and believe that the journal can make it a more popular subject. 

“History isn’t a subject that everyone prefers, and especially at a school where STEM is the main focus, the humanities are really under-appreciated,” Lauren said. 

Stevens immediately supported the history journal; he was as enthused about the project as Andrew was. He was also impressed with how thorough and thoughtful the editorial board had been in the creation process of the Herald, leaving almost no work to the teachers. 

“Something I appreciate about the group of kids who put this together is the way they front-end loaded it and they came up with a product. The kids really took the initiative, and now [the advisers] are just making sure that it works out in the future,” Stevens said.

Many on the editorial board believe that this journal will change research essay writing, especially for freshmen and sophomores. Spencer Cha (10), a member of the editorial board, thinks that he would have been much more comfortable writing the freshman research essay if previous essays were available as models. 

“As freshmen, we had basically no sample papers, no examples of papers to base our research papers off of,” Spencer said. “But with this journal the freshman will have a better foundation of how to write their research paper.”

Andrew acknowledges that the Herald may not start with a general readership, but his vision is for the journal to inspire students to pursue excellence when writing their history essays. He hopes that, by compiling stellar examples of essays together, the Herald will spark an interest in the subject for students.

“Let’s face it, people aren’t gonna read 2000-3000 word essays for enjoyment with all their other commitments,” he said. “Our target audience is freshmen and sophomores who are looking for some extra guidance.”

The editorial board of the Herald hopes that the journal will encourage greater variation in research essays and foster student discussion about their topics and history in general. 

“That’s one of the goals of the journal actually, to engage in scholarly discussion with peers,” Andrew said. “That’s the vision that we want to have with the history journal.”