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(518) (194) (107) (101) (69) (67) (45) (6) (2)It's been five years since Kristy Buller suited up in "haunt couture" on a first-person assignment at Field of Screams. Now the former Freestyle staffer is deputy press secretary for the New York City Department of Homeless Services.
"I deal with all the communication requests coming into the agency," Buller, who just took the post a few weeks ago, said.
"I think Freestyle not only provided me with practical work experience, but it has also (provided) an outlet for getting public clips, and it definitely enhanced my communication skills," the Lancaster Catholic High School graduate said.
"In high school I wasn't such an outgoing person," Buller said.
Of the Field of Screams project, she added, "It was definitely out of character."
Buller, who interned with the teen section in high school, said the experience provided background knowledge for "internships throughout college and the job I'm doing now."
Buller said she started interning in high school and "stayed until right when I left for NYU.
"It was really nice to have something already on my résumé; not many people had internships in high school."
During her sophomore year at NYU, Buller interned for Hillary Clinton's New York Senate office. She bridged her sophomore and junior years with a summer internship for the Intelligencer Journal.
The Freestyle staffer also spent a semester of her junior year in an internship program at Rolling Stone.
"Going abroad completed me," Buller said of a semester spent in Florence, Italy, during her senior year of college. "(It) gave me this new outlook." The experience also inspired Buller to apply for her next internship at a small Soho-based lifestyle magazine dubbed Bene.
Throughout her high school internship and college, the Freestyle staffer kept up with her column, Less Bull, More Buller.
"Now when I look back on those articles I look back and think 'Oh wow, what was I thinking?' or, 'Oh, I (still) think the same way.' "
Garrick Eshbach, a former resident Freestyle columnist, is now based in Portland, Ore., as a manager for a gym and freelance writer. Cheaper than Therapy was a weekly piece that ran for six years and would usually cover "topical things," according to Eshbach.
"Sometimes I would talk about whatever cartoons that were on that week, (or) things in the news," Eshbach said. He described the much-read piece as a "train of thought" column.
"Some of them were really important, like the one that I wrote about graduating high school and the one that I wrote about 9/11," he added.
"(The column) came out of the idea that it was just going to be a spot to write whatever I wanted to write about, and that (writing) was cheaper than therapy," Eshbach said.
The column taught Eshbach about writing for an audience, instead of himself.
"I think what I learned from writing my column was really to have confidence in myself and confidence in my own opinion," Eshbach said. "(Confidence) helps in workday situations where you have to deal with a variety of people. You can still get your point across."
Eshbach, a 1997 graduate of Columbia High School, had worked as editor of his student newspaper, but said that Freestyle garnered many great memories for him.
"It was a great, great experience," Eshbach, who studied writing at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia after writing for Freestyle, said.
Krisha Martzall daily runs into people who enjoy her work; the photographer rooted her talent in Lancaster with Krisha Martzall Photography.
"I focus on portraits, wedding and commercial," Martzall said.
According to the Lancaster-based photographer, it "hasn't even been a year yet" since she's moved into her studio. "We just moved in June," Martzall said. "Prior to that I worked out of my home."
Martzall had worked as a photographer for the Lancaster New Era and also as a freelance photographer, but a couple years ago she "decided I should be my own photographer and that's when I started my own business: Krisha Martzall Photography. I office-share with two other artists in Central Market Mall."
The Conestoga Valley High School graduate said she had to look for photography opportunities in her early days.
"Being young, I didn't really have much opportunity like (Freestyle). I took classes at Pennsylvania College of Art and Design and college classes at the Art Institute of Philadelphia." She called her early experience "testing the waters before I dove in."
Freestyle taught Martzall how to work with other artists because she had the opportunity to work with the Intell's staff photographers on her assignments.
As a part of Freestyle, Martzall "met some friends that I'm friends with to this day."
As a Freestyle photographer, Martzall remembers doing the weekly Say What feature.
"That really stuck in my mind a lot," she said. The experience "made you put your nervousness aside. (It) helped me learn how to approach people."
"I was getting published at, like, 15," Martzall said. "I don't know many other newspapers that are doing that in the area."
Jasmine McDowell Grimm joined the Freestyle staff when she was just 15. Then in ninth grade, she remembers joining the staff only after her parents prompted her. But the Solanco High School graduate received a full-tuition scholarship to Missouri Valley College and ended up working on more than 30 publications, including "newspapers, magazines (and) college Web sites."
She even did "research on how to put cameras on the backs of animals" when she worked with National Geographic.
In her Freestyle days, Grimm cited her most memorable assignment as when she interviewed a young girl who was raped and gave her baby up for adoption.
"The story definitely left an impact on me, but I didn't realize the impact it would have on the community," Grimm said.
Now, Grimm works for Connections magazine, a publication produced by Nxtbook Media. Grimm has been with Nxtbook since July and believes her time with Freestyle has proved itself valuable.
"There's so many aspects of journalism that I really didn't understand," she said. Grimm suggested any college-bound student interested in journalism take courses in media law, and "really put their heart into" their careers.
Grimm said her time with Freestyle helped her not only to improve her writing skills but also to improve her understanding of journalism.
E-mail: freestyle@lnpnews.com
