Sheet maker competition SZ school newspaper Erding – Bavaria

One night it got to her. She already had the last verse of her poem in her head: “No one knows – and that is the art of perception.“In German: “No one knows – and that is the art of perception.” From then on, Annika Heindle took care of itself. In the early hours of the morning, she then wrote three stanzas and 24 verses. “The Art of Perception” , she wrote about her work – a reminder to young people not to look at themselves too critically.Her second poem ever.”It came right from the heart,” she says.

A June morning in Taufkirchen an der Vils, a village a few kilometers east of Erding. Annika Heindle, 18 years old, is sitting at her desk with a black top, her hair tied back and light makeup on. It consists of a desk with two monitors, a colorfully illuminated keyboard and a mouse in her room, which is also her creative workshop.

She worked for the school newspaper for two years exchange of words the FOS/BOS Erding worked. There she is the woman for everything: she draws comics and caricatures, writes texts and poems and designs surveys for the exchange of words. This year, it once again applied to the Blattmacher school newspaper competition organized by the SZ, the Ministry of Education and the Nemetschek Foundation.

Heindle opens a text document on the computer. “Corona and Die Zeit” is above it, these are the results of a survey she did for the current issue of the school newspaper. How would you describe the Corona period in just one word? What have you been doing meanwhile? Did you use the phase well? The aim of the high school graduate was to show her classmates: “Many people feel the same way as you, and you are not alone.” It came out: most classmates experienced the time as rather mixed.

“We have to seize our chances more!”

She also processes her socially critical view creatively. She pulls several sheets of paper from a stack of paper on her desk. She drew a two-page manga-style comic on it. It’s about two students. They have many different opportunities, such as taking part in a trip to England, applying for a temporary job or, after a few years, managing a project at work. However, one of the two does not take the chances, probably because they are too costly for him. The other perceives them and shines. “Are you taking your chances?” Heindle asks at the end of the comic. “There are so many opportunities in life,” she says. But many are too comfortable to use them.

Open detailed view

Heindle himself, on the other hand, comes across as someone who knows exactly what she wants. Before she says anything, she thinks for a moment, her sentences are clear and considered. This is how she approaches her drawings and texts. For her comic on the subject of “chances in life” she wrote down the idea first, as always. The mother also helped with the brainstorming. When there was enough time, she threw herself into the work. Mostly in the evenings in their creative phase and mostly with music. Then she makes a rough sketch. She sketches important details on a separate sheet of paper. Finally, she draws the finished work on a new piece of paper. Often, she says, she feels as if she is in another world. She forgets the time, sometimes she draws until half past midnight.

From a young age she was creative and taught herself to draw. Annika Heindle began doing this intensively in fifth grade, at that time mainly inspired by anime series. This is how she discovered her own style of manga, which she describes as “unrealistic” and “exaggerated”. Later in the eleventh grade, realistic drawings were added, which she still makes today. These are portraits of people.

Heindle scrolls her finger across the screen of her smartphone and opens a table. Content title, author, status – it’s the tool your school newspaper editorial team uses to organize edition planning. Although the team only met once this school year because of Corona, the 23-strong team put together a diverse edition with articles, poems, glosses, commentaries and optical illusions. The overarching theme: perception. The idea came from her, says Annika Heindle. On social media, she says, there is a lot of deception. “That’s not the reality that’s being shown.”

Passionate gamer

But sometimes she escapes from reality. She has been playing on the computer since she was five. Pokemon, Minecraft, Call of Duty, Animal Crossing, Mario. She wants to turn her hobby into her job. She already has her degree in her pocket. Starting in October, she plans to study “Informatics: Games Engineering”, i.e. game programming, at the Technical University of Munich. Your creative platform, the school newspaper, then falls away. But maybe, she says, she could draw for a newspaper on the side in the future.

To the exchange of words-Team, she is likely to be missed, also given her versatility. “As an editor, Annika really masters all facets, from interviews to creative formats. She is a great asset to our editorial team,” says the mentoring teacher exchange of wordsKaren Pfeffer.

But maybe this is not the end at all. Finally he conceded exchange of wordsl won the bronze medal among the Bavarian vocational schools at the Blattmacher competition. And who knows, maybe there will be a place on the podium again when the best Bavarian school newspapers from this school year are awarded in the SZ main building on July 18th. Heindle stays creative either way. She already has her next poem in mind. It should criticize social media, she says.