Becky Glazier of New York sat in a crowded common room on the third floor of Jones Residential College. At 11:59 p.m., her floor mates began to countdown the seconds until her 17th birthday.  

“At first I was kind of worried that we weren’t going to do anything,” Glazier said of her initial reaction to spending her birthday at cherubs.

Glazier’s father flew in for her birthday. They went into Chicago for some shopping and deep dish pizza.

“I was happy about it,” Glazier said.

Birthdays at the National High School Institute journalism program are not as scary as they may seem. Most cherubs found their special day exceeded their initially dismal expectations.

Clemence Kim of California woke up on his 17th birthday to a greeting from his smiling roommate Peter Smith of Kansas. Kim and Smith went to lunch to a local Korean restaurant. Later that day, the entire dining hall sang a round of “Happy Birthday.”  Compared to birthdays at home, Kim said this one was “most definitely better.”

Miranda Morgan of Tennessee had a bit of a different birthday predicament.

“My birthday was on July 4th, the day we covered parade in Evanston,” Morgan said. “For the beginning of it, we walked to the parade in the rain and interviewed people and walked back in the rain. That part was really miserable. But then afterwards, there were fireworks, and we just had a lot of fun watching them, and they were really cool, so that kind of made my birthday better. It was actually a good day aside from the parade story.”      

Morgan had initially been worried that she would be alone on her birthday since it was the first week of the program. But her new cherub friends decorated her room and floor with balloons and streamers. The faculty also pitched in.

“Tom (Giratikanon) gave me a bag of Skittles which was really nice,” Morgan said. “The day before he asked me what my favorite candy was, and I was like, ‘Um, Skittles?’ because I didn’t really know why he was asking that. But he did that, and it was great.”

This year’s summer birthday celebrators offer some advice for future cherubs with July birthdays.

“Tell everybody that it’s your birthday because then they’ll celebrate with you and just have fun and do something you want to do as long as you don’t have a story due that day,” Morgan said.

Glazier said that if possible you should, “have friends or family come visit and go to Chicago. It’s a good break and a good opportunity to get to visit with them.”

Kim simplified the key to a good birthday into one sentence: “Make good friends, that’s all you need.”