TAMPA — This week as we celebrate High School Scholars, we bring you the story of a Tampa teen who plans on pursuing a career in journalism.

On the day we met Lilly Molina, it was straight to a National Honor Society officer’s meeting after school was over. Molina is the president.

“I was vice president last year, and I was really shocked,” she said. “That’s what kind of encouraged me to be more involved in school when I saw that someone like me, who was an underdog, people didn’t really know me, but I got vice president and now that I’m president, it’s really motivating me.”

That motivation to succeed is something that seems to come naturally to Molina. With a perfect 4.0 GPA, it’s no surprise she was selected as one of Spectrum Bay News 9’s High School Scholars.

“I actually want to be a journalist when I get older,” she said. “I’m going to school to become a journalist.”

Despite considering herself an underdog, Molina is actually ahead of most students her age pursuing journalism. She will graduate high school with her associate arts degree, too.

“I spent the last four years since freshman year trying to get that through the collegiate program,” she said.

Molina is also an editor and writer for The Daily Falcon, Leto High School’s newspaper.

This is the paper’s first year, and Molina immediately got involved. It was one of her first opportunities to put her dream to the test.

“COVID 2020, all I could do was write, but I wasn’t really good with descriptions and details and using imagery to play out a whole scene in someone’s mind with just words,” she said.

“So I was like, ‘What is a good form of writing where you can just say how it is, report and do good and have a positive impact?’ And that was journalism.”

Molina and her best friend also launched their own podcast on Spotify.

The podcast is aimed at helping students navigate high school, something Molina mastered. Next year, she’ll rise through the ashes as a freshman when she’s a proud Phoenix at Elon University in North Carolina.