{"id":11595,"date":"2026-07-21T20:09:58","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T01:09:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/?p=11595"},"modified":"2026-08-02T02:32:37","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T07:32:37","slug":"listen-birthdays-and-bylines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/07\/listen-birthdays-and-bylines\/","title":{"rendered":"LISTEN: Birthdays and bylines"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe title=\"LISTEN: Birthdays and Bylines by Medill Cherubs\" width=\"800\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&#038;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F2365369055&#038;show_artwork=true&#038;maxheight=1000&#038;maxwidth=800\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">[CHERUBS AUDIO THEME MUSIC]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">This summer, seven cherubs celebrated birthdays during their time in Evanston.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">[CHERUBS SINGING \u201cHAPPY BIRTHDAY\u201d]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The thought of spending a birthday away from home left some cherubs feeling uncertain, but everyone stepped up to make sure that the celebrants felt special on their big days.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">SCARLETT ASHFORD: My friends threw me a surprise party. They went to Whole Foods and they got me a cake, and they even had my name on it which was really cool. I was so shocked.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">That\u2019s Scarlett Ashford. Scarlett said she was glad to spend her birthday at cherubs, because it meant she got to be with her friends, something she wasn\u2019t used to having grown up with a summer birthday.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Carter Heit, on the other hand, usually spends his birthday with friends at sleepaway camp. Because Carter\u2019s birthday was on the fifth day of the program, he wasn\u2019t really sure of how it was going to go, given that he\u2019d only just met his friends. But, he was pleasantly surprised.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">CARTER HEIT: We all had a Domino&#8217;s pizza party on my birthday, which was really fun. A few of them also signed a card for me, totally randomly, and slipped it under my door, which was super nice and super unexpected. That really made me happy. I mean it almost brought me to tears. I\u2019ve literally only known these people for, I think at that point it was like five days, so it was super meaningful and super nice.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Becca Dodek also got surprised by her friends.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">BECCA DODEK: I have to say, my favorite part of the day was probably when I opened my door and I saw, on the ground in front of my door, it was flooded with balloons, and then a basket. I thought it was so sweet, and it was very nice to wake up to.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">After days full of festivities and fun with friends, the CAAs had one more surprise in store for birthday cherubs: homemade cake and singing in the Great Room.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">CARTER HEIT: They called everyone into the Great Room. No one really knew what it was for. And then they called me and one other up to the stage. And then they were like \u201cOh, it\u2019s your birthday,\u201d and then we all started celebrating. Everyone started singing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">[CHERUBS SINGING \u201cHAPPY BIRTHDAY\u201d]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">SCARLETT ASHFORD: I was a little overwhelmed, I have to admit. I\u2019m such an introvert, and I\u2019m really shy, so I was like \u201cOh my god!\u201d But it was kind of cool. I\u2019ve never really gotten that much attention for my birthday before.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">BECCA DODEK: It was a really fun day, it was really special. I got to spend time with the people that, even though I only just met them a few weeks ago, I feel like we\u2019re so close, and have created such a special bond, and I feel like that really strengthened on my birthday, and it was really special getting to celebrate with them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">[CHERUBS AUDIO THEME MUSIC]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reporting for Cherubs Audio, I\u2019m Ellie Adams.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Music provided by @prettyjohn1 on Pixabay<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Listen to how cherubs celebrated their birthdays while at the program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":11057,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[681],"class_list":["post-11595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-audio"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":681,"user_id":287,"is_guest":0,"slug":"adams26","display_name":"Ellie Adams","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7e1878285dd5e5d16b0da22f9c1c56fa1bebd00dacac8266c2c65f9566d13cbe?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"1","user_url":"","last_name":"Adams","first_name":"Ellie","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11595"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12877,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11595\/revisions\/12877"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11595"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=11595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}