By Nora Schindler It’s not a new thing, the issue of girls growing up fast. I think the concept of a girl growing up faster than the others around them is one thing almost all girls can relate to. During middle school, dynamics shift and the maturity gap between boys and girls seems to expand. After all, there’s a clear difference between the two middle … Continue reading Are Young Girls Growing Up Too Fast?
By Elisabeth Palacios Since the 1920s, consumerism in America has increasingly defined both our economy and culture–whether we can afford it or not. In the last year, credit card debt was the highest it has ever been. According to a recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, it surpassed $1.08 trillion. “We are still largely a paycheck-to-paycheck nation,” based on the words … Continue reading America’s Unhealthy Consumerist Culture
By Tiyya Geiger Cellphone addiction in our increasingly interconnected society perhaps most clearly manifests itself in our grudgingly short attention spans. We itch for the answer to our questions the second they appear and when gone unanswered, we allow the next thing to distract us in a cycle of never-ending vapidness. Previously intriguing dilemmas now rarely cause a batted eye or induce a spark of … Continue reading Cell Phone Addiction: a Personal Retrospective
By Sidney Brant TikTok is a terrifying platform. Users of the app often acknowledge this with the caveat that yes, it sucks the life out of you and makes any long-term task impossible without a Subway surfers video playing in the background, but it can expose you to so much unique, interesting media that you otherwise wouldn’t have discovered. There are communities formed fully online … Continue reading Why is BookTok So Annoying?
By Cal Clapper Emails are a vital tool to connect people in the professional and academic worlds, but McCaskey student emails are inaccessible. Having an email address allows students to quickly and professionally contact teachers, employers, and colleges; and access information about possible internships or opportunities that could be open to them. Every McCaskey student has a school email linked to their ID number and … Continue reading The Case for School Email Access
by Gabriel Brogan Bread and cheese, cheese and bread, all the time. Anecdotally, I noticed this pattern among McCaskey’s school lunches, but wondered if my observation was just confirmation bias after a few extra-cheesy days in a row. Digging deeper into the SDOL website’s lunch menus section, I discovered that I was not mistaken. The amount of bread and cheese served and eaten by the … Continue reading McCaskey nutrition: the pros and cons of the bread & cheese diet
by Nora Schindler First period here at McCaskey starts at 7:50 in the morning, but sometimes you might not even be able to tell. Lots of students can tell you that by the first bell some classrooms are half empty and by the second period bell the classrooms are almost always full. While lots of parents and teachers attribute the tardiness to just plain laziness, … Continue reading Should we start school an hour later?
by Sidney Brant A father, pulling his bleeding child out of a pile of rubble; a woman, the crotch of her pants bloodied, being forced into a jeep and taken hostage. The images, videos, text blurbs, and news stories that barrage our screens don’t provide information about the war–they are the war. The most recent iteration of the century-old struggle between Israel and Palestine began … Continue reading The optics war underlying the Israel-Hamas conflict
By Elisabeth Palacios More and more school districts across the U.S. have been implementing four-day school weeks and three-day weekends. This could be great for teachers and students, as they’d have less stress, be given more leisure time, and be able to have a better work-life balance. However, what are the other consequences of students having less educational time during a standard week? Will the … Continue reading Could a Four-Day School Week Work at McCaskey?
By Sidney Brant As seniors decide whether or not to submit SAT scores, and juniors prepare to take the test for the first time, many students contemplate the same question: what’s the point? It seems ludicrous to spend dozens of hours re-learning freshman year trig and how to apply grammar rules to heinously written passages for questions that may or may not be on a … Continue reading Is the SAT Becoming Obsolete?
By Mitchell Copeland Music is one of the few things that all people seem to love, a unifying force among many cultures and communities. We don’t often think about the impact of music on pop culture and art. It is used to make political statements, tell stories, share culture, or just make cool melodies. It’s no secret that some artists garner more support than others, … Continue reading Panchiko is a DIY Music Era Success Story
I had always imagined high school to be what it was in the movies: the cliques, the fights for popularity, the overdramatic bullying, eating lunch in the bathroom. I was fearful of the experiences ninth grade would bring me and I was petrified of the four years to come after that. My start to high school was different from how most people would spend their … Continue reading Goodbye, McCaskey
The FS100 program is a freshman college course at HACC that teaches you about life skills you may need to be successful in school and life. The program is a real eye-opener that takes you through subjects such as how to control finances to deep discoveries about your own learning habits. I enlisted into the program by attending Ms.Walls CA class. From there, we learned … Continue reading My Experience in FS100
There is a distinct feeling that comes with the end of something. It’s not always immediately apparent to me, as I often am too concerned with specifics. Where I left my phone, where my water bottle is. Things that distract from the grander point, or blur the lines between what truly matters and what doesn’t. I’m not so sure my uncertainty about my phone’s location … Continue reading An Ending
By many metrics, McCaskey is a wonderful school. We have an outstanding music program, a states-winning track team, the most advanced courses in the world available to high schoolers, vibrant diversity, teachers who work tirelessly to ensure that we have the educational experience we deserve. But we are absolutely abysmal when it comes to kindness. Our unkindness is manifest not only in frequent physical fights, … Continue reading McCaskey Has a Kindness Problem
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