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Competing in the FIRST Robotics Challenge
By Kate Sotir, VI Form
Competing in the FIRST Robotics Challenge
Working in the basement level of the STEM building, using lots of power tools, and occasionally throwing out words like “kickoff,” “drivetrain,” or “STEAMworks,” we are FIRST team 3566, also known as Gone Fishin’.
Gone Fishin’ competes in the FIRST Robotics Competition. FIRST stands for “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.” The robotics competition, open to any high school student, was created in order to promote the STEM fields and offer a competitive yet collaborative atmosphere for robotics. In the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), teams are given a challenge, in the form of a game, and then have six weeks to build a 120 pound, $10,000 robot to meet this challenge. After those six weeks are up, teams compete in various regional events. The ultimate goal is to go to the world championship, held in St. Louis, where around 800 teams gather to play the game. (more…)
Voice in Guitar and in Literature…and in Me
By Shep Greene, VI Form
Voice in Guitar and in Literature…and in Me
The guitar is an integral part of who I am. As my skill has progressed, I’ve seen my appreciation and understanding of music progress as well. Over this past year, I began to delve into a more abstract form of music in improvisation. Within this form of my guitar playing, I began to find striking similarities between music and literature. Imagine every note as a letter and every note coming together to form a riff, with all of the respective letters coming together as one word. By the end of a piece, just as by the end of a novel, you’ll have a powerful message to send out to your listeners and readers. (more…)
Empathy Through Education in China’s Xi Ma Yin Village
By Carrick Zhu, V Form
Empathy Through Education in China’s Xi Ma Yin Village
My mom and I began our volunteer teaching trip in 2014. With the help from the local Red Cross Organization in Ning Xia, China, we were able to find a local primary school situated in Xi Ma Yin village. Xi Ma Yin rests at the base of the Helan Mountain where the water supply is scarce. The villagers are mostly immigrants from the other side of the Helan Mountain. The elementary school where I worked is called Xi Ma Yin Immigrant Development Zone Elementary School. (more…)
Global Connections of Media and Skin
By June Seong, IV Form
Global Connections of Media and Skin
Amidst the chaos that is my life – including the future I must decide upon, the necessity to be “special,” and my attempt to make this post somewhat grammatically correct – I am struck by my simultaneous privilege and ignorance. This privilege and ignorance is exhibited through myriad ways at this very moment: 1) this dull MacBook Air that I am communicating through and that was probably configured by an underpaid or unpaid laborer; 2) the whizzing air conditioning that is breathing on my neck so that I might not die from heatstroke whilst the world scales up a few sweltering Centigrades; 3) the immensity of the world that is within computer click’s reach via Facebook. (more…)
Sketches Under the Hot Sun
By Kennedy Petties, IV Form
Sketches Under the Hot Sun
I completed four sketches this summer on 18 by 24 paper, with 2 on black paper in color and 2 on white paper in shaded pencil. I worked on it for Studio 3 this year as a IVth Former. It was a concentration on globalization and how I defined it. I define globalization as the interconnection of ideas, people, and places. It’s like social networking for beliefs and worldly progress and history. I took things from my everyday life, in this case automobiles and their breakdown, and had to express them within the parameters of the assignment. The structure of a car, and how each part is from somewhere else and then put together to create something to take you anywhere else, is amazing to me.
Brantwood Camp: The Toughest Yet Most Rewarding Summer Challenge
By Lauren Menjivar, V Form
Brantwood Camp: The Toughest Yet Most Rewarding Summer Challenge
Have you ever imagined being a teenager and escaping from the world for sixteen days to take care of ten girls (or boys), live in a shack with them, and have your devices taken away in order to better connect with the people around you? The situation may seem unfathomable for some, if not, most millennials, but I decided to stow away my laptop and phone in exchange for books and a flashlight at the Brantwood Camp. (more…)
A Whole Universe Is Out There with Bigger Stuff To Deal With Than My Broken Phone
By Natalie Novak, VI Form
A Whole Universe Is Out There with Bigger Stuff To Deal With Than My Broken Phone
Editors’ Note: This is Natalie’s chapel speech, spoken to the community on 29 January 2016.
Sarah: A reading from Life of Pi by Yann Martel
“I saw my suffering for what it was, finite and insignificant, and I was still. My suffering did not fit anywhere, I realized. And I could accept this. It was all right. It was daylight that brought my protest: No! No! No! My suffering does matter. I want to live! I can’t help but mix my life with that of the universe. Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry onto a vastness – how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped view I have of things? This peephole is all I’ve got!”
Kat: A reading from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy by Douglas Adams
“In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.”
Good morning.
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Natalie Novak. Also known as Natalie Novak. And if this still isn’t ringing any bells, I’m also the girl who threw up in chapel her freshman year. For all you freshmen that are afraid you’re gonna embarrass yourselves, I’m here to tell you that people forget about those things fairly quickly. Until they remember a year or so down the road, and then they never forget. So, my advice to you is, if you need to make a quick escape go out that door because this one is harder to open. (more…)
A Novel of Reaction: Larsen’s Passing
By Charlotte Wood, V Form
A Novel of Reaction: Larsen’t Passing
W.E.B. Dubois wrote that “all Art is propaganda and ever must be…” He thought that artists and writers should try to make the world a better place through their work. Nella Larsen, the author of Passing, would not agree. Her novel centers on two light-skinned black women, Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield, and their respective decisions to pass as white or not. I believe she wrote this novel not to persuade the reader of something or to convince them to enact change, but rather to reflect the world how she sees it. The book is a reaction to society, not something for society to react to. Passing itself is portrayed as something that simply is, not wholly good or wholly bad. Both characters participate in it, and so the reader is not meant to side with one over the other. The relative passivity of its message is reflected in the passivity of its main character, Irene. Because she is not active, the intention of the novel is not active. Lastly, the ambiguity of the ending leaves the reader, like Irene, with more questions than answers. (more…)
LEO 