“Natural beauty takes two hours in front of a mirror.”
– Pamela Anderson.

Today there are several companies and people that advertise beauty products and the like. The message seems to be that you are a beauty if you cake your face with our new product or try the latest hair fashion. I personally believe that natural beauty is something that cannot be seen in a mirror.

I am not a big fan of wearing make-up. A lot of people at my school wear it, and when they do, they look like they should be on the cover of a magazine. However, when I wear it, I look like I should be included in the horror section of the latest Ripley’s Believe It or Not book. More »

Throughout the entire week I heard people referring to the final exams like the gallows. Well, from past experience, the waiting is the worst part.

Anxiety is strange thing. You expect something to happen, and your imagination dreams up horrible and terrifying situations. My mind played thousands of tricks on me throughout the week. I thought of forgetting all of the German words I knew to all of a sudden finding a trigonometry question on my Geometry exam. However, none of the exams were as bad as my mind made me believe. I just had to make it through one more day. More »

Normally, when I think of parades, I think of large colorful floats filled with happy people throwing out candy to the excited crowd. Then, my friends introduced me to the song “Welcome to the Black Parade” by My Chemical Romance.

The song starts out with a beautiful piano solo. It’s very slow and simple, and to me it represented happier times and better days. Then the singer comes in, telling a story of how his father took him to see a marching band when he was younger. The father then says that he will one day leave the boy to join the Black Parade. To this day, I still don’t know what the Black Parade represents, but it doesn’t sound promising, and it sounds like a place of no return. Then it hit me. This song represented Day 4 of my final exams! More »

My friends and I have tons of fun together. We help each other out, talk, and we have a list of 125 inside jokes. One of these jokes is our use of the word ‘purple.’ We use the word purple as an adjective, generally when we have no idea what to say. The word purple describes my second day of final exams, which was on Wednesday. More »

There is a wonderful Broadway musical entitled “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.” My brother bought me the soundtrack, and I crack up every time I listen to it. It’s about a group of young students competing in a spelling bee. The lyrics are hilarious, and I can relate to most of the songs after my experience with spelling bees. More »

What is it about the word final? Most times, it is a word that many do not wish to hear, such as when the final book in your favorite series is coming out, the final season of your favorite TV show that you obsess over has just ended, or you figure out that a younger sibling has eaten the final candy bar.

The word final can also be a good thing. Yes! The final book is coming out and I can finally figure out what happens! Yes! The final season of that boring TV show is over! Yes! I got the final candy bar, not my younger sibling!

However, for first time high school students like myself, the word “final” can be downright terrifying. It’s Final Exam time! More »

A few years ago, Bill Amend did an entertaining series based on How the Grinch Stole Christmas in his wonderful comic stip Fox Trot. The story was told by the youngest child, Jason Fox, just before Christmas. He based the Grinch character on his mother, Andy, who enjoys to cook healthy food and gives useful presents instead of his video games. More »

In elementary school, my teachers would set up a Secret Santa game between me and my classmates. In third grade, I decided to write a note to my Secret Santa to tease him a bit. One of my friends next to me asked what I was doing, and once I told her, she started to make one. She stealthily folded the note up and stapled it together. Later that day, I got a note that was all folded up and stapled together. Secret Santa High School Style is a completely different ball game. More »

Several old movies, television shows, and books always show people living in small towns. You see families sitting together at locally owned restaurants and watch the waitresses bring their meals immediately when they come in because they eat there so often that their orders are memorized. You see random people walking down the street, saying hello to every person they pass and address each one of them personally.

However, my favorite part of the old classics is the fact that the whole community gets together for one person or family. When I was living in Raleigh, North Carolina, I never experienced something like that in a town with a population of 341,530. However, I experienced that magical moment this week in a small town with lots of big hearts. More »

In old cartoons and stories, people were always depicted with a lightbulb over their head. Whenever someone had a brilliant idea or knew every answer, the light would click on by a little chain and shine brightly. Not only was the lightbulb over my head burned out today, the chain was yanked out as well. More »