This week's Photo Theme: 

Nature 

(Happy Belated Earth Day)

Connections

Check out more of our Customized Connections

 Here !

School Update

This Week's Features!

It is well known that the college board administers the AP exams and SATs. But did you know that they are a “non-profit” organization? This non- profit organization’s mission is to “promote college readiness and be part of the college admissions process." They do this by administering and creating the AP class coursework and SATs. However, they charge $98 for an exam and $58 for low-income students. They also charge $60 for SAT exams, $40 for a late fee, and $12 to send your exams to colleges. It is understandable if they charge a little money for their operations; however, these fees are a blatant way of making extra money. Collegeboard makes about $1.1 billion in revenue annually, and they are registered as a 501(c)(3) organization, meaning they are tax-exempt. Collegeboard has a work force of about 300 employees, and each employee makes roughly an average of $100,000 a year. That means that, in total, they have to spend $30,000,000 on their employees. They state that they spend about 870 million dollars a year on expenses, but where does that other $130 million go?? Who pockets the rest of the money? The college board CEO, David Coleman, makes roughly $1.5 million annually, and he is making this off of a non-profit organization. More questions have to be asked about college boards and how they have exploited the education system and abused their non-profit status to make money. 

Senioritis: “A supposed affliction of students in their final year of high school or college, characterized by a decline in motivation or performance.” That is the Google definition of what it is. Now, looking back on this school year, it seems like this effect has stopped being limited to seniors. As a junior myself, it feels like, for me and many other juniors, this year has really felt draining from start to finish. In all honesty, due to how quickly the year became hard, many of the students in the junior class have already felt the senioritis effect. The effort that many students put in at the beginning of the school year isn’t really being matched. Just ask any junior: when was the last time you genuinely put time aside to finish your homework or took time to study? Now, obviously, there are still students out there who put in all their effort into doing homework or studying all the time, but at the end of the year, it would be fair to assume at least 70% of juniors have really slowed down in the amount of time they have put into doing work outside of school. The same can also be said for the amount of time spent working in school. It is pretty obvious to say that a lot of students either don’t really finish work in class if it isn’t necessary or do the bare minimum to get it done. 

I feel like, for myself at least, I noticed that I haven’t put in as much effort as I could be or was doing comparatively to the beginning of the year. There could be other factors that are playing into this, though. I don’t necessarily think you can even call this feeling. Many juniors are feeling a version of senioritis, but more of a general stress that is taking a heavy toll on a lot of students. With AP tests on the rise and many students having to take finals as well, the built-up stress is starting to impact these students more and more. Junior year as a whole is the most important time of a high school student’s life, where grades matter, you begin to plan out your future, and everything revolves around planning for the future. A feeling begins to set in, even if you think you can succeed in school. Then, boom, everything kind of just falls apart. Motivation is currently really hard to find for a lot of people. Maybe their grades just aren’t as good as they were in the first semester, or they just find classes to be a lot more challenging leading up to this newer semester. Junior year is a hard year. It also feels like students now have to deal with so many outside factors that aren’t even school-related yet affect their school lives so much. Whatever it may be, it is taking a toll on many students. 

The biggest fear of most juniors this year, from what I see, is the fear of just failing. It doesn’t have to even be failing a class or a test—just failing in general. Not living up to expectations that they were set or set on themselves. Thinking about setting expectations for yourself will give you motivation, which it may do for many people, but a lot of students are setting themselves up to try to meet unrealistic standards. Instead of doing the best they can throughout the year, they are pushing themselves so hard at the start that they realize they don’t have any gas left to finish off the year. That’s what I did early on, and now it feels like even wanting to go to school is so hard. Stress is a really scary thing, and it is affecting so many students right now, but we are reaching the end of the year. So, finding any means of motivation can really push you to the end and finish the year off strong.

Current World

“...to bring rain on the uninhabited land and on the desert where no man lives, to satisfy the barren and desolate ground, and to make the seeds of grass sprout?” (Job 38:25–27, Amplified Bible), Many speculate if what is said in the Bible is true, as how can a dessert get rain, and if more future properties will come true. When Dubai, a country located directly in the Arabian Desert, which on average only receives 3.73 inches of rain every year, received more than 5 inches (2 years worth) of rain on April 17, 2024, that left many of their malls, roads, and infrastructure flooded, and that also caused a few deaths to be confirmed due to the massive flooding. Dubai’s massive rainfall caused many problems for Dubai's citizens, as their homes have been washed away. Driving on the roads is not ideal as, due to the massive flooding, their cars would sink. This unusual event poses a question to a lot of people: What is the real cause of Dubai’s flooding?

Online, the battle about whether cloud seeding or greenhouse warming has caused discontent. Many have shared and argued their opinions on the real cause of Dubai’s recent massive flooding, but as of now, scientists and weather forecasters have confirmed that the cause of the flooding is due to the large amount of moisture that has been building up in the atmosphere due to the warm seas, which eventually falls as rain over the Arabian Peninsula (greenhouse warming). Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, states, “Did cloud seeding play a role? Likely no… But how about climate change? Likely yes!”. To understand the Rebuttals side we have to first understand what cloud seeding is which is essentially a method scientists do that is putting tiny particles of nuclei into the atmosphere that attach to the clouds that after a cloud seeding takes place create snowflakes that eventually grow and fall on earth increasing precipitation,  Danie Swain counteracts this argument again by stating that “it's unlikely that a cloud seeding operation would move forward given the well-forecast intense rainfall”, while Meteorologist Ryan Maue, former chief scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration agrees with Swain and gave a definitive answer that “If that occurred with cloud seeding, they'd have water all the time," he said. "When it comes to controlling individual rain storms, we are not anywhere close to that. And if we were capable of doing that, I think we would be capable of solving many more difficult problems than creating a rain shower over Dubai.

Follow our Instagram!

for the latest news and interesting interviews of your peers around campus.

@ksjcwolfprints