I’d like to preface this article by saying, yes Brooklyn, I did start this article in Times New Roman twelve. Also, I’m sorry for the gram-mar mistakes that I will inevitably make that will probably kill you a little bit on the inside.
Grammar mistakes and poor usage of font are two of the things that will probably drive Brooklyn insane by the time she’s 22, or sooner. Or it will be the fact that she has to give a gradua-tion speech that will ei-ther be the end of her or cause her to ascend,
hav-ing finally found her zen. When I started this article, I thought that it was going to be the easiest thing in the world. Oh, I know Brook-lyn, I thought.
This will be a piece of cake.
This is not a piece of cake; it’s not easy, because I
can’t write this without either breaking down and crying because we will be graduating today, or putting so much
sar-casm in this that it hurts. I could probably tell At the end of each
year, it’s traditional for Octagon members to write up an article full of wisdom and the ex-periences of the veter-an seniors. Katie veter-and I both balked at the no-tion of writing about ourselves when no scholarships were be-ing offered, so we just decided to write each other’s. So gather ‘round, kids, and let me tell you a thing.
Never befriend this human if all you care about is seeing a book or movie you lent to her ever again, because it
will likely fall between her bed and the wall where it will fester until our galaxy collides with Andromeda. I would ad-vise against seeking Miss Johnson as a com-panion if you can’t
pro-cess sarcasm. Do not become friends with Katie if you can’t handle the fact that every inani-mate object in her orbit
Online@ www.nw-tigers.org/the-octagon
Volume 66, Issue 32 May 22, 2015
By Brooklyn Smith
Today:
Graduation– Senior class picture @ 6:30 -Ceremony starts at 8 PM
Monday:
Memorial Day; No school
Tuesday: Baseball:
JV&V @ Grantsburg
The Yearbook Staff regrets that there is a mistake on Seth Stariha’s Memo-rial page (p. 105) regarding the date of his death. Please change your yearbook infor-mation to read July 23 as op-posed to July 25.
Thank you,
NHS Black &
Gold Staff
Students who have signed up to take Writing for Publication next year can see Mrs. Thompson if they are inter-ested in learn-ing about edit-ing.
Pg. 2 Nik Sauer
Pg. 3 Infrastructure
Pg. 4 Memorial Day
By Katie Johnson
In which the Senior Octagon members discuss their time at NHS .
“Katie, by Brooklyn” Continued Pg. 2
has been duly personified and named. Do not ex-change friendship brace-lets with this woman if you dislike road rage reminiscent of Mario Kart races specifically on Rainbow Road.
Do befriend Katie if you want to scream-laugh about nothing eve-ry ten minutes. I would suggest becoming one half of the Gruesome Twosome with her if you enjoy being entertained by all the ways things go cartoonishly wrong (or right) in Katie World. Seek a bond in blood starring you and K-Bae if you like having stupidly intelligent conversations about music, politics, books, movies, and many more topics that I almost certainly am not allowed to adduce in a school-sanctioned publication. Swap vows of eternal
loyalty if you benefit from knowing that you have someone whom you know will support you any way she can, in whom you can confide, and who will help you whenever you need it, unless she is in a dead sleep, in which case I wish you good luck. Most of all, befriend Katie, but only if you can handle the sass.
Possibly the biggest testament to Katie’s high -caliber fab is the fact that the songs “Little Willy” by Sweet, “Come Together” by the Beatles, and Heart’s “Never,” re-mind me of her, and those are amazing tunes, even if they aren’t by the Pink Floyd Sound. It’s still a great accomplish-ment, especially when one considers that Heart is the best girl band of all time.
As much as it sounds like I’m trying to sell my friend right now, I’m not -- truly, I just wanted to
talk about how great she is. I am for sure not sug-gesting that you bombard her will your obstreper-ous and ungainly suppli-cations for friendship; she’s mine, you can’t have her, and statistically speaking, she doesn’t like you, anyway.
This is because people of our age group tend to be particularly trying; seriously, although you think you’re “not that bad for a teenager,” you still just do stupid things. You can’t help it. There’s nothing you can do. So because she’s one of my best friends and I care about her mental health, I’m going to give you some pro tips so as to not incur her wrath. So for Katie’s sake please… Use your blinker. Don’t pretend to be
someone/thing you’re not.
Text back before the second coming of Ronnie James Dio. Signal when you
turn.
Don’t get an animal if you don’t know how to take care of
said animal
(applicable to chil-dren).
Man/woman up and eat all of the lefto-vers; don’t just leave a half serving for some unfortunate soul to find.
Coordinate the flash-ing light on the back of your car with the direction in which you are turning. Don’t talk to people
while they’re using headphones.
Send a cordial letter to fellow drivers indi-cating exactly how your vehicle will de-viate from its forward course.
Don’t procrastinate. Don’t be a hypocrite. Use
Your
B L I N K E R You’re welcome.
“Katie, by Brooklyn” From Pg. 1
This past Tuesday, when I was sitting in my office (as I sarcastically call the Octagon/ Yearbook cubicle within Mrs. Thompson’s room), I decided to go for an entirely spontaneous walk around the school. After strolling awk-wardly right through the middle of Mrs. Thomp-son’s lecture (sorry...), I started down the third floor hallway. As I roamed the halls, I was ruminating on this very article; what I wanted to say, the things I should leave people thinking about.
While I attempted to dwell deep within my thoughts (as I’ll admit I do far too often), certain
things around the school kept popping out at me, often making me laugh at some of the things I’ve done dur-ing my four years at this school.
For exam-ple, the door handle former-ly belonging to Mrs. Thomp-son’s room now sits on the door to the art hallway’s girls’ bath-room, which
was relocated after I, uh, broke it... I still don’t know how that
hap-pened. I like to think that it wasn’t any more than a freak accident, but, as I
once said in Honors Eng-lish, I’m divulging. My journey began, as I said, in the Yearbook/
Octagon room; my of-fice. I refer to it as such because during the course of this year, this room has come to be where I spend most of my time. There are, in my mind, two reasons why this is. For one, it’s an extremely serene place to get things done. There is always just enough background noise (especially when a class is going on) to what would otherwise be awk-ward silence, and yet the
noises of the school are just distant enough for you to not get distracted by them.
And secondly, the job of the Octagon Editor, being of course a job of immense responsibility and prestige, has certain perks that I have enjoyed taking advantage of. For example, when I went on this jaunt about the school, not a single word was said to me.
No one asked where I was going, or what I was doing. They all just as-sumed I had a good rea-son for it. This may just be due to the fact that I have mastered the art of looking like I know what I am doing when I really have no idea, but I think the title of Senior Editor has something to do with it.
After the third floor hallway, I went down the somewhat-grand stair-case, through the array of tables, and down the hallway leading to the
Band room. Band has been, without a doubt, the single greatest and most rewarding aspect of my high school career. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that mu-sical pursuits are what take up most of my time, and that I like to think of them as something I have an affinity for. But set-ting that aside, two other major reasons are the people I play alongside and, to quote Mr. Hessel, “Hintzman.”
Moving along, the next stage of my quest was the art hallway, which I would regret not spend-ing more time in if I had any artistic skills whatso-ever, which I do not. But even so, the memories of the 10th grade study hall in which we played cards and sprinted to lunch every day are enough to make me reminisce. After that I headed back to the commons and through the locker bay to the first floor hallway, where I had both had homeroom with Mrs. Lahti for two years, and
across the hall had Bowled Quizzes.
Then I went down to the science hallway, where classes like phys-ics, chemistry, and Hon-ors Biology entailed co-pious amount of simulta-neous learning and laughing.
Afterwards, I went up to the first floor, past the library, and back to the room in which I am now writing this article.
My point in relating all this is thus: the things that I will remember most about NHS are not its flaws (of which I will admit there are many), nor what I could/should have done differently, but the things that I did while I was here, and the good times that were had whilst doing them.
And looking back, I’m amazed at all the things that I’ve done in this building, and in practi-cally every corner of it. What I’d like to convey to all those students who will one day be in a simi-lar position to mine is to enjoy the time you have
spent in this building, and, once you near the end, don’t get too caught up in (as I said) its flaws, or the things you could have done.
But with that being said, take advantage of the opportunities present-ed to you while you still have the option. I fully realize that I’m devolv-ing into the practically-cliché “make the most of your time here” that we hear thrown around so often, but one of the things I’ve come to real-ize during my four-year stint here is this: it’s much better to take those kinds of things seriously than to dismiss them out of contempt for a system that you don’t agree with.
So, as I conclude the conclusion to my time here, I would like to thank this place for help-ing me to become (for better or worse) the per-son I am today. Fare thee well, NHS, and may your future students enjoy their time here as much as I have.
“Nik” From Pg. 2
If you have been watching the news at all for the past several years, you may have noticed a lot of problems with bridge collapses, train crashes, and other trans-portation disasters. It has seemed like all of these issues are happening within the same relative range of time, so one must ask: why?
The deterioration of our infrastructure was mainly brought to the attention of the media with the I-35 bridge col-lapse that happened in August of 2007 in
Min-neapolis, if you remem-ber. That eight-lane bridge was a relic for all intents and purposes, with its construction be-ing in the 1960s.
While it is true that the bridge was annually in-spected, it is interesting to note that the federal government rated it ”structurally deficient” as far back as 1990, and absolutely nothing was done to remedy the struc-tural weakening of the support system under-neath it; 13 people died and 145 people were in-jured because of this weakness.
And this is not the only
bridge that is in this con-dition. The same report that listed the I-35W bridge as structurally de-ficient also listed another 75,000 bridges as being in the same condition, 1,198 of which are in Wisconsin. The real question is, are these bridges being fixed? The short answer is, not enough. Most bridge repairs are superficial, and do not fix the under-lying causes that lead to the vast majority of bridge collapses. The issue is that there is simply not enough fund-ing to fix these problems, due to cuts that reallocate
that money into other projects, such as national defense via the horrifi-cally expensive F-35 pro-ject, which is expected to cost over $1 trillion dol-lars over the next 50 years (and was given an-other $10.6 billion in-crease this February). And bridges are not the only aspect of our infrastructure that is fall-ing apart over our heads. All aspects of infrastructure are critical to everyday life, hence the idea that it is infra-structure.
“Infrastructure” Continued Pg. 5
Memorial Day is more than just a vacation day, it’s a day to remember those who lost their lives while protecting our country. Memorial Day was formerly known as Decoration Day, and was celebrated on May 30. Accredited with estab-lishing Decoration Day as a national holiday, General John Logan de-clared, “The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strew-ing with flowers, or oth-erwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in the defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lay in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the
land.”
As said by va.gov, “It is believed that date was chosen because flowers would be in bloom all over the country.” A cen-tury later, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. Such legislation claimed that Decoration Day (now referred to as Memorial Day), Veterans Day, and Washington’s birthday shall be cele-brated on a Monday to ensure three-day week-ends for federal employ-ees.
Memorial Day was designated on the last Monday in May, for this day was not “the anni-versary of any particular battle.” It’s not known exactly where the tradi-tion of Memorial Day
began, however, the fed-eral government recog-nizes Waterloo, NY as the “official birthplace.” Because of this, Water-loo holds a community-wide celebration in which residents decorat-ed the graves of soldiers. Originally, Memorial Day honored only sol-diers who died in the Civil War. But due to numerous casualties from succeeding wars (specifically the World Wars), the holiday ex-panded the tribute to all fallen veterans. Today, people across the country continue to commemo-rate Memorial Day by visiting and decorating cemeteries. Although, the holiday has been modified some, for we now visit and decorate
the graves of everyone (not just military person-nel). In addition, commu-nities hold parades, and families and friends gath-er for barbecues or pic-nics. Many people also spend the weekend camping or fishing. According to histo-ry.com, Memorial Day “unofficially marks the beginning of summer.” This year, Memorial Day falls on May 25. A pa-rade will be held in West Duluth at 12:30 p.m. The route will run along Grand Avenue and end on Fifth Street by Denfeld High School. The American flag will be at half mast and, at 3:00 p.m. the annual, na-tional moment of remem-brance will take place. By Mikayla Maijala
you stories upon endless stories of things that you would not understand, that would be pointless, and that would probably make you angry. This being said, I think I should tell you one story. Coming up with a sto-ry that is school appro-priate was a real struggle, but after some deep thought I came up with one that will not be as funny to you as it is to me: on our many esca-pades to the cheap movie theater, we ended up see-ing Divergent twice. The second time was probably one of the best times we ever had at the cheap movie theater. There were so many jokes to be had about how the two main char-acters interacted with one another. We were alone in a movie theater just
laughing as hard as we could to a movie that was not supposed to be funny at all. This pretty much sums up our friendship. And our advanced math classes.
Another matter alto-gether is Syd Barrett. When talking to anyone, she suggests that the first question to be asked is, “Syd or Roger?” with no context. This usually re-sults in mass confusion, although she still holds hope that it could one day illicit a proper an-swer and subsequent conversation.
In case you don’t know, Syd is a member of the band Pink Floyd, as is Roger Waters, and both artist also had solo careers. The more you know. *Fake rainbow with hands*
If it were up to Ms. Smith, this article would be totally about Syd and Roger; incidentally, they
were not actually born named Syd and Roger: Syd was born a Roger and Roger was born named George. Why they changed their names, I do not know; if you’re curious, I suggest asking Brooklyn the next time you see her. Or dis-cover Google, and I mean Google, do not Bing that.
Now that we’ve cov-ered Brooklyn’s favorite psychedelic studmuffin, I can impart to you Brook-lyn’s eternal wisdom. Brooklyn giving advice is not usually a pretty sight, but she usually has a good point behind the rant that she tends to go on for an awkwardly long time whenever her opinion is requested. For instance, I recently stum-bled into her house while she was lecturing her younger sisters about conservative Republi-cans. So her biggest
piece of advice to the Midwest would probably be to not become a con-servative Republican, as liberal Democrats are where it’s at.
I also have advice to you concerning lyn: the way to Brook-lyn’s heart is to love the right bands, presidents, or at the very least to keep your mind open to all of these things. If you have a great love for bassists and Da-vid Bowie, you have so many automatic brownie points; she may even text you back before the sec-ond coming. Just make sure your texts are the pinnacle of perfect gram-mar, or she may still ditch you for Rush. With that said, this is where I leave you: to stew over what you have learned about Brooklyn, and myself. Good luck to you all, and may your harvests prosper.
Our roads, our levees, and even our quintessen-tial power grid are falling into states of disrepair. Many of these systems are relics of their crea-tion dates, such as during the Great Depression, or during the 1960s, when things such as hydroelec-tric dams were consid-ered “new technology” and installed by massive work programs.
Even our power grid is aging and receiving maintenance only when it fails, usually during
less-than-convenient times, such as storms. And roads, as many of you who drive already know, are in terrible con-dition. 21% of all roads in Wisconsin are listed as being in “poor” condi-tion, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.
And, akin to the recent Amtrak crash in the news, we also might have to worry about rail-road infrastructure in our state. Granted, we do not have any real passenger train systems in the state, but we do have some-thing a bit more
hazard-ous: railcars containing raw, crude oil and other refined petroleum prod-ucts going in and out of Superior by way of the Calumet refinery.
Now, no issues have surfaced with the rail-ways up here, but it would be interesting to see how often the rails are repaired or replaced, since we have an envi-ronment of harsh winters and semi-hot summers that are very conducive to the deterioration of anything metal, rails in-cluded.
So, as you can see, we may be facing a really
bad problem, here. Our nation has not updated our infrastructure for quite some time, and we are suffering the
conse-quences of it. Now, it is important
that no one in particular should be blamed with regards to political affili-ations, and this state of inaction that has existed for quite some time, but I feel the need to ask the more important question: how many more disas-ters, and their subsequent deaths, need to occur be-fore we start to change and update our crum-bling infrastructure?
We all know that some drinks are awful for your teeth, and probably for your entire being, but what drinks are truly the worst for your teeth? Don’t worry, I looked it up for both of us, and will share my findings with you. Here are the top five worst drinks for your teeth.
Alcohol- Alcohol has
a lot of sugar in it, which can decrease your saliva production. Decreasing your saliva production makes your mouth dry which means that bacte-ria can more readily re-produce in your mouth.
Tea- This is a poten-tially staining drink, the worst tea being black tea, or any tea that is a darker blend. If you really love your black tea and aren’t willing to change be-cause you may stain your teeth, consider drinking your tea from a straw to limit exposure to your (currently) pearly whites. Coffee- Just like tea, it stains your teeth like no-body’s business. Again, like the tea, if you need your coffee, just drink it through a straw. Or, if you’re really willing to go the extra mile, you can drink water to rinse it off your teeth after every drink of coffee. Diluting your coffee with milk instead of sugar can also be pretty effective in helping your teeth to thrive instead of yellow. Orange juice- Now, I
love orange juice, so it pained me just a little bit having to put this one on the list, but I had to in-form you of all of the potentially bad drinks, even those that I drink on the daily. This citrusy drink contains a lot of sugar and a lot of acid which can be detrimental to your teeth if consumed in a large amount.
Any citrus drink, such as cranberry juice or pineapple juice is the same thing. Don’t fret, you can get less sugar options or options with less acid in them than regular orange juice (or your personal choice of citrus concoctions). Soda/Energy Drinks
-These drinks have so much sugar in them they should probably come with warning label. They also have a lot of calories and usually con-tain an unhealthy amount of caffeine which isn’t bad for your teeth, but can’t be good for the rest of your body. These drinks attack the enamel on your teeth, which
can-not be replaced.
All of these drinks just kill your teeth. Limiting your consumption of these drinks will help you keep your teeth pearly white and feeling healthy. If you can’t go without these beverages, try drinking them through a straw to limit your teeth exposure to all of these drinks.
5/22
Zachary Makela
5/23
Bryce Bayliss Cameron Clemmer Dustin Soyring
5/24
Rebecca Prochaska
5/25
Natalia Woodhull
5/27
Cordell Brett Kayla Janowicz Catera Johnson
5/28
Santana Knight
Happy
Birthday!
By Katie JohnsonSenior Editor/ For-matter:
Nik Sauer
Text Editor
Brooklyn Smith
Staff Members:
Katie Johnson Jay Gaare Richard Schiff
Luke Rutten Evan Simmons Mikayla Maijala
Cassie Harvey Alissa Ormond Chaede Vig
Advisor:
Mrs. Thompson
Are you up at one a.m. and can’t fall asleep? Do you want to know why you can’t just pass out the second you lay your head on the pillow? Here are the top seven reasons why you cannot find it within yourself to fall asleep.
7. It’s too quiet
--Sometimes, if you’re used to it being noisy when you fall asleep, and you try to sleep without any noise, this can be worse than if there was a general ruckus. When there’s no noise, every sound that inevitably happens seems way louder and is way more distracting.
6. You ate something that’s not easily digesti-ble -- There are certain foods that are hard for your body to digest, and
these foods are bad to eat right before bed because your body isn’t supposed to have to work that hard to digest foods during the night. Some foods you should avoid are: bacon, hamburger, dark choco-late, boxed cereal, ice cream (there goes my midnight snack), and curry.
5. There’s a full moon -- Research from the Swiss has shown that people get less sleep on nights surrounding full moons. And according to all of the websites I looked at, no, this does not mean that you’re go-ing to become a were-wolf.
4. Your dog (or pos-sibly significant other) -- If you share a bed with any sort of living being, you know the pain of being kicked out of your own bed. Getting the
boot from your bed is not good for sleep, and you can constantly be shift-ing to adjust to the extra being that is occupying probably most of the space.
3. The room is not the perfect temperature -- If your room is too hot or too cold you will be tossing and turning all night, trying to decide between one leg out of the blanket, or just taking the blanket off complete-ly. You get up to try to make sure that you’re the right temperature, but that just means that you’re awake longer, try-ing to make yourself comfortable, and it’s just a giant hassle.
2. Secret fear of the dark -- Some people will not admit it, but a lot of people are afraid of the dark. If you’re afraid of the dark, then every
noise that is heard while lying in your bed in the dark will set you on edge, making it very hard to sleep.
1. You overslept on the weekend -- If your sleeping patterns change on the weekends, it’s harder for your body to get back into the rhythm of your sleep schedule; if you stay up late, it’ll be harder for you to go to get enough sleep during the week, especially on that dreaded Monday. So if you keep to your sleep schedule it might make your Monday less drain-ing.
If you’ve been suffer-ing from lack of sleep, one of these may be your problem. If they are, then there are some pretty easy solutions to all of them, and it always helps to know why you can’t sleep. Happy sleeping.
Around the age of 16, most people apply for their first job; this mo-mentous event is new and exciting. However, some teenagers may not know what to expect. To begin, one should re-search the company.
According to
glassdoor.com, “The best way to learn about what the company does and what they look for in a candidate is to research the company.”
Look at the customer and employee reviews; are the reviews good or bad? What is the store's policy, and what are their benefits? Has the compa-ny ever been in acompa-ny legal trouble? Employers are
impressed when appli-cants know about the company, and it sets the applicant apart from the others.
Next, practice inter-viewing with a friend or family member. Go online to find some com-mon interview questions (i.e. what hours are you available to work?) and practice your responses. By doing such, you will be confident and pre-pared to answer most, if not all, questions during the interview.
Wear formal attire to the interview: this will show that you're serious about the job. Teenage boys should avoid jeans and tennis shoes. A for-mal, collared shirt with khakis should do. Girls
can wear dress pants with a nice blouse. It’s advised that one leaves for the interview 10-15 minutes early. This will give you some extra time in case traffic is backed up.
Remember to show enthusiasm. Enthusiasm will show the employer that you're excited about the job. Furthermore, ac-cording to career-cast.com, enthusiasm signals employers that you “will be easier to work with, and more likely to become a pro-ductive team player.” During the interview,
make eye contact. As said by chron.com, “The eyes become the window into your interest level, confidence, and
profes-sionalism during an in-terview.” Moreover, not only does good eye con-tact display respect and good manners, but it also shows that you’re confi-dent in answering ques-tions.
Lastly, brag about yourself. Emphasize
your awards/
accomplishments and any traits/skills that help make you unique. More-over, tell the employer about any job experienc-es that you may have, such as walking dogs or babysitting.
Everyone is nervous about their first job, but if you practice and pre-pare, you should have no difficulty. Good luck!
