iChap

featherduster

iLearn. iThink. iDo.

iChap.

the

Westlake High School

Volume 43

Issue 1

October 20, 2011 4100 Westbank Drive Austin, Texas 78746

BRAINS+BRAWN courtesy photo

Looking back Ten years after attacks, 9/11 remembered pg. 13-16

October {contents}

PEOPLE+PLACES Tanner Thompson

Strutting his stuff Everything’s always better with Beanie Babies pg. 28

The Featherduster, the newsmagazine of Westlake High School, attempts to inform and entertain in a broad, fair and accurate manner on subjects which concern the readers. The publication also seeks to provide a forum of ideas and opinions between the staff of the newsmagazine, the faculty, the student body and the local community about issues presented.

All material produced and published by The Featherduster staff is copyrighted and cannot be reproduced without the writer’s consent or that of the editors. Content decisions rest in the hands of the staff, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case of Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier.

Opinions expressed in the columns

Editors-in-Chief Hannah Kunz Lizzie Friedman

Andy Brown

TRENDS+TRADS

Managing Editor Hirrah Barlas

Copy Editors

Asst. Camille Lewis Asst. Monica Tan

Art Directors Brad Dunn Emily Mitchell

Web Master

Cooking for Dummies

Caroline Hunt Christina Shin

Nikki Roop

Inexperienced chef attempts exotic meal: stuffed pigs’ feet pg. 56-57

Brains + Brawn

Becca Burt Selah Maya Zighelboim Asst. Marco Scarasso Hillary Hurst Cody Crutchfield Asst. Breck Spencer Asst. Ben Wallace

Shea Wendlandt

People + Places

Jenny Messer Julie Dorland Asst. Anika Hattangadi Asst. Catherine Mear

RANTS+RAVES

Back from the grave Karen Scott

that appear in The Featherduster do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the entire staff, the school administration or the adviser.

The staff encourages letters to the editor as an avenue for expressing the opinions of the readers.

All letters must be signed to be considered for publication. Due to space limitations, not all letters will be published, and the editorial board reserves the right to edit them for purposes of placement. No material will be printed that is libelous, advocates an illegal activity or which the editorial board deems is in poor taste. The restriction includes letters to the staff, advertising and anything else the board feels presents an inappropriate message.

Student ventures into local cemetery, senses the spirits pg. 60

Trends + Traditions Hailey Cunningham Zelda Mayer Asst. Jessica Stenglein Asst. Josh Willis

Rants + Raves Danielle Brown

Web Photographer Photo Editors Barrett Wilson Asst. Karen Scott

Business Manager Emily Cohen Asst. Abby Mosing

Photographers Allie Carlisle Isabel De La Luz Katherine Curtis Nikki Humble Tanner Thompson

Reporters

Andy Brown Brian Wieckowski Caitlyn Kerbow Christina Rosendahl

Christine Schulz Elizabeth Emery Emily Martin Jacob Prothro Jaimie Pitts Jared Schroeder Jennifer Prideaux Jono Krawczyk Keren Rempe Laura Doolittle MacKenna McDonell Madison Goll Martin Celusniak Michael Deisher Michaela Moss Monica Rao Olivia Lee Peyton Richardson Rachel Cooper Ryder Nicholas Sara Phillips Sarah Berg Sloan Simpson Taylor Cloyd Taylor Kidd

Adviser

Deanne Brown

On the cover: Seniors Brad Dunn, Mehul Mehta and Kendall French-Kazen Cover photo illustration by Barrett Wilson For more stories, visit www.westlakefeatherduster.com.

3

Time ccrunched

Teachers face problems managing schedule with extra class added

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an Em d ily Br M ad it Du che nn ll

ne of the changes that came with this school year was that teachers were given a sixth class to teach beyond their usual five. The change has affected students and teachers on multiple levels.

According to administrative predictions last spring, the added sixth class should have decreased the average class size. This proved true in some cases, as some classes have as few as 12 students. However, other classes have students wall-to-wall at 32-plus. School counselor Janet Kirk says that the reason for this is simple.

“It’s really because of the master schedule,” Kirk said. “The variation is because of the electives and the lunches.”

For instance, many sports have practice during first and eighth periods, leaving many first and eighth periods with fewer numbers of students than in other time slots. The same idea applies to

lunches. As half the school has lunch fourth period, the other half is in classes with more students.

“Everybody has a second period so that should be the largest period of the day,” assistant principal Steve Ramsey said. “We’re really compacted second through sixth and everyone needs to have a lunch. That’s where we take a hit because teachers need to have a lunch also. Another problem is that we allow our students to have as many off periods as they want when they’re seniors.”

The changes have put teachers in a difficult position as they try to implement the new technology, as well as take on another class to teach. Teachers must pace themselves throughout the day so that classes with fewer students don’t get too far ahead of classes with more students.

“In a full class discussion with 23 people who need to talk vs. 30 people, the class with 23 is going to get more opportunity to talk for their grade,” English teacher Valerie Taylor said. “The pacing ends up different sometimes.”

Another factor regarding the class size issue is the recent retirement and resignation of many teachers from last year.

“Through attrition, we didn’t fill those spots so there may be some inequity in specific departments,” Ramsey said. “For instance, social studies probably has smaller classes because we didn’t have anybody resign or retire in that department.”

The instructional challenges and the stress they cause teachers haven’t gone unnoticed by students.

“Teachers are having a hard time, but I’m sure they’ll figure out a way to get as much done as they have in previous years,” junior Bridget Walsh said.

Along with problems planning, the extra sixth class leaves teachers drained by the end of the day.

“When you do back-to-back classes all afternoon, you’re tired,” English teacher Michelle Crocker said. “There is a physical tiredness

that comes with teaching. Teaching six times versus five is a very big difference.”

The sixth class comes with many side effects, but one problem is particularly frustrating for teachers.

“We lost time but we have the same amount of work as we usually do, just with less time to do it,” Crocker said. “The lack of time to work during school means more homework for teachers at night.”

Another way that administrators reduced average class sizes was by having teachers share lunches. Instead of having a designated planning period for teachers, teachers now share a lunch with other teachers of that subject where they can plan.

“One of the nice things about our having five classes instead of six is that there was time for not just an individual teacher to plan but for teams of teachers to come together and plan together to make projects and lessons more meaningful for students,” Taylor said. “As teachers, we also like to learn from each other about different teaching techniques.”

The change has brought down the average class size but has made scheduling classes more difficult.

“One of the biggest changes with the sixth class is that there is no more room sharing because teachers teach through the entire day with the extra class,” Ramsey said. “Class sizes have gone down but the ability to move people around has gotten difficult because we don’t have any rooms. In second period and sixth period we might have two or three teachers off, but everybody else is teaching a class, so there’s less flexibility in scheduling. Last year we had teachers taking conference periods throughout the entire day so changes this year have made scheduling a little harder.”

The changes have been tough but it’s the price to pay in order to have as many class options as possible. It may be hard now, but teachers are persevering as they adjust to the new obstacles.

“It’s like training for a marathon,” math teacher Jocelyn Bixler said. “It’s hard at first, but your body will get used to it.”

—Monica Tan

Homecoming facts • • • • • • •

•

Game: WHS vs. Del Valle, Oct. 21 Pep rally: Red, white and blue theme Dance date: Oct. 22, 9 p.m.—12 a.m. in the Chap Court Tickets will be sold Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of HC week during both lunches. Tickets will be $15 at school or $20 at the door.

Theme: Moonlight Rendezvous DJ this year is junior Jono Krawczyk, who has his own DJ company, SUP3RFLY. Dance Rules: All students need a Westlake ID to get into the dance. Students may bring guests from other schools, but in order to do so, they must first consult their assistant principal for approval. Their date will need to be on a list (made by APs).

Pick up mums starting Oct. 17 in room 314.

Scan this QR code to read about Student Council’s involvement in helping the victims of the Bastrop wildfire.

Belle ball

of the

StuCo teams up with Project Princess to help girls less fortunate

Izzy de la Luz

Juniors Sarah Berg and Natasha Keshishian model Homecoming dresses in the spirit of the upcoming dress drive.

Most girls, if not every girl, have something in their closet that they’ll never wear again.

Whether it’s a necklace, a purse or a dress from last year, Student Council will take it. StuCo is working with Project Princess, a group that takes donations and helps girls who cannot afford dresses for dances like Homecoming and Prom. “[I was] reading Seventeen magazine and they were talking about donatemydress.org,” StuCo member junior Ashika Ganguly said. “I went online and found a Project Princess branch in Austin. I thought it was a great idea to do because we’re so fortunate and I love the idea of helping some girl get her dream Homecoming.”

Project Princess will take gently used dresses, purses or other accessories and give them to underprivileged girls. Any shoes donated, however,

must be new. The dress drive is Oct. 17-28, which are the weeks before and after Homecoming. Donations made prior to Homecoming are rewarded with $5 off the price of the Homecoming dance ticket. If a student donates two items, they have the choice of purchasing an additional discounted ticket or entering a raffle. Project Princess would love to get as many donations as possible, so they are also taking sun dresses.

“We’re hoping that on the second week of the dress drive, girls who know they’ll never wear their Homecoming dresses or accessories again will donate them in order for underprivileged girls to have a chance to wear items they can never afford,” StuCo member and head of the dress drive senior Christina Shin said.

—Caitlyn Kerbow

Orchestra goes to Mo Ranch The orchestra members experienced ties of unity at their first Mo Ranch field trip Sept. 16-18. Members bonded in more ways than one during this peaceful retreat, through team building exercises, getting to experience the joys of the beautiful setting and having the opportunity to get away from the busy city life for a weekend.

The idea of Mo Ranch was inspired by some members who wanted to bring the orchestra closer as a family.

“Just last spring a lot of our or-

chestra officers were thinking of ways to get people involved in groups,” orchestra director James Edwards said. “I think it was a great way to strengthen the students’ relationships and bring them closer together.”

With so many things to do outdoors, so many people around and no cell phone service, Mo Ranch, which is near Hunt, Texas, truly helped people connect on a more personal level. Students had the opportunity to go canoeing, swim, explore the unique area and much more. A “Mo Down” dance also took place Saturday night,

where students got the chance to dance with their new friends.

“One of the most memorable moments at Mo Ranch was the Mo Down, because I, who most people see as the shy girl in the corner just freaking out about her grades, got to let loose and go crazy at the dance,” sophomore Elizabeth Battey said.

“Everyone was somewhat shocked that I was actually capable of having fun. It was fun that people got to see another side of me.”

—Ryder Nicholas and Christina Shin

During “Molympics,” a competition between squads, one of the activities was River Relay, which required the competitors to thaw a frozen t-shirt, put it on and swim across the river.

Christina Shin

5

Students travel to Korea during summer for Model United Nations conference On Aug. 3, some members from the Westlake Model United Nations club, as well as other lucky students, traveled to Seoul, South Korea to participate in the Korean International Model Congress hosted at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. Accompanied by Model UN sponsor Janet Espinosa, seniors Celeste Bergeron, Arnab Chatterjee, Emily Guthrie, Scott Rizzi, and juniors Jono Krawczyk, Sophia Shi and Julia Woodby took part in a three-day conference.

“KIMC was actually the first MUN conference that

Seven schools from around the world learn cultural diplomacy

A

I’ve ever been to so it was all new,” Julia said. “At first, it was extremely nerve-wracking because I’m not the most politics-oriented person ever and I had never written a resolution or made an amendment. My strategy was to talk as little as possible and avoid embarrassment, but then once I got into it, I found myself talking more and more. It was a really amazing experience and I can’t believe all that I learned.”

Westlake was the only school from the Western Hemisphere invited to attend the conference. While in

Seoul, students stayed in the homes of host students from Westlake’s partner school, Bugil Academy.

“The most memorable moment was when I said goodbye to my host family,” Sophia said. “They were nice enough to prepare a bag of snacks for me to eat on the way back to the U.S. and my friend in the family gave me a wallet-sized picture of herself. My host family was so friendly and hospitable the entire time. It was definitely sad leaving, and I wish we could have stayed longer.”

—Jono Krawczyk and Christina Shin

Foreign encounter

n-nyong-ha-se-yo — this means hello in Korean. For session with people from each country represented. We had to come eight Westlake students, this was necessary to learn, for they up with a product. [In] one group I was in, for the theme popular culhad the opportunity to travel to Korea and be involved in something ture, we came up with a business plan about a global version of MTV that opened their eyes to new perspectives. with traditional and pop music from all around the world people might The International Youth Leaders Forum is an annual academic and not have heard. For the theme forging the future, we came up with a multi-national forum where participants from different countries share plan of an Indonesian coffee shop chain throughout the U.S. The most their opinions about topics and build international friendship. From meaningful cultural interaction was working together in those groups Sept. 5-9, seniors Chris Bull, Sarah Butler, Olivia Cheney, Caroline to come up with team projects.”

Furst, Mehul Mehta, Kinley Redfern, Christina Shin and Fiona Wilson One of the most memorable events that really showed the different had the opportunity to be U.S. delegates. types of cultures was the International Festival, where each country set “The forum was the coming together of students from many differup a booth to show what their culture had to offer. ent nations in one place to discuss the topic of convention — which was “We got to experience food from every country,” Sarah said. “South cultural diplomacy — in their country, and in other countries, and how Korean food is so good. I also got to learn all these different games, it could be used to promote future cooperation,” Chris said. like this top spinning Chinese toy. The Indonesians showed off this The third annual IYLF was hosted by Westlake’s sister school Bugil awesome clap dance game that they learned when they were young.

Academy in South Korea, where All the cultural performances we Westlake was able to take part for saw were amazing, and the dance the first time as a representative party at the end was crazy.” of the U.S. Not only were they able to “This is the first year Westlake learn about new cultures, but the has done this and the first year Westlake students made memothey invited a Western school,” rable friends.

Mehul said. “Westlake’s partner“I made friends at the forum ship with Bugil Academy gave us that I will always stay in touch the entrance to the forum and we with, even though we may never were so lucky that they called us.” see each other again,” Olivia said.

This year’s theme was cultural “I have pen pals in Australia, diplomacy, a term unfamiliar to Skype buddies in South Korea, Students from America, Australia, China, Indonesia, Korea and Singapore display their unique culture by wearing traditional costumes, providing food and demonstrating a performance at the International Culture Fair. most people.

Facebook friends in Singapore, “It means being able to unTwitter friends in Indonesia and Christina Shin derstand other cultures, kids and email buddies from China. One people from different countries and learning how to solve problems week was just enough time to make great friends and get to know each more diplomatically between countries,” Caroline said. other, but I would have spent another month with all of the students In order to achieve cultural diplomacy, people must first learn and if I had the choice. I learned so much about other cultures through engage in foreign cultures; Westlake students did this by engaging with their music, food and dances. We talked to other people about our U.S. six schools from around the world. culture, but also had the chance to learn more about other countries’ “We met kids from China, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia and traditions.”

South Korea,” Mehul said. “All of them were awesome. I honestly can IYLF was intended to help students from different nations learn say that I did not meet one unfriendly person the whole time. They about the differences between cultures. However, it also showed that were so nice and every single one of them was cool.” no matter where people are around the world, we are still similar.

Each day was dedicated to a different theme where kids would be “The kids really weren’t that different because even though each put into different mixed groups. They had to discuss and come up with student had their own culture, they brought a sassy personality,” Chris some sort of business plan or product that could potentially be used said. “This convention really showed me that this is a global world, and relating to their themes: traditions and values, cultural diplomacy in seeing these kids, I can relate them to people back at home. It made action, popular culture, beyond the IYLF and forging the future. me think that no matter the different languages we speak, or the differ“The theme was cultural diplomacy, so each day we had a different ent cultures we grow up in, humans are essentially the same.” theme relating to that,” Fiona said. “Every day we had a mixed group —Christina Shin

Feelin’ the Football stands tall against invisible opponent

T

Two-a-days. These words make even the toughest football players wish they had taken up some indoor sport where they could work out in the air conditioning. Two-a-days mean toiling in the hot summer sun, where temperatures regularly exceed 100 degrees. It is an experience every football player remembers, and one that most every player dreads. This year, they coincided with one of the hottest months in Texas history.

“I have lived in Austin my entire life and this is the hottest I have ever seen it,” freshman offensive line coach Blake Bryant said.

The team suffered heat-related casualties during two-a-days, the most serious being Bryant and defensive lineman senior Brayven Hager.

Both collapsed on the second day of practice due to dehydration and were taken to the hospital.

“I sweated out everything I drank Sunday on the first day of practice,” Bryant said. “I just did not refill what

heat

I had lost.”

Brayven collapsed on the same day as Bryant after weightlifting.

“I remember thinking that it was the worst pain I have ever felt in my life,” Brayven said.

An ambulance and two fire trucks were summoned for the pair, causing some drama among the freshmen players who were practicing outside when the emergency vehicles arrived.

“We were all just wondering what they were for,” freshman Ryan Newberg said. “We hoped that nobody was injured.”

Brayven would return a few days later, as would Bryant.

Playing through the hot weather may have caused some problems for the football team, but there were some advantages to it as well.

“It brought us together and really made us a family,” Brice said. “It shows how much work it takes to be a Westlake football player.”

—Jacob Prothro

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with marching fundamentals in the stadium from 8 to 11:30 a.m., and on some days the band practiced again from 6:30 to 9 p.m. In the evenings and afternoons, the temperature flew up to around 105 degrees.

“I did not ever feel like I was going to pass out,” mellophone player freshman Lindsey May said. “But I did feel nauseous after some of the really long sections without water.”

While practicing, students were encouraged to drink as much water or Gatorade as possible, because with all of the drills and repetition of moves, loss of fluids through sweating was inevitable.

Drum major senior Tess Hellebreker also said she believes it was a tough camp because of the sweltering days.

E

Did you know?

The Texas drought is expected to last until the end of October. reuters.com So far, this year in Austin we have had…

80 days of 100+ (all-time record), 23 days at 105+ (all-time record) and 27 consecutive 100+ days (all-time record). austin.ynn.com A stone age and modern survival skills professor from Connecticut actually fried an egg and toasted a marshmallow on the sidewalk using some mirrors this July. cheshire.patch.com This is the worst drought in Texas since record-keeping began, 116 years ago. thinkprogress.org According to the U.S. Drought Monitor at the University of Nebraska, more than 90 percent of Texas is suffering from “extreme” or “exceptional” drought conditions.

Marchers beat the heat during camp This summer in Texas was a record-breaking one, where temperatures above 100 degrees were recorded at least 85 times. Despite this obstacle, the marching band powered through the heat.

The upperclassmen understood the expectations for success in marching band, since it was nothing new to them. The new students, however, only realized the enormous amount of dedication and focus that band requires as the sweated out each morning rehearsal.

“Parents drop off their kids all excited and pick them up absolutely exhausted,” assistant band director Craig Davis said.

The band started its training Aug. 2. The average camp day began

ell

itch

M mily

“It was still a tough year [in camp], but people got it together and drank water at home, and stayed inside while away from band camp,” Tess said.

In spite of the heat, the intense work and the urge to puke or faint, the marching band grew stonger and more fundamentally sound. Band members also developed a nice sense of camaraderie.

“This summer was a whole lot of work, but it really pulled us together, both as an ensemble and as a family,” flute player freshman Kinsey Cation said. “The most rewarding thing in the world is when everyone just clicks, and we’re all in time, like we’re in each others’ minds.”

—Michaela Moss and Brian Wieckowski

In April, Texas Forest Service responded to 78 fires burning 460,850 acres in seven days. channel6newsonline.com Deep Eddy, a great place to cool off on hot summer days, was originally a bathhouse built by the Works Progress Administration during the Depression era. alwaysaustin. com Barton Springs is one of the most well-known and “coolest” spots in Austin. The temperature of the water averages about 68 degrees. alwaysaustin.com —Hirrah Barlas

Izzy de la Luz

7

An untamable

disaster Barrett Wilson

Animals displaced by wildfires; area residents reach out to help The Bastrop fires forced many people to evacuate their properties, often with less than ten minutes notice. With so little time, people struggled to get both themselves and their animals to safety.

“Many people were instructed to let their horses out and to put duct tape on the mane of their horses with their name and cell phone number so that the horses could be found,” English teacher Kitty Mellenbruch said.

“Some people were even told to paint phone

courtesy photo

numbers and other information on their animals.”

Mellenbruch had animals in the fire zone, but was able to evacuate his animals to safety.

Her brother, who has 200 head of cattle, was also able to evacuate his animals. Several land owners were not as lucky and were not able to get all of their animals out. Fortunately, numerous people from nearby areas were able to help them.

“They created a Facebook page where people could post if they needed help getting their animals out,” Mellunbruch said. “If someone only had two trailers to get their horses out but they needed four, they would post their address and say that they needed two more trailers, and somebody else from a nearby town would show up and help them out.”

The hardest problem to address during the fire was getting food and water to the animals.

“Most people use well water for their ani-

mals, but the fire fighters had to shut off the electricity so it became hard for people to get water,” Mellenbruch said.

The fires and drought during the summer have caused a large shortage of hay. Because there is no grain storage in the South, people are struggling to find enough food for their livestock. A number of ranchers are even having hay shipped in from other parts of the country.

The wildfires have impacted the animals and ranchers of the Bastrop area, and it will take much time before the damage can be repaired.

“It will take easily three to five years for life to go back to normal for those people and animals affected by the fire,” Mellenbruch said. “In the future, there’s not much you can do to prepare for these fires except have more of a plan.”

—Monica Rao

Westlake teacher’s house narrowly escapes Bastrop fire The evening of Sunday, Sept. 4 was passing normally for English as a Second Language teacher Kevin Yeoman. He was getting ready for his brother to come over to his house for dinner when, just after 4 p.m., Yeoman’s brother called. “[My brother] asked me if I knew there was smoke coming,” Yeoman said. “He said there was a wall of smoke coming across the highway. My wife and I had no idea, actually, because we hadn’t been outside and hadn’t seen anything.”

As soon as his brother informed him about the fire, Yeoman stepped outside to see the spectacle for himself.

“It looked like a giant thunderstorm,” he said. “The smoke was almost like white, cumulus clouds with dark undersides.”

Yeoman learned that their neighborhood was being evacuated and began to pack in preparation for his departure. He quickly moved through his house, looking for what he needed and what possessions were most sentimental.

“I remember going through each room and taking a couple seconds to just scan and think, ‘What can I grab real quick that I absolutely do not want to lose?’” he said. “I had a tub of pictures that I picked up.

We had only been living in that house for about a year, so I still had a couple boxes of our keepsakes. I grabbed two boxes of those. My wife grabbed the laptop computers and her work computer — she works from home. I had two guitars that I grabbed. That was really all I had time for.”

Yeoman and his wife left with their few possessions in two separate cars. While he packed, Yeoman had been mostly concerned with the mechanics of evacuating. However, as he drove away from his home, he contemplated the possibility that it might be the last time he would ever see it.

“It felt more like a precaution, like we would be returning that night,” Yeoman said. “I remember looking at something [as we packed] and thinking, ‘That’ll be okay.’ In my mind, I was thinking, ‘I’ll be back for that later.’ We just had the feeling that we would be back, but when we got into the car and pulled out into the street, the line to get out of the subdivision was already backed up. It took us about 30 minutes to exit the subdivision. You could just see the wall of smoke getting bigger and bigger, and before I left the subdivision, I realized I probably won’t have a house by the end of that night.”

Yeoman and his wife went to stay with his brother. For the next 10

days, they would have no idea about the condition of their house. An official report listed their address as destroyed by the fire, but aerial photos e-mailed from friends seemed to indicate otherwise.

“It was cautious optimism, I suppose,” Yeoman said. “We wanted to still think that our house was there, but at the same time, why would it be on a list of destroyed houses if it was? Emotionally, we just bounced back and forth.”

On Thursday, Sept. 15, after two date changes, authorities gave Yeoman and his neighbors the okay to return to their area. At 10 a.m., he finally learned the condition of his house: it was still standing, although it was one of the few in that subdivision that hadn’t perished in the fire.

“We had all been let out at the same time; the officials all let us back in at the same time that morning,” Yeoman said. “All of our neighbors were there, and my wife and I got to walk through the front door of our house. Everybody else was sifting through ashes.”

The Westlake community banded together to support Yeoman and his wife with donations. They then passed on the donations to families who had not been so fortunate in escaping the fire.

“We donated what we received to those who desperately needed the help which included four Bastrop fire fighters who lost their homes to the fire,” Yeoman said. “They never stopped fighting the fire to attend to their own homes. They did an incredible job, and we will be forever grateful for their tireless efforts.”

Most of Yeoman’s neighbors say they won’t return to the neighborhood. Regardless, he spends nights at his house, feeling a need to protect it and his neighbors’ from looters. He has also begun to plan renovations to his house in case a wildfire should ever again come through Bastrop County. All in all, Yeoman has gained some insight from his experience.

“Just walk through your house,” he said. “If you had five minutes, what would you take? Pick out those items that mean more to you than anything else. Stuff like furniture and televisions can be replaced, but [pick out] those items that you had since your childhood or that somebody made you, something that’s really special, and make a list. Put that list on your refrigerator or somewhere that’s accessible, and if you had to leave in five minutes, grab that list, go through it and get what you would not want to lose more than anything in this world.”

—Selah Maya Zighelboim

Below: A scorched car sits in a yard hundreds of feet from a leveled house. Bottom Left: A charred tree trunk continues to burn alongside a Bastrop road almost five days after the wildfires ignited.

Karen Scott

Barrett Wilson

Karen Scott

Barrett Wilson

Above: Austin firefighters assess the speed and direction of the fire which broke out west of Austin Sept. 3. Some 24 homes were destroyed and 30 homes suffered damage. A total of 125 acres were burned in the Steiner Ranch subdivision. Left: These burned trunks are all that are left of the grove of trees along the road in Bastrop. The fires in Bastrop were the worst across Texas with 1,554 homes burned and 34,068 acres destroyed. Teacher Kevin Yeoman was one of the lucky few whose home suffered only minor damages even though it was directly in the burn zone. In describing his return to the subdivision after the danger passed, he said, “All of our neighbors were there, and my wife and I got to walk through the front door of our house. Everybody else was sifting through ashes.”

9

iPad invasion District purchases iPads with technology bond money This year, Eanes ISD made the decision to put $817,000 from technology bonds towards roughly 1,700 iPads for student use in the Westlake Initiative for Innovation, or WIFI program. The pilot program provided for all juniors, seniors, select sophomores and their teachers to receive an iPad for the year. While the iPad and case came free of charge, there was an option to pay $35 to cover insurance.

“The pilot teachers had to go through a lengthy process to get the iPads,” assistant principal Steve Ramsey said. “They are definitely excited about them. It’s making their workday easier. Most of their planning used to consist of copying, but now they have the ability to be more creative.”

While there is room for innovation as far as what can now be done in the classroom, the Izzy de la Luz iPads also have similar Junior Caleb Bales plays a popular iPad game called Asphalt 6. functionality to a desktop computer or laptop. Students can use apps like Pages, Keynote and iMovie to do the same things they could on a computer, with the added benefits of being environmentally friendly, conveniently portable and constantly accessible.

“It’s definitely cut down on the amount of paper that we use,” AP U.S. History teacher Bert Bonnecarre said. “We’ve probably used about a third of the amount of paper we used last year, up to this point. We still print out the review packets, but other than that, all the other paper is pretty much minimized. The chapter review quizzes are on the iPads, I’ve got it set up on Google Docs so it grades them automatically. It’s pretty cool.”

Despite the initial enthusiasm, users have found drawbacks as well.

“One of the downsides is that there are still some resistant people,” Ramsey said. “We are trying to get teachers where students are [in terms of use].”

Most students are very excited to be a part of this program, however, some choose to take advantage of the opportunity in a negative way.

“My least favorite thing about the iPads is the distractions and the temptations for students to use them dishonestly and irresponsibly,” AP Environmental Science teacher Bob Murphy said. “But that is strongly outweighed by their benefits.”

While the new technology is great for educational purposes, there are also countless games and other distractions that the App Store can provide.

“It’s distracting when you are trying to take notes in class because

there is that temptation to get on Facebook or play Top Girl,” senior Xavia Gamboa said.

Even though it’s easy to procrastinate, Westlake students have stepped up to the challenge and had the opportunity to do and accomplish more than ever before.

“The new technology has really opened my eyes to what is happening in our world and I am able to be more organized and travel lighter,” senior Alexis Erthal said.

Teachers are already finding unpredicted ways to incorporate the iPads in the classroom, and more uses are in the works.

“There are still bugs in this,” Bonnecarre said, “but if you look hard enough you can find the faults in anything. I think there’s more we can do with them than we’re doing, but this is the initial step.”

The administration is confident that Westlake students will make the most of this experience.

“We trust the students and faculty,” Ramsey said, “whereas there might be some hesitation in other schools. We know you all are responsible. Our risks in going through with the pilot were whether students were going to use the iPads for education. We know they still play games, but we had more issues with cell phones than we do with iPads.”

—Becca Burt with additional reporting by Lizzie Friedman

“iPads rock! While they can be distracting at times, the iPads give us constant information and helpful online tools. Oh, and my Tiny Wings score has improved drastically!”

—senior Catherine Anne Prideaux

“I think the iPads were great in theory, but I think they probably decrease productivity because they can be such a distraction.”

—senior Wehman Hopke

“I prefer paper over the iPad because I like having a hard copy. The iPad is cool and it could be used well, but it also causes a big distraction.”

—junior Jeffery Carlson

“I love my iPad, but it can be really distracting during class when I start to take self pics.”

—sophomore Chloe McCullough photos by Karen Scott and Shea Wendlant

The apple of my eye With an abundance of games in the App Store, it’s hard to know where the best games lurk. Having made their run through the top 25, some of these games have puzzlingly faded in popularity. These are some quality games which ought to be checked out by any gameaholic.

Battleheart

For those who love wizards and warriors, Battleheart is for you. In this game, you command an assortment of characters with straight forward gameplay — kill everything attacking you. The game also gives the player a variety of choices: which characters to have on your four-man team, who to upgrade and which abilities to teach them. Gameplay is giving orders to your team by simply dragging your finger. Although there isn’t a large amount of enemy types, this doesn’t affect gameplay enjoyment. Overall, Battleheart is a must-have for fantasy fanatics and strategy lovers.

Developer: Mika Mobile, Inc. Price: $2.99 Customer Rating: Five stars

Infinity Blade

Avenge your father; kill the God King. That is your sole objective in this fantasy action game. Infinity Blade is an expensive game, but you get a lot of bang for your buck. First off, there are beautiful graphics; the game has realistic visuals, vivid colors and precise details.

Secondly, there are countless helmets, suits of armor, weapons, shields and magic rings to use in your endless monster slaying. There are numerous enemies to face as you advance towards the God King, your father-killing nemesis. Gameplay includes dodging, blocking and parrying the enemies’ blow and, when the time is right, striking back.

The downside of the game is its repetitive plot and gameplay. After a few times, the game becomes dull. In general, if you are willing to dish out the cash, this is a great game to have, and it utilizes the iPad’s large screen and great resolution.

Developer: Chair Entertainment Group, LLC Price: $5.99

Customer Rating: Four and a half stars

Death Rally

Like racing? Like weapons? Death Rally puts these two things hand in hand. There are a variety of cars, weapons and maps to play in different combinations. In this quick-paced action racing game, your only goal is to win, by any means necessary. There are certain elements of strategy hidden under the violent action. You can focus on getting ahead and taking first place or just exterminating all of the competition. The game keeps you locked in with the task of defeating “The Adversary” and unlocking the many cars and weapons available.

Developer: Remedy Entertainment LCD Price: 99 cents Customer Rating: Four-and-a-half stars

Tiny Tower

Tiny Tower offers a lot of entertainment for those who enjoy passive games. It’s practically addictive. In this game you manage a tower which you fill with people and businesses, constantly restocking businesses and making the “Bitizens” dreams come true. This game also offers the customization of Bitizens and businesses. Another nice characteristic about this game is that you can choose how much time you want to spend on it, whether you want to constantly monitor your businesses or log on once a day. Another interesting feature is the Bitbook, basically Facebook for the Bitizens in your tower. Since Tiny Tower is free, it is a must have for any gamer.

Developer: NimbleBit LLC Price: Free Customer Rating: Four-and-a-half stars

World of Goo HD

World of Goo is a game of getting from one point to another. Using goo balls, you must construct structures that bring the goo balls to pipes. Whether you are constructing bridges or towers, endless challenges will face you, including lack of goo balls, saw blades or wind. Although rather expensive, there are countless levels and tasks you must overcome. You can compete with other players online to build the tallest tower using excess goo balls you save. With stunning graphics and challenging gameplay, if you are willing to spend the money, World of Goo HD is a great

game to get.

Developer: 2D Boy Price: $4.99 Customer Rating: Four-and-a-half stars

Gravity Guy HD

You are free… as long as you evade your pursuer and, more importantly, don’t fall.

In this fast-paced game, you have to keep flipping gravity in order to dodge obstacles and survive. Along with single player, you can play multiplayer with four other people on your iPad or online with another person.

Your goal in this is to beat the other to the finish line, surviving along the way. In this game, quick decisions, great timing and lightningfast reactions are vital to win. Gameplay is simply tapping the screen to flip gravity, timing carefully to avoid slowing down.

Developer: Miniclip.com Price: $1.99 Customer Rating: Four-and-a-half stars

Harbor Master HD

Harbor Master is a care-free game about helping cargo ships dock. It starts slow and easy, but progresses until you have to carefully coordinate boats around each other.

Making this simple task more complicated are the different sizes, colors and speeds of boats as you dock them. Although the concept isn’t very original, the game is free and worth trying.

Developer: Imangi Studios, LLC Price: Free Customer Rating: Four-and-a-half stars

Early Bird HD

You know the saying the early bird gets the worm? Well this game puts the saying into action.

In this game, you’re a little blue bird trying to catch a snarky worm.

With a swipe of your finger, you send the bird closer to the hole where the obnoxious worm dwells. But be wary my fine feathered friend, numerous obstacles such as thorns, lightning bugs and gravity stand in your way. Whether you fly in temperate meadows, dusty deserts or snowy peaks, 96 levels of flying fun await you.

Developer: Booyah, Inc.

September 11, 2001 “When I got home from school, I remember my mom was standing by the couch watching TV. When I walked inside, I could see the towers falling.”

—junior Audrey Allen

Ten years later

Hannah Kunz

13

A matter of time

Senior Lizzie Friedman visits the construction site at Ground Zero in March, 2011. She moved from Manhattan to Austin in 7th grade, but loves going back to New York every chance she gets.

Hannah Kunz

10-year anniversary arrives, New Yorker finds new meaning in My grandma remembers exactly what she was doing when President John F. Kennedy was shot: taking my father out of the bathtub. My dad remembers where he was when the tragedy at the Munich Olympics occurred: walking home from a summer game of baseball in the park. And me? I remember where I was on September 11, 2001.

Dressed in my brand-spanking-new khaki corduroy skirt, red collared shirt and navy blue lace-up shoes, I gingerly climbed the narrow stairs on the yellow school bus, finding my seat just as I had the day before. I wasn’t nervous today. My second day as a second grader and my primary concern was that the bus would make me late again. Even at the age of 8, I was a freak for punctuality. So far, I liked New York and my new school. Fieldston, one of New York’s prestigious private schools, was 30 minutes outside of Manhattan, a commute that didn’t faze me until 9/11.

I feel like at a certain point in one’s life, memories stop becoming disconnected and last year and the year before start to mesh.

But in second grade, my recollections can only be described as instants, short moments with little importance that come and go, yet somehow etch themselves into my brain.

The time between my arrival at school on my second day, Sept. 11, 2001, and the time when I left school is not one of these figments of my memory that trace back to my toddler years.

I do remember, though, that Karen, my

second grade teacher who we addressed by first name as part of the unspoken liberal stance taken by the school, told us that we would be leaving early. She neglected to give us a reason, but none of us 8-year-olds cared at first. We were just excited for a half-day.

My enthusiasm soon faded when Susan Bram came to the classroom door. She was an acquaintance of my mom’s and the only parent my mom knew at the school. Susan softly explained that she would be taking me to her house with her three kids, all of whom I didn’t know. With the chaos of children questioning our spontaneous departure, it didn’t even occur to me that I wouldn’t be going home on the same yellow bus I had ridden before, let alone going home at all.

The next thing I remember, I was sitting in Susan’s Suburban. Palms sweating, heart pumping, I had no idea what was going on.

Tyler Case, the older brother of my friendto-be Olivia, sat in the front seat. Even in the midst of my anxiety, I knew he was one of those boys who thinks he’s a big shot at the ripe age of 12 when he told me I was too little to know what had happened: the Twin Towers had been attacked. His unbecoming arrogance added to my unease, but we quickly arrived at Susan’s handsome home where we were greeted by her husband and giant Sicilian pizza pies. When she suggested that I put on her younger son’s clothes so that I could go swimming with the other kids, I knew it was

time to call my mom.

It wasn’t that I missed my family, but rather that I was pining for a familiar face.

It’s hard to look back and remember that I didn’t know what was happening just a car ride away. All I wanted was to feel safe in the sense that I wasn’t alone. After wailing into the phone, I convinced my mom to call our cousins and have them come pick me up.

Somewhere along the way, I found out that there had been a fire. Apparently, that’s all my second-grade level of development could handle. I ended up sleeping over at my cousin’s, and the last thing I remember is that a pigeon pooped on my dad’s Yankee hat as we were walking home from the train station the next morning. I guess some memories aren’t capable of escaping one’s mind.

It’s not that my experience on 9/11 was unique or frightening. On one hand, I don’t feel worthy of the questions I’ve been asked simply because I lived in Manhattan while the World Trade Center collapsed. While people were fighting for their lives and the lives of others, while my father was running from his office just a few blocks from Ground Zero, I was eating pizza, and that is not something worth sharing. I never understood why my seventh grade Texas History class was so taken with my story on the day we discussed 9/11, but on the other hand, I now understand that people are quick to grasp anything that will bring them more of a connection to

courtesy photo

When the World Trade Center was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, policemen and firemen rushed to the site to aid the victims. Hundreds of men and women from the FDNY and NYPD returned to Ground Zero every day after the tragedy to help clean up the large amounts of rubble.

St. Paul’s Chapel, across from Ground Zero, exhibits memorabilia to commemorate 9/11. Following the terrorist attacks, the entryways of firehouses and churches were flooded with cards, photos and flowers.

People shared their gratitude and sympathy for those involved.

courtesy photo

World Trade Center tragedy that horrific and monumental day. Yes, my memory of that day is incomplete, but it’s my memory and one that continues to acquire more meaning and grow as I do.

As the 10-year anniversary approached just last month and the television flooded with memorials and remembrances of the tragic day, I changed. A suffocating sadness brought me, an unemotional person, to tears.

While the country is recovering, I am just starting to comprehend the magnitude of 9/11. I am older now and have recently been back to Ground Zero. It is at this point in my life that I unapologetically indentify myself as a true New Yorker. The 10-year memorial allowed me to see the trauma with a different set of eyes, with a more mature perception.

I am proud that my generation has seen, and will see, tremendous changes on both a national and international level. The world we live in today is not the same place it was 10 years ago, but through it all, Sept. 11 has remained a day that grounded this country, bringing the population together against the hardships that have been endured.

For me, 9/11 represents two things. While it symbolizes a partial destruction of my belief in the good of people, I also see that it was a day for Americans to rally together and take care of one another. Time is impactful, and these past ten years have given me the opportunity to fully understand.

—Lizzie Friedman

A decade of change How U.S. has coped, transformed since 9/11

T

he footage is hypnotizing. It’s hard not to replay the horrific scenes: one plane hits, then another.

It’s clearly not an accident.

Many are haunted by the seconds when the planes struck, the explosions, and the moments the buildings came down to their demise. It’s unimaginable that this was an intentional act, and that the world could change in such a short matter of time.

Where were you on Sept. 11, 2001?

Ten anniversaries of 9/11 have passed and each year we are reminded of the horror. We remember those who perished, and those who stood as true American heroes. This day undoubtedly triggered multiple changes in our society.

In the 20th century, it was unthinkable that a terrorist group such as Al Qaeda could hijack a commercial plane and crash it into the Twin Towers and Pentagon via suicide mission. It was simply unfathomable that they could have so much hatred for the United States, and would be willing to kill themselves in an act of terror and devastation. We watch the news and hear of suicide bombers and terrorist attacks and don’t think much about it. Terrorism has become a part of common understanding among the American people as we progress within the nuclear era.

We are a generation in which the world is seemingly smaller and as we grow to be more globally connected, our security is put on the line.

Technology has become quite advanced and accessible and what may seem like an advantage is proving to become a burden. Since World War II, the weight of human society has become heavier and heavier as nuclear warfare emerges in the hands of powerful world leaders. 9/11 marked the turning point in American warfare as we pursued a “War on Terror.” Wars are no longer fought on a battle field with horse and soldier, but are fought with technology and terrorism on a global spectrum. This terrifies people. For years, Americans have lived comfortably in a country with freedom and safety. Now, an increase in technology is harming these liberties.

Weeks, months and even years after 9/11, traveling by airplane has become an unsettling idea. American and United airlines would have greatly suffered without aid from the government as people began to question the safety of air travel. To offset some of these doubts, security in airports has become tighter and the cockpit door is now locked, protecting the pilots. However, Americans still have some skepticism which comes hand-in-hand with religious and racial discrimination.

Much of our anger as a result of 9/11 has been directed towards Muslims and people from the Middle East. We question their motives and values which we categorize as threatening our own. We even label them as terrorists as we watch them walking down the aisle of an airplane, trying to find a seat. America, the melting pot, has become a frozen pond, stuck in the insecurities that 9/11 has caused.

September 11, 2001 will always be remembered as a day that changed America forever. It challenged us as united people to overcome hardship. An entire decade later, it is clear that America is moving on, but is still haunted by the destruction of that day. Technology and security have indeed increased, yet these advancements could be dangerous for our future.

—Caroline Hunt

15

Duty calls A

Senior’s aunt recounts responding to 9/11 attack on World Trade Center

NEWS Explore 9/11 The official 9/11 memorial app was made by the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. Its purpose is to act as a guide to understanding the national tragedy.

Cost: Free

plume of fire and smoke exploded into the clear “That night, we put a bus together and drove to the towers,” Caridi sky at 8:46 a.m. the morning of September 11, 2001. said. “The tunnels were still shut down, and debris was everywhere.

Screams ripped through the air. News headlines and Everything was very clouded. We got to the Trade Center, which was television stations flashed the words “Terrorist Attack” and “World burning. It was all in flames, very hot, hot flames. We got to The OfTrade Center Destroyed.” fices of Emergency Management Building, which was where you were Four commercial airplanes had been hijacked by Al-Qaeda memsupposed to go when everything went wrong, and there were fumes in bers. Two had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City, the building, because it was a self-contained unit. It was on fire, and it one into the Pentagon in Virginia and, after a heroic coup by the paswas melting. Then, it collapsed. I don’t have much memory after that. sengers, the fourth plane collided in a field in Pennsylvania, instead of That was just too much for me.” the White House or the Capitol in D.C. It was a day that America would The next morning, Caridi and other police and firemen began to never forget. work on clearing the rubble and searching for bodies 12-16 hour shifts.

The same day in Austin, Texas at Barton Creek Elementary, senior In the first several weeks, there wasn’t much equipment available to Paige Caridi’s second grade teacher turned on the television. When she shift through the ruins, and responders had to move the burning steel, realized the screen was playing the horrific scene in New York City, she wires and bodies by hand. quickly shut the television off. Later that day, she pulled Paige aside to “There were thousands and thousands of shards of wire and alumitell her of her aunt’s involvement as a Port Authority police officer in num and steel,” Caridi said. “It was very sharp. There was no glass. I the 9/11 attack. always remember saying, ‘Well, you’re not going to cut your fingers on “My dad had called the school to tell me, because I knew my aunt glass, because the glass has been pulverized into sand.’ There were no was a police officer,” Paige said. “[He] had called the school to say that toilets. There were no desks. There were no lights. There was nothing. she was okay. The school called my teacher, and my teacher told me.”

There was just steel and pulverized people and dust.”

Earlier that morning, in her home in South Hampton, New York, It would take an entire year for Ground Zero to be cleaned up Paige’s aunt, Doris Caridi, was sewing completely. The nation pitched in when she got a phone call. to help out Caridi and the other reSenior Paige Caridi’s aunt, Doris Caridi, stands proudly in her uniform. Caridi was one of the many “My mom called me,” Caridi said. sponders by donating helicopters, police officers that helped clean up the remains of the World Trade Center after the 9/11 tragedy.

“She said, ‘I think a small plane hit the clean-up equipment and gloves.

World Trade Center.’ I turned the TV “The country started sendon, and a video of a hole in one of the ing us gloves,” Caridi said. “You’d towers that the plane had made was come, and there would be a box of on, and because I was very familiar gloves for you, and children would with the World Trade Center, havwrite messages on them. We’d go ing worked there for years, and very through a pair of gloves in a day familiar with fire, I knew right away easily. The gloves would say things that it wasn’t a small plane. It was a like, ‘My hero,’ ‘God bless you’ and big plane. I knew something had gone ‘Thinking of you.’ They’d have little terribly wrong, because there are far pictures on them. They were much too many safety systems in a plane for appreciated.” a pilot to make this mistake. I knew it Caridi’s friend and partner, was intentional right away.”

George Howard, had died saving On her way to the airport, Caridi civilians at the World Trade Center. called her co-workers to confirm that “We got his body out pretty courtesy photo they were on their way before calling quick,” she said. “He had been on the inspector of the John F. Kennedy Airport. He told her to bring as top of the rubble. If you were in the building, you were gone. There was much equipment and as many people as she could and meet him at the no sign of you. If you made it to the perimeter, you were crushed in World Trade Center. Before arriving at JFK, she heard the news that the steel, there were pieces of you. George Howard’s whole body was the Pentagon had been attacked and all planes were being grounded. recovered. He was one of the few whose whole body was recovered.”

“I got to Kennedy Airport, and it was insane,” Caridi said. “There Responding to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, were people running around and getting equipment. Then, all of a Caridi was haunted by the horrors she saw and the dangers she faced sudden, the building went quiet. The radio had stopped, and over the for the next 10 years. loudspeaker, they announced that Tower One had collapsed, and the “The agony will be with me forever,” Caridi said. “Losing my friend radio systems were down.” will be with me forever. Why didn’t I die? Why did they die? Why did From the tarmac of the airport, the Twin Towers of the World families with children die? People who had a lot more going for them Trade Center used to be visible. But when Caridi went down to the than I did. Why me? Why didn’t they take me? Let these poor guys go runways, one could not be seen, and the other was smoking. After the back to their kids. It stays with me every day.” second tower fell, New York City went on lockdown.

—Selah Maya Zighelboim

Paintball player Chase Luxton turns pro

Not just guns and games We’ve all been to at least one of those birthday parties: kids running around on a sugar high, their faces splattered with cake icing, laughing maniacally as they mercilessly shoot each other in the butt. But to some, paintball is more than just fun and games.

For professional paintball player junior Chase Luxton, it’s much more than just a chaotic birthday party.

“It’s become a really serious sport,” Chase said. “They’re coming out with $2,000 guns now and there are huge, huge tournaments that’ll go for three days and 50,000 people will come. It’s got a real cult following.”

Chase’s first experience with the sport was typical. It was his 11th birthday party and he had so much fun playing paintball that he went back to play again, and again, and again, and now his enthusiasm has paid off.

“I became a professional by playing a lot,” Chase said. “It’s just about going to different fields and playing with random people, meeting new people. I tried out for a division two team and went from division two to professional. The main thing as a pro is that you play in the professional division of Paintball Sports Promotions and National Paintball Player League tournaments, and you’re sponsored so you get $1,000 guns for free from that sponsorship.”

Paintball has come a long way since its debut, and is now considered a legitimate sport. Like any competitive sport, there’s a lot of structure and strategy involved.

“There’s a flag in the center of the field and the goal is to grab the flag and hang it on the opposing teams’ side, while eliminating

the other team,” Chase said. “There are three different kinds of positions: front, mid and back. I’m the guy who runs up on the very far side of the field, the left or right, whichever side has the Doritos, which are these really big triangle-shaped bunkers. They look like giant snacks. There’s also a bunch of strategy involved. For example, you have to decide whether you want to shoot people right off the break or if you want to run to your bunkers first and then start shooting.”

As a professional, Chase plays in many competitions, which are paid for by his sponsors.

“The tournaments are set up so that you play every team, and then the teams with the most points will go on to the next round and then they’ll play everyone,” he said. “It’s a points game.”

The maximum length per game is 20 minutes, but some are much shorter if the flag is captured quickly. Within a tournament, there could be only a few matches or 20 to 30.

“If everyone is shot before the flag is

caught, then it’s a draw game and no points are awarded,” Chase said.

The rules for game play vary from tournament to tournament.

“For PSP you can only shoot at 12.5 paintballs per second, while at NPPL you can shoot at semi-uncapped which is however fast you can move your trigger fingers,” he said. “There are three, five, seven or 10 players on a team, depending on the tournament. I don’t always play with the same guys. We might have a rotation or we try to put people in different positions. It gets switched around a lot.”

Although playing paintball may be every 10-year-old boy’s birthday dream, many people don’t realize how dangerous the sport is when played competitively. New guns continue to be developed, allowing players to shoot faster and for the paintballs to hit with more force. There’s a lot that could go wrong.

“You can dislocate your knees or break your bones from awkward diving,” Chase said.

“There are a lot of bruises. A friend of mine dove and landed on his tank wrong and the high pressure tank shot off and hit another one of our players and broke his arm from the force of the tank.”

Paintball has come a long way as a competitive sport since its start. Regardless of the dangers associated with it, Chase has found a game that he has a real passion for.

“Whenever I play I’m more in the zone,” he said. “I’m just like, ‘Alright I need to do this, get there, do what I need to do so my guys can do what they need to do so we can win the game.’ I’m very focused.”

—Christine Schulz

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Give it a try: A few local places to play paintball are Hill 13 Paintball, Outlaw Paintball and Maximum Paintball. For most

fields, it costs around $20 to play if you bring your own equipment. But this equipment can be costly. A case of paint is around $60. However, you can rent equipment anywhere. Most paintball arenas will have everything you need for a great time.

19

Making a commitment Senior athletes break down the recruitment process Senior Mariana Sims tees off at Jimmy Clay Golf Course. “My dad would take us out to the driving range every morning, and [that’s how] my sister and I both learned to really like golf,” Mariana said. Mariana will play golf for Wake Forest next year.

Barrett Wilson

Preventing a goal, goalie senior Lindsey Harris stops a score at the I-10 shootout in Houston January 2010. Lindsey will be attending the University of North Carolina next fall.

Running with the ball at the Westlake vs. Lake Travis game, quarterback senior Blake Box tries to pick up a first down. Blake is thinking about attending Dartmouth or Bowdoin for football next year.

Shea Wendlandt

Crazy. Unpredictable. Exciting. Recruiting produces madness off of the field, creating a whole new game for high school players.

They must be able to navigate through the rules and regulations of the NCAA, while being cautious of potential deceptions from recruiters and boosters along the way. And now with the recruiting scandal at the University of Miami, players must be even more cautious of the rules regarding the recruiting process.

They must make the decision of whether they can handle the workload of being a student athlete, and whether they want to eventually play professionally. The pressure is put on

high school kids to sign their next four years away to a coach they barely know, trusting that the coach is looking out for the athlete’s best interest. Crazy. Unpredictable. Exciting.

These words only scratch the surface of the bedlam that is recruiting.

Athletes who want to play in college relish in the chance given to them by the recruiting process. Quarterback senior Blake Box is one of those few, as he is considering playing football at Dartmouth or Bowdoin next year.

“It would be a cool opportunity because not everyone gets to play a collegiate sport,” Blake said. “Just to play any sport in college

courtesy photo

would be fun.”

Some colleges don’t give out NCAA scholarships, and have to find a way to make their schools more attractive to recruits.

“How Bowdoin would do it or how Dartmouth would do it, is rather than give out scholarships, they cut the price of tuition so that it is not as expensive,” Blake said. “It’s like ‘Hey not only do you get a great education, you get to pay less and play football.’”

In order for high school players to properly get their names out there on the recruiting trail, they must attend a number of camps, finding out which school is best for them, and

Other recruits Katharine Noonan

soccer soccer

Rollins College

Walker and Tucker Hume Rollins College

Emma Blackwood Columbia University

Thomas Haws

Wake Forest University

Hannah Baptiste

volleyball

University of Texas at Arlington

Cailin Bula

Southern Methodist University

Paige Caridi

Dartmouth College

Drew Wikelius

United States Military Academy, West Point

basketball

tions. But sometimes they keep calling and it gets repetitive and sometimes that’s annoying, but it’s also nice to know someone likes you.”

For soccer, most of the recruiting is done on the club level and through the camps, not through the Westlake soccer team.

“Most of the college coaches talk to your club coach and that’s how you talk to them because you can’t talk to them directly at some points,” Lindsey said. “They will know your club coaches more than your high school coaches.”

For football, Westlake is more involved because in addition to the camps, games are how players show that they have what it takes to play in college.

“What I generally try to do is meet with my kids their sophomore year and they start to develop their lists of schools, like a top 10 list or a wish list, and then we go over those schools, and they go and visit those schools,” head volleyball coach Al Bennett said. “By the fall of their junior year, we focus more on what has happened so far and who has recruited them and contacted them. Sometimes I contact these schools the spring of their sophomore year. As schools become interested in the player and express their interest in them, the kids try to visit those schools and get them on their list. So my role is kind of a counselor with them, guiding them through the process, getting them thinking about the schools and the college’s academics, locale and weather. A lot of our players don’t like going up north where it is cold. I kind of put all those factors together and help them make their lists.”

For many of the players, the most involved members of the recruiting process and decision-making are their parents.

“My mom signed me up for everything, put me everywhere and just basically did everything for me,” Lindsey said.

When players go to visit the school, the coaches break down what will happen once they arrive at the school as a member of the team.

“Basically, you practice with the team every day and they do workouts in some of the mornings,” Mariana said. “You qualify for tournaments and as there are seven or eight of us on the Wake Forest team, you can only take five to the tournaments. You also have to have a certain amount of study hours towards academics. It’s an athletic thing where you have to go a tutor with another athlete and it doesn’t matter which sport they belong to and you have to logs hours to make sure you do well.”

Even after the lights in the stadium go down, the game doesn’t end for those fortunate enough to play on the next level. To them, it comes down to the chance to play what they love for four more years and beyond, and show what they are truly made of.

—Cody Crutchfield

Jaimie Grace

Texas State University

softball

where they can see themselves playing in college.

“Every college has a recruiter camp,” soccer goalie senior Lindsey Harris said. “If you want to go to their school, that is the place to go. I went to South Carolina, Colorado, Auburn and North Carolina.”

Ultimately Lindsey chose The University of North Carolina because she felt it was the best fit for her.

“I want to stay in the South and it’s a great school with a really nice campus,” Lindsey said. “I’ve been a fan of UNC basketball for a while and their soccer team is amazing; the way the coach runs the program is perfect.”

Lindsey had the honor of being featured as the ESPN RISE player of the week for women’s soccer March 9.

At these camps, a player has to display the skills necessary in order to succeed on the team and show the recruiters all they’ve got.

“It’s kind of like a miniature practice,” Blake said. “They test your skills, your speed, your strength and your athletic ability. They see what you can do with your athletic skills, and see if you can put that into their drills to see if you’re a good fit.”

Also at the camps, players learn what exactly the rules are for recruiting in NCAA and what to expect from recruiters along the way.

“If you go to camp, they usually have a session that tells you the exact rules, when they can contact you and when they can’t,” Lindsey said. “There are a bunch of times when they are allowed to email you, and when they are actually allowed to call you.”

For other sports such as girls golf, some players find that past recruits are their best source of information for the NCAA rules, how they apply to their situation and how they are specifically being recruited.

“The rules are never broken down,” senior Mariana Sims said. “I kind of wish it was because it would be a lot easier, but you basically have to learn the rules by word of mouth. It’s a lot of you talking to other kids who have gone through the process before.

The [NCAA rules] are pretty strict rules and it’s really difficult to learn them at the beginning, but once you talk to other people it gets easier.”

In some sports, assistant coaches predominately do most of the recruiting work.

They are the ones who send the emails, make the phone calls and talk at the camps.

“Primarily it’s just assistant coaches like defensive back coaches and lineman coaches,” Blake said. “The coaches are divided into regions that they recruit, so you don’t always get a quarterback coach. I’ll get an offensive lineman coach, but he’ll recruit Texas and [I’ll] talk to him. Most of the coaches are nice, and most of them want to just talk and have conversations and answer any ques-

Kathy Dzienkowski Dartmouth College photos by Karen Scott

For more information on the nation’s top recruits, scan this using your QR reader app for the iPad or iPhone.

21

Off to the races

Cross country boys trot towards District Title As the sun rises over Lady Bird Lake, the boys cross country team has already hit the ground running. The runners hammer out two hard hours early every morning. Though working towards their goals will take a lot of commitment, the runners and head coach Bert Bonnecarrere are confident that it will pay off.

“The kids have worked harder this summer than any group I have had at Westlake,” Bonnecarrere said. “The results have been evident in our success as a team. We are closer to our team goals earlier in this season than any season before.”

Despite the grueling practice regiment, the runners seem to be embracing the difficulty and turning it into stimulation to succeed.

After winning the AISD meet against what Bonnecarrere called “a very competitive field,” the Chaps finished fourth at the Lockhart Invitational, second at the Gerald Richey Invitational and second at the Baylor Invitational. The early triumph has provided the team with an enjoyable experience.

“This year has been full of excitement,” sophomore Bonner Garrison said. “We have a very good team with great potential.”

The team members hope to maximize that potential by constantly pushing on towards their goals.

“I think the boys have set the bar high and are motivated to perform at the highest level,” Bonnecarrere said. “The boys are motivated to win the District title and make a good run in the Regional meet.”

Bonner and his teammates feel the same way.

“Everyone seems ready to compete for a division title and beyond,” Bonner said.

—Andy Brown

Monica Tan

Seniors Max Castera, Mitch Conrad, junior William Norman and sophomore Cade Ritter train before school on the practice fields. Their District meet is Oct. 28 at Decker Lake.

Girls outrun competition, prepare for Oct. 28 District meet The girls cross country team is hard at work, preparing for its next meet. Just like the boys, the girls get up early every morning and run every day.

“It’s a big commitment,” coach Chris Carter said. “It’s not just something you do. It kind of becomes who you are.”

Cross country is a grueling sport that requires outstanding

Monica Tan

The girls cross country team grinds out an early morning practice. The District meet is Oct. 28 at Decker Lake. “Having to run at 7 in the morning while I’m still half asleep is difficult,” junior Renee Nolan said.

athletic ability. In order to build a superior girls cross country team, Carter had to seek out not only good athletes, but also those who are dedicated.

“A big challenge is finding those kids who really want to do it and those who are really willing to put the time in to be good,” he said.

The amount of dedication required can often be difficult for the runners to handle.

“I don’t really like being at Town Lake every morning, or having to shower and get ready at school during first period,” junior Renee Nolan said.

But according to Renee, the camaraderie of the team atmosphere is well worth the sacrifice.

“I love everyone on the team,” she said. “They’re like my second family.”

The overall mixture of team chemistry and hard work has carried the team to early success so far this season. The girls won two out of the three races they entered at the AISD Invitational and first overall at the Lockhart Cross Country Festival, Gerald Richey Invitational and the Baylor Invitational.

The cross country season runs through November, and Carter is confident in his team’s ability to push towards the proverbial finish line.

“What’s good about the size of the team is that we’re able to split up everybody into groups,” Carter said. “In each group, everybody has a training partner who’s going to push them, and our team is really good about pushing one another to get better.”

—Andy Brown

Strains, pains and

gains

Lady Chaps play through injuries, battle toward playoffs

O

Of the 16 varsity volleyball players, an astonishing 50 percent were plagued by injuries at the start of the 2011 season. Of those eight injured girls, seven play on the front row, which holds all the hitting and blocking power. The girls’ injuries are expansive, including: shoulder (outside hitter senior Paige Caridi, outside hitter senior Cailin Bula, middle senior Maddi Williams and outside hitter junior Michelle Schuler); back (middles juniors Katie Daffer and Anna-Christine Parrish); ankle (setter senior Lisa Ghidoni); and elbow (outside hitter junior Grace Weghorst). Head coach Al Bennett says these injuries have resulted from “over use because everyone is playing so much.” Bennett is alluding to the ever-extending club volleyball season which, for some girls, can last until July, giving them very little recovery time before school ball begins in August. Even though all injuries impact the team, certain ones play a larger role.

“Losing Katie has been a significant loss for us,” Bennett said. “Her block touch is 10 feet.”

Even with all of these injuries, the Chaps are undefeated in District at press time. Playoffs will begin Oct. 28. Paige, Maddi and Cailin have returned to their starting positions, alongside middle senior Hannah Baptiste and setter senior Avery Bashaw.

“I’m getting great performances out of my seniors,” Bennett said. “[The seniors have] stepped up and taken ownership of the team and have performed in critical times in

matches the way we expect seniors to do.”

The Lady Chaps have also garnered some individual recognition in tournaments. In the Fraulein Fest, Paige and Avery were named AllTournament, and Maddi was named All-Tournament in the Pearland Tournament. Maddi is leading the team in blocks and Hannah is leading the team in kill percentage.

“It feels good [to be recognized], but it’s all about the team, definitely, because in the game against New Braunfels if the bench wasn’t screaming for us we wouldn’t have been able to push through,” Avery said.

In preparation for playoffs, Bennett explains how important it is to treat every game like a playoff match.

In playoffs, the Chaps will again face many of the teams they have already battled.

“We will change what we are doing and look at what changes or additions we have to do,” Bennett said.

“We’ll work on some other things, like developing some of our younger players, and players that haven’t been on the court as much.”

There’s no doubt there are skilled players on varsity this year, but preparation and training is key to getting through playoffs successfully. Last year the Lady Chaps ended their season in the second round of playoffs.

“We have a lot of talented players, so who knows how far we’ll be able to go,” Lisa said. “It all depends on how hard we practice and play.”

—Sarah Berg

Right: Senior Paige Caridi serves the ball during a match against Dripping Springs Sept. 2. The varsity team beat Dripping Springs in three games.

Far Right: Senior Maddi Williams serves during a match against Westwood Sept. 13. Maddi leads the team in blocks and was named All-Tournament in the Pearland Tournament.

Left: Senior Avery Bashaw jumps to reach the ball during a match against Westwood Sept. 13. The Lady Chapparals won in three straight games.

Katherine Curtis

Emily Cohen

SPORTS VolleySlime Want to play volleyball and not even break a sweat? Try VolleySlime from the iTunes App Store for both the iPad and iPhone.

Cost: 99 cents Emily Cohen

23

They’ve got the

moves

Forni sisters perform, compete in waterskiing

F

or some, racing through the water on two thin skis or flying through the air at more than 30 mph sounds like risky business, but for freshman Jenae Forni and sophomore Rochelle Forni, it is just another day on the lake.

While living in California, the girls’ father taught them the basics of skiing. But it wasn’t until 2008, when the family began practicing at Aquaplex Lake in Buda, that they became serious competitive skiers.

“We were able to ski every day and there were a lot more people our age competing with us,” Rochelle said.

Originally, the sisters just competed in slalom events, where the skier navigates around six buoys on one ski. Shortly after their move to Texas, Rochelle and Jenae started competing in jumping and trick events as well.

“When I first started jumping, I went over a five foot ramp and it seemed like I was ski-

Competing at San Marcos River Ranch, sophmore Rochelle Forni does a trick to show the skills needed to impress the judges. Rochelle began skiing competitively in 2008.

ing into a red wall,” Jenae said. “It was nervewracking at first. I’m not scared of it anymore, though. I love the thrill of it now.”

Rochelle and Jenae water ski at local competitions in places like Austin and San Marcos, however they also compete at larger tournaments like Regionals and Nationals.

“I was most excited to be skiing the summer I qualified for my first Nationals,” Rochelle said. “I had to keep skiing well to maintain my national average so I could still be qualified.”

The sisters love to compete and they have trouble naming a favorite event.

“I love lots of the events because if you have a bad day in one of the events, it’s okay,” Rochelle said. “You have the other events to make up for it.”

Although Rochelle and Jenae love to participate in waterskiing tournaments, it is not the only way they get to ski. They were also introduced to a show skiing group called Ski Bees.

“The first year we moved to Texas, we entered a tournament,” Rochelle said. “We met

a huge group of show skiers called Ski Bees from McQueeney, Texas. They have a show every week in the summer, which we are now part of.”

In order to perform in Ski Bees, Jenae and Rochelle have to practice on Wednesdays and perform on Thursdays during the summer.

“I was a little nervous the first time I performed,” Jenae said. “I ski with my left foot forward and I have to ski with my right foot forward in Ski Bees because that’s what everyone does. I couldn’t have the wrong leg.

It was a little weird, but later I got it.”

There are several different acts in the Ski Bees shows, two of which are ballet line and pyramid. Ballet line is where the skier skis on one foot while performing ballet moves on the other. In pyramid, several skiers stand on each other’s shoulders as they ski by.

“I’m in ballet line,” Jenae said. “We are all interdependent on one another because if one person falls, she takes down the whole group.

I’m working on being in pyramid, but I don’t know how to climb up yet.”

Aside from performing and competing,

photos by Shea Wendlandt

Above: Zipping around the bouy, sophmore Rochelle Forni cuts back to the left at San Marcos River Ranch. Rochelle and her sister, Jenae, competed against each other on the slalom course.

In the first round, the Fornie girls tied with a score of two buoys at 34 mph. In the second round, Rochelle beat Jenae by getting fourth. Left: Flying through the air, freshman Jenae Forni performs on the jump section of the course at the River Ranch competition. one of the girls’ favorite aspects of waterskiing is making new friends.

“I love going out and skiing with my friends,” Jenae said. “Skiing isn’t very fun if you don’t have someone to hang out with.”

The sisters have had plenty of laughs while skiing with their friends, and they have met some interesting people.

“There’s this guy that always screams really loud right before he skis to let out his nervous energy,” Rochelle said. “I was sitting on the dock getting ready to ski when the guy dropped at the end of the dock. Before he got up, he screamed again. I decided we had to answer his call, so I told everyone on the dock to scream back. He went ‘AH!’ and we went ‘AH!’ Then he got up and skied again. We were cracking up on the dock.”

Rochelle and Jenae have no plans of slowing down. The sisters want to make a splash in the world of waterskiing.

“Even though I don’t always win, I still love waterskiing,” Jenae said. “I never want to stop.”

—Sara Phillips

Waterski must-knows

Slaloming

Skier goes around six buoys on one ski

Jumping

Skier goes over five-foot ramp at about 32 mph

Tricking

Skier performs tricks while skiing, such as flips and turns

Ballet Line

An act in Ski Bees shows in which a skier skis on one foot and performs ballet moves with the other

Pyramid

An act in Ski Bees shows in which several skiers stand on each other’s shoulders as they ski by

25

This is...

Friday night Held up by her teammates, senior Taylor Nesbit chants for the Chaps during the all-school Lake Travis pep rally held in the competition gym.

Tanner Thompson

On “the board,” a platform held up by the Push-up Squad, senior Paul Mathieson struggles through his final pushups after the Chaps scored during the Abilene-Cooper game Sept. 2. “Push-up Squad is exciting because it’s almost like being on the team, in a way,” Paul said. “You get to cheer on the team and pump up the crowd.”

Shea Wendlandt

At the New Braunfels pep rally Sept. 28, the drumline performs the school’s alma mater. “Drumline requires a lot of hard work and practice, but hearing our music and seeing the reactions of the students and teachers makes it all worth it,” senior Olivia Cheney said.

Hannah Kunz

Tanner Thompson

Cheering on the Chaps during the Abilene-Cooper game Sept. 2, a group of junior boys displays the word “Chaps” on their chests in blue paint. “I like to paint my chest at the games because it gives me an excuse to just go crazy,” junior Tate Bowden said. “I get to scream as loud as I want and start chants, and it’s just all-around fun.”

Rushing the Lake Travis defense, runningback senior Brice Dolezal stiff-arms a Lake Travis defensive end during the Battle of the Lakes at Darrell K. Royal Memorial Stadium on the University of Texas campus.

Westlake lost 7-35, but beat Abilene Cooper 47-33 the following week.

Stepping off the field after Hyline’s half-time performance,

sophomore Samantha Brocklehurst smiles at the crowd of Westlake fans. “I love getting to spend time with so many friends, and I love waking up and seeing them in the morning,” Samantha said. “It makes my day.”

Shea Wendlandt

Tanner Thompson

27

THE MAN

The myth

THE LEGEND

Individualist expresses self through stuffed headpieces

Tanner Thompson

Junior Milo Wimmer is more interesting than you are.

Even if he doesn’t know it.

Most of us have seen Milo; he’s walking through the halls with an armful of books, brown hair hanging past his shoulders and a glorious, glorious beard. And he hauls. I mean he is flying. He takes large, reaching strides in rapid succession, keeping his body rigid, slightly hunched over from the weight of his massive backpack. And did I mention the stuffed animals?

Milo wears stuffed animals on top of his head.

He does it to improve his balance. He finds time for this hobby between orchestra rehearsals, his studies [he dreams of becoming a biological engineer], Magic the Gathering competitions, and writing his currently-in-progress science fiction novel. People are intrigued by this spectacle of a bearded teenager balancing a Beanie Baby on his head. It’s understandable.

“I wear [the animals] to practice balance and show off my collection,” Milo said. “It’s nice to be prepared for anything that comes my way, and I’ve found that [the need for] balance pops up a surprising amount of the time.”

It’s hard not to ask. How does everyone react to the animals?

“I get a lot of weird questions about them,” Milo said. “I think the weirdest one I’ve ever gotten had something to do with magnetic hats, and there will be times when I’m walking through the halls and someone will say ‘Hey, I have that stuffed animal!’ A lot of people ask how I keep them on my head. I don’t, gravity does.”

People mainly seem curious about the stuffed animals, if not slightly confused. Not everyone, though. His more malicious peers, the same ones who bullied him for skipping a grade, see Milo as a target.

“My parents are fine with it, in fact, most people are,” Milo said. “Well, except Mr. Edwards, the orchestra director. He finds it distracting. There are two or three people who constantly try to knock the animals off. I just pick them right back up and keep going. They like to try to make me mad, or they feel like they are powerless and that’s their way to gain power. Or they are just jerks. It doesn’t make me mad.”

Regardless of harsh remarks and criticism, he doesn’t care about what anyone thinks about him. He just does what he wants.

“I plan to be that guy that lives in the freaky house down the road and does experiments in the basement,” Milo said.

“Explosive ones. I do have an ultimate goal in mind, but it is too early to reveal it quite yet.”

—Breck Spencer and Ben Wallace

Code: FD

This certificate must be presented during checkout. This certificate can’t be redeemed for cash. Can’t be used with any other certificates or discounts.

Expires November 30, 2011

Looking

forward

Despite trauma of car accident, Catherine Liu maintains postive outlook It was supposed to be a fun family vacation. In December 2000, senior Catherine Liu and her family drove to Disney World where she met Mickey Mouse, rode roller coasters and ate cotton candy — every kid’s dream. However, on the way back home, an accident occurred that changed her life forever.

“Something happened and the car started rolling around and turning over,” Catherine said. “I wound up going through the windshield and hitting a tree. They sent a helicopter to pick me up. The person in the car behind us was a nurse and she had a pump in her car for putting air into lungs. Since I couldn’t breathe, she used that. I was in first grade so I don’t remember a lot of it.”

Catherine’s memory of her time at the hospital is also hazy.

“I had a lot of surgeries,” she said. “[The doctors] didn’t want me to move around because I was healing, so they put me in an induced coma for a week.”

However, a few surgeries were not enough; the severities of Catherine’s injuries require her to continually receive intensive medical procedures.

“They have had to cut open the skin off my head so that they could work on my face,” she said. “Last surgery I had [junior year], they moved my jaw because it was too far back. They also added bone from my skull to under my eye because that shifted during the accident and they tried to correct that. Then afterwards, I had to wear a brace for my jaw. There are plates in my head somewhere as well. Every month, I go to Dallas because my dentist is there. I’ve had braces since sixth grade and I still have them. Every month I also see my plastic surgeon, who does cranial facial surgery. Basically, he fixes my face because that’s what hit the tree.”

After the accident, Catherine was not able to go back to school right away. She needed a lot of time to recover from her injuries.

“I didn’t go back to school in first grade, and in second grade I was home schooled,” she said. “I came back during third grade, so I was out for about a year and a half.”

Although this accident was tragic for Catherine, she has had the support of her family to help her through difficult times.

“My mom takes care of me all the time,” Catherine said. “She drives

me to Dallas every month to see my doctor. When I was in the hospital, she would always be there and would take care of my cuts after surgery. My mom said that since I had to be in the hospital for so long, and there was not much to do, she would sometimes take my sister, [2011 graduate Alice Liu], out of school so that we could play. My sister helped me have a normal life. When I couldn’t go to school or see any of my friends, she was always there for me to talk to or play with. I was usually at home with my grandma, so Alice was the only person near my age that I got to be around, so I felt more like a normal kid with her.”

The car accident left prominent scars on her face and a few on her body. Catherine thought she might not be looked at the same way again. However, she was surprised by her classmates’ reactions when she returned to school.

“They were already informed because my mom said that [Barton Creek Elementary] had an assembly to tell everyone,” Catherine said.

“Everyone was very supportive — no one was ever mean. None of my friends questioned me about what happened; they all seemed to accept that I was different. ” The positive reactions she received from her peers helped her not worry about what people were thinking and to get on with her life.

“Once I got back to school and saw that no one actually gave me funny looks, I tried to have a normal life,” Catherine said. “I don’t worry about things happening because of the accident.”

Even during the transition from elementary to middle school, people who weren’t aware of her accident still treated her with the same friendly manner.

“Most of the time people would look a little bit, but they wouldn’t be rude,” Catherine said. “Sometimes people would come up to me and ask me, but that was okay. It wasn’t that big of a deal.”

Although Catherine went through a difficult time, she does not want her accident to make her seem like a victim. The accident has motivated her to try hard in school and prove that nothing can hold her back.

“I just wanted to do really well,” she said. “I think it was there from the beginning. Before the accident, I was competitive. But after the

accident, I tried harder to do normal things, instead of being ‘the kid in the car accident who can’t run around and play with friends because she’s still healing.’”

Catherine’s competitiveness and self-motivation influenced her to do extremely well in school.

“I’m in Latin 5 AP, Physics 2 AP, Organic Chemistry and Statistics AP,” Catherine said. “I like Latin because it’s a logical structure. Chemistry is pretty interesting too because there are so many things going on with different atoms. In 11th grade I took Multi-Variable Calculus, so now I’m taking statistics. Math has always made sense to me.”

Not only is Catherine in the top 10 people in her class, but she’s involved in many extracurricular activities as well.

“I’m involved in orchestra, which I’ve been doing since sixth grade,” she said. “I’m co-president of the CUTE club and co-president of Mu Alpha Theta. I’m also in Destination Imagination, which I’ve been doing for three years. I do traditional Chinese dance, which I started before I was in kindergarten. [At first], I didn’t like it because it was a lot of work, and I had to put on a lot of tights and leotards. But now that I look at it, it’s a lot of fun. It’s a good source of exercise for me because when I was little, I could not do much because I had the accident. [Chinese dancing] was one of the things I could do.”

Now, Catherine has moved on from her accident and looks to the future. She doesn’t worry about what people might think when they look at her, but about the typical teenage stresses.

“Like all the seniors, I have the same worries: getting into a college, or getting a job,” she said. “Basically, what I’m going to do in the future. I’ve been thinking about MIT, Cal Tech, Princeton and Stanford.

That’s what I’m worried about right now.”

Although Catherine has the same concerns as her peers, the accident has made her thankful for things that most people take for granted.

“I appreciate things a lot more, like eating food,” she said. “Because of my jaw surgery, I wasn’t allowed to eat anything except for things like liquids and mushy food [for months].”

Out of all the years Catherine spent going through the healing process, the most memorable aspect of the whole ordeal was the people who cared for her when she needed it.

“Everyone around me as a whole was really nice,” she said. “It’s memorable that everyone was so great and supportive about the accident.”

Catherine accepted what happened to her and doesn’t bother to dwell on the “what ifs.”

“What happened has happened,” she said. “There’s no point in asking ‘what if this happened,’ so I concentrate on what I’m doing now rather than what happened in the past. I try to have fun and do well at what I’m doing. I’m happy because I feel like being happy. There will always be tomorrow.”

—Christina Shin

“Everyone was very supportive — no one was ever mean. None of my friends questioned me about what happened; they all seemed to accept that I was different.”

—senior Catherine Liu

“My sister helped me have a normal life. When I couldn’t go to school or see my friends, she was always there for me to talk to or play with.”

—senior Catherine Liu

Karen Scott

{ westlakefeatherduster.com }

people + places

31

o f a r t andy e o B z a r c

With their feet firmly planted on the ground, juniors Matt Favaron, Jono Krawcyzk and Keyur Mehta look ahead to their next event, Frightnight, on Halloween.

T

Barrett Wilson

Young entrepreneurs pursue event-planning business The Parish night club is dark. And I mean really dark. It is Aug. 16, and high schoolers dressed in all black are jumping up and down, fists pumping, listening to the electronic music play. Junior Jono Krawczyk, aka SUP3RFLY, is controlling the madness all with the touch of his fingers. In between all the commotion, juniors Matt Favaron and Keyur Mehta are watching their and Jono’s creation, Blackout, unfold into a successful night.

“We were all sitting in Matt’s room one night playing FIFA, and we were like, you know what, we should have a massive party with 400 people,” Jono said. “And then we did.”

Thinking of a name to call themselves was the next challenge.

“We got our name because once when I had to go out back to my car, I started to put on my tennis shoes, and Keyur said, ‘No no no, we only go barefoot,’” Jono said. “So our name be-

came Bearfoot Events. And bears are really cool animals, so we put a bear foot as the symbol.

We are all bear fans.”

With the goal set for planning a huge party, Bearfoot Events started to make this dream become a reality.

“We put a lot of hours into it,” Keyur said.“Before we started planning, we started organizing and thinking of ideas for a couple hours a day, a couple of days a week.”

With all of the different aspects of the event needing to be taken care of, they decided to split up the work.

“Since we were all working during the summer, we took turns contacting people when we weren’t busy,” Keyur said. “It was pretty split up.”

“Getting the DJs and promoting was really what we did the most of to prepare for the event,” Jono said.

A lot of the time spent in preparing for the show was used for selling tickets for the event.

They sold tickets both in person, at Starbucks, Honey Ham and Mozarts, and through PayPal online.

“We sold tickets probably 30 times for two hours at a time,” Matt said. “We sold a lot just sitting out waiting for people to come.”

From the beginning stages of the event, all three boys were encouraged by their parents.

“Our parents were supportive since we took it on ourselves,” Keyur said. “They thought it was really enterprising. We didn’t throw a lot onto them. We just asked them for the initial loan to make the down payment and then we paid them back. They were just kind of worried about the insurance and liability aspect of it.”

When the big day finally came, they spent every minute preparing.

“We woke up, did finances and organized ticket lists for people who bought online,” Jono said. “Then we sold tickets that morning in person. We also rented some equipment and bought water, ice and snacks. Then at about 5 p.m. we started working as fast as we could setting up equipment, putting up signs, doing sound checks and preparing for people to get there.”

Once the performance began, there was never a dull moment.

They spent the whole night working to make sure everything ran smoothly.

“Jono was backstage most of the time because he obviously knows the most about the technical aspect and the music equipment,” Keyur said. “Matt and I were roaming around and we would switch off between ticket sales, the roll call booth and dealing with people getting kicked out. If there was a fight or something we would deal with that. There were security guards, but we would help them or do anything that the house manager needed us to do.”

Even though they spent a lot of money and time making Blackout happen, it didn’t make much profit.

“There were a lot of costs that we didn’t foresee,” Jono said. “The space was actually $1,000 more than we expected, so that definitely added to our expenses a lot. We really made hardly any each.”

Along with that, there were some setbacks that happened during the event.

“The house manager tackled this one kid off the stage because he was throwing water everywhere,” Jono said. “I got kind of frustrated because there were a lot of people up on the stage dancing, and they kicked out the electricity of half of my stuff, so a lot of my stuff didn’t work when I got up there. We also had bought water to sell, but it turned out that the Parish started giving out water.”

But even with the mishaps and without a big paycheck, they believe the party was a true success with 444 tickets sold.

“We got to six tickets away from selling out,” Keyur said.

“Blackout was definitely about getting our name out and the company started. I had a lot of fun. It was the last party before school started so I think a lot of people enjoyed that.”

The complications didn’t stop the boys from looking at the positive aspects of the event.

“I think it was kind of cool having all those people up on stage because they were excited about it and they got the crowd pumped up,” Keyur said. “We learned from the water thing though, because the Parish, by their contract, is required to give water to people if they are dehydrated. It was just something we didn’t forsee. On the plus side, we now have hun-

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Plans are underway for future parties.

“Right now we are in the early stages for planning the next one after that, which may be in the end of December, New Year’s, or early Spring Break,” Matt said. “‘Like’ our Facebook page because we will be putting updates there about these upcoming events.

We are thinking the theme for the next one is going to be called Glow, and it is pretty much crazy lights, glow sticks and neon. We really want to go all out on the theme instead of everyone just wearing black.”

The boys are thankful for gaining the experience of planning Blackout.

“Because we have already done one event, we know what each other’s strengths are in terms of planning,” Jono said.

“We do things pretty much independently, and then we meet up with each other if we have an update about anything. As it gets closer to the event, we start talking more to plan it.”

When it gets closer to the time of Frightnight, they know the time they will need for planning may take time out of their busy schedules.

“When we have to plan times to sell tickets it cuts more into our schedule,” Keyur said.

“Even though for Blackout the most extensive part was ticket sales, we are only doing a few in-person sales with most coming online through PayPal so it won’t be that bad. With the iPads now, it’s easy to plan things at school when we have breaks.”

Jono, Keyur and Matt hope to continue with Bearfoot Events all throughout high school.

“I could see us planning and throwing at least five or six parties before we graduate,” Jono said.

With all the time spent together in planning the event, the boys grew closer as friends.

“With Blackout, we spent so much time together,” Jono said. “I am surprised I am not sick of them yet.”

—Hannah Kunz

“We were all sitting in Matt’s room one night playing FIFA, and we were like, you know what, we should have a massive party with 400 people. And then we did.”

—junior Jono Krawcyzk dreds of water bottles in our garages.”

From starting this company, Jono, Keyur and Matt have definitely learned a lot about the business world.

“There is only a certain amount that you can learn from reading, but actually planning the expenses and getting the finances together — we learned all kinds of real world skills through that,” Keyur said. “For me, it definitely affirmed that I want to be a business major.”

With one event down, they are currently in the process of planning their future parties.

“We are preparing for our next event, Frightnight,” Jono said. “It’s going to be at Karma Lounge on Halloween night. We’ve teamed up with Megan Parken to plan it.

We’re really excited because it’s going to be smaller than Blackout which we hope will create more of an intimate atmosphere with the performers and the audience. Like Blackout, Thomas Ewart, aka Illuminaughty, and I will be playing. It’s a costume party as well, which we hope will provide a different feel than just another theme party.”

33

Dear Cha Wish y’al Pacific: h t u o S The land, New Zeiaa and Hawaii Austral

Sitting in front of the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge in Australia.

Bags packed and passports in hand, various groups of Westlake students and teachers defied the common space and traveled to an array of countries across the globe this past summer. Whether in Europe, Asia or the South Pacific, students had the opportunity to immerse themselves in a foreign culture and experience a lifestyle beyond their own.

—Caroline Hunt

Students snuggle up to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in Madrid, Spain.

Rotorua lights: Trip High ermal village in and th a ra House e y -Visited p a O B y n e ro n yd in By ee the S -Surfed ferr y to s y b d merangs le e -Trav rew boo th y d a n W a y ts b s 42 Walla ughout rain fore nolulu ro th d e ik au in Ho u -H e L is a d d e ra s Pa ttend in Surfer’ rl Harbor and a a e P d e it -Vis ent was ble mom ra o m e stars e m most king at th g on e o h T lo “ , : d te n in Isla Quo aid. “Be Student utside on Fraser h Trank s being able it o d ly re e e it M t n defi d jus enior king home an group,” s with our so far away from tiful and breathta ere.” h u d a e n e c erien s so b that isla ever exp thing wa n ry ld e u v e o c e to se at you ething th and som

Spain

Trip H ig -Visite hlights: Place d -Saw El Museo d S t amp th e nand’s e Aqueduc l Prado in M Here t s a -Staye Castle in Se and visited drid d g Isabe lla an -Atten with host f ovia d Ferd amilie ded c ilasses s in Bu in San at La U rgos tande r -Visite nivers idad d d the moun e Can tains tabria of Pic cos de Europ Stude a n Spain t Quote: “O n w e Santa as the food of my favo nder, rite th , ” senio th in Café V alor. T ere was this r Sophie Co gs about here, Also, sta sa a w esom we th id which roughout th all got chu e cafe cal . “In led rros c are lik e trip on ch we ate e app tion o oco et fa a group meal whic izer bars. Ta t many tap late. as ba h is m of frie pas a rs r eant t nds.” o be s e a small p , orhared amon ga

aps, l were here...

A boat excursion in Potsdam, Germany.

For the names of students and directors on each trip, scan this.

ny Germa hts:

ür zies in W nt il m a f fere host hlig d in dif h their Trip Hig s met up wit up and staye nt d -Stude d then divide city n red the a lo p x e burg, ay and enach for a d towns h Eis ic n u stle in lin dM -Visite Wor tburg Ca e city of Ber h e t h t d e w r a -S explo d and ore -Visite pe bef o Euro ior Julia t n e e ,” sen never b “I had stly amazing tely dif fer: e t o u e tQ ple on Studen and it was h ny has a com d there’s , a an ip r m d t r e t e x e I was tha rela id. “G e r a s o the on nd a m h z it u is w o g t S s in de arou lea yth e. Ever e family — at I would walk iving in ib v t n e L d th mind. ina, an rust in more t st sister, Car o one would er.” ho th dn in. My urselves an rusts each o o t t y s b ju n tow yone s, ever village

China

Atop the Great Wall of China.

courtesy photos

Trip Hig hli -Visited ghts: th -Travele e Great Wall of Chin d to the a called “ s The Bir ite of 2008 B eijing O d’s Nes -Visited t” lympics T -Explor iananmen Sq uare ed the various of the c temple ities s and s treet m arkets Studen tQ ant apa uote: “Ever yw r tment here we b Barker said. “I uildings being went there we re gimean g built,” s The Ch ian ine en for its g se governme t, and I mean ior Claude nt ro ev govern wing populatio is tr ying to ac er ywhere. ment is c o n mmoda .

A ppare bu to keep their GD ilding these a ntly, the Chin te par tme ese a hous P up or nt ing so to live in bubble beca mething and buildings us it’s any of t he apa e most people causing r tment can’t a s.” f ford

35

Bassist wins full scholarship to prestigious music camp Bass in hand, junior Seth Davis concentrated on the conductor, waiting for his cue. As soon as Seth saw the baton point in his direction, he started to move his bow, letting the music consume him.

Seth has been playing bass since he was 11 years old. His dedication to music inspired him to attend Interlochen this past summer, a music camp for young musicians. He received the $7500 Emerson Scholarship to participate in this program, Becca Burt which he acquired by auditioning.

“It was a video audition,” Seth said. “I had to play two solos, and then one major and one minor scale. I auditioned in January of 2011.”

Seth received news a few months later that he had won the scholarship.

“I was pretty happy, and so were my parents,” he said.

“The Emerson Scholarship was given to only two bassists.”

The duration of the camp was six weeks, and it consisted of a demanding practice schedule and difficult pieces of music.

“There was an orchestra program which I was in, for all of orchestral majors,” Seth said. “There was a bass technique class that I went to. Also, I got a private lesson once a week and one extra class. I did six concerts over the course of the program, so one a week. I had to learn a lot of material very quickly, which was fun.”

The camp was a great learning experience and it improved

Seth’s ability to play bass. There was a moment throughout the whole program that really caught Seth’s interest.

“The thing I really liked the most was once a month, a group called Time for Three came to the camp,” he said. “It consists of a bass and two violins, and the bassist from Time for Three did a couple of master classes with all the basses there. That was really fun because the style was so different than I’ve ever seen. The bassist has a lot of jazz background, as well as classical. He did a lot of contemporary music so he showed us how to play that which was really different.”

Although Seth always loved to play in the orchestra, the camp helped him realize that he would like to take his music a step further.

“I would like to play the bass when I’m in college,” Seth said. “I am even thinking about music as a career path.” z h Kun —Christina Shin Hanna

Over summer, senior jumps at chance to study quantum mechanics “If you can’t handle physics, you might as well get out of the room because I’m about to multiply the wave function by its complex conjugate. It’s going to get real in here.”

While most high school students probably don’t even understand jokes like this, senior Brooks Bixler spent his summer making them while he studied quantum mechanics at Stanford.

“We stayed in sorority houses, and my house had three different classes in it: particle physics, quantum mechanics and non-Euclidean geometry,” Brooks said. “We were all super nerds and made a lot of physics jokes. It was awesome.”

The Education Program for Gifted Youth, the month-long camp Brooks attended, offers college-style courses for high school students, with topics ranging from creative writing to engineering.

“I’ve been to a camp before where we’ve

learned, but this is the longest camp I’ve ever been to and probably the most rigorous,” Brooks said. “We did three hours of class and three hours of studying, and then just had activities in the afternoon. Obviously, [I learned] quantum mechanics, like quantum tunneling, entanglement and Schrodinger’s cat, etc. We talked so much about the double slit experiment that I know more about it than I ever wanted to know.”

Although this was a new experience for Brooks, his interest in science was not.

“I read some books when I was in 10th grade about quantum mechanics, and I got really interested in it,” Brooks said. “Then [EPGY] sent me a little thing, like, ‘Hey, come to our camp,’ and it had quantum mechanics listed as one of their courses.

[To apply], I just had to answer a bunch of math questions and attach it and write short little paragraphs about myself. And I had to

get two recommendations, preferably from teachers of a prerequisite. In this case, calculus and physics were prerequisites, so I got those two teachers to write me recs.”

While the application process was relatively simple, Brooks quickly discovered that the material would be a bit more complicated than he had expected.

“I thought I knew calculus until I went to this camp,” Brooks said. “It looked like [the professor] just threw up chalk on the board.

It was pretty bad.”

Whenever the work got too tough though, there was always something to joke about.

“We called [the professor] Gary, and he was really smart, probably the smartest guy I’ve ever met, but it made him really quirky,” Brooks said. “He would make the nerdiest jokes I’ve ever heard. I didn’t even laugh at them.”

—Zelda Mayer

During his trip to Mongolia, freshman Michael Deisher stayed in this motel. “The location of the motel was convenient because it was close to the school,” Michael said. “But we didn’t stay here much because we spent our time teaching.”

Michael says goodbye to one of his favorite students, Lucy, on his last day of the trip. “It was hard to leave because I knew that I wouldn’t be able to see them again,” Michael said. “But I was thankful that I made so many close friends.”

e Plac p Stam e Her

Student works as teacher while traveling to Mongolia; gives English lessons “Teacher, teacher!”

These were the words spoken by teenagers much older than me. To me.

And there I was, only a rising freshman. I had agreed to spend two weeks of my summer in Inner Mongolia, teaching English to kids at NaHeYa Bilingual School, thinking I would be a teacher’s assistant. Boy was I in for a surprise.

I rolled my tiny suitcase down the stairs of my apartment in Beijing, China, where my family had been vacationing for a month. It was just a short van ride to the bus station, but I was not ready for the 10-hour bus trip to Hohhot, Inner Mongolia which followed.

After sitting in a stained, damp seat for what seemed like a lifetime, I was finally able to get off the bus and stretch my legs. I remember reading all of the signs that were in Mongolian Script thinking, “This is definitely not the Mandarin I’m used to.”

The other volunteers and I made our way over to yet another bus, which would take us to our motel. We found that the motel was rated a “C” in its health inspection. I could already tell this was going to be a long two weeks.

My second day there, I reported to work. I went to the school all chipper and ready for my first day as a teacher’s assistant. All of the volunteers sat in a circle and the leader, Gary, began assigning jobs.

“The teachers will be: Cindy, Karen and Becky,” Gary said. “Assistants are: Michael, Drew, Jordan, Kolbie and Kenzie.”

Gary went on describing the plan for our two weeks, and then he turned us all loose to go to our classrooms. Becky, Kenzie and I went to our little classroom and started setting things up. We moved the desks into rows, wrote our own little welcomes onto the chalkboard and set out all the supplies we were going to need for that day. Finally, the students arrived. They were placed into a testing room to determine their level of English. Almost all of them were advanced and were sent to our classroom. We ended up having more than two times the students we expected, but not all of them seemed to be very advanced. So, we had the idea of separating the class into two groups — intermediate and advanced. This was when my status went from being a lowly assistant to a high-ranking teacher. Thankfully, I had Kenzie, another teenage volunteer, by my side to help out. For the next two weeks, we worked from 8 a.m. until 8 or 9 p.m. daily. At the end of each day, we would go out into the public areas and advertise the school through singing nursery rhymes and dancing to them. Then we would fall into bed, exhausted.

It was definitely a struggle to handle a class of people five years older than me and still keep cool, but in the end, it all worked out. courtesy phot os by Micha el Deisher Because I speak Mandarin, which is their first language, we were able to communicate pretty effectively through either English or Mandarin.

I definitely improved my language skills, and also expanded my sense of culture. I learned a lot of new things about the country of China and met many people who I will probably have life-long relationships with, even if it is only through e-mail. Partaking in this trip opened my eyes and made me realize that I was more capable of leading and teaching people than I thought I was. Who knows? Maybe I’ll eventually become a middle or high school English teacher and I’ll have this memorable trip to thank for that.

—Michael Deisher

Sincerely, your traveling friends 37

Stepping Dance enthusiast becomes first boy on Star Steppers

Stepping to the beat, sophomore Kyle Zemborain performs at the JV Red game against the Pflugerville Panthers at Westlake Sept. 19.

A

As the clock ticks down the last seconds of the first half, performers wait on the sidelines for their turn in the spotlight. The music starts. The Star Steppers begin their intricate routine, hypnotizing on-lookers with their skill. Eyes scan the field for friends, classmates and peers, stopping on one dancer who is dressed differently from the others, an amazing talent who is bringing a refreshing new twist to the Star Steppers.

As a fourth grader, sophomore Kyle Zemborain enrolled in a ballet class at the Contracosta Dance Company in California. He wanted to impress a girl he had a crush on, and going to her dance studio seemed like a reasonable move.

“I went into dance because of a girl that I liked, and then realized I actually enjoyed it,” Kyle said.

Beginning at level one, he was typically two years older than everyone else in his class. “[Starting dance later] made me work harder to be able to keep up with everyone else,” Kyle said. “It felt really good once I got to the point where I understood dance more because it opened up opportunities to learn more difficult things and other types of dance.”

When he moved to Austin in seventh grade, Kyle started dancing with Ballet Austin four times a week.

“I do a summer program with them called Summer Intensive and we have two performances with that,” Kyle said. “I also do The Nutcracker, where in the past I have played the parts of Fritz and other minor roles, and then I also do the end-of-the-year performance with Ballet Austin.”

In addition to dancing with Ballet Austin, Kyle joined Star Steppers last spring. The team dances during fifth period and performs during home junior varsity football games. When the music starts, Kyle is able to leave his worries behind for at least a couple of minutes.

“I like the feeling of moving constantly, without having to think,” Kyle said.

Although Kyle is the only guy on Star Steppers, he feels that he is treated fairly.

“It feels great [being in Star Steppers], and the dance teachers make

UP Shea Wendlandt

it pretty much equal for everybody and don’t make a big deal out of the fact that I am a guy,” Kyle said.

Kyle’s team members enjoy his company and are proud that he decided to join the team.

“He’s a great dancer,” junior Sally Kelley said. “We all love how he stepped up to be the first guy on a Westlake dance team.”

Kyle’s fellow Star Steppers have always been very welcoming; however, that wasn’t always the case at other schools. Even though Kyle may have received grief from peers, he was never bullied.

“When I moved here in seventh grade I went to Austin Independent School District,” Kyle said. “I felt like people weren’t as accepting there because nobody had seen a guy in dance whereas in California there were several [male dancers]. [But I learned] how to stand my ground.”

Though Kyle is confident in his choice to pursue dancing, he appreciates his parents’ support and encouragement throughout his dance career.

“My mom thinks it’s good [that I dance],” Kyle said. “[At first] my dad didn’t exactly say anything, but I could tell by his face that he was confused about why I took dance. He still came to my performances even though I didn’t really want [my parents] there, because I sometimes feel awkward with them watching me.”

Along with his parents, other family members back his enthusiasm.

Several have their own careers in visual and performing arts.

“Lots of people in my family are involved in the arts,” Kyle said.

“My older brother makes documentaries, one of my cousins makes the Saw horror movies and others are actors.”

Kyle plans on dancing in the future and is even considering dancing as a career after he finishes school.

“I want to see how good I am junior year before I decide if this is what I want to do,” Kyle said. “I thought about [auditionng for] Hyline, but I decided [people probably wouldn’t] want to see a guy on Hyline.”

While he isn’t sure whether he wants to pursue dance as a career, for now he is dancing purely because he enjoys it.

“I’m good at backing up why I dance,” Kyle said. “I would rather dance in a room full of girls than wrestle with a bunch of sweaty guys.”

—Anika Hattangadi and Catherine Mear

Walk

Walking the

T

The lights went down in the fine arts center of St. Stephen’s Episcopal School in Austin. The contestants, including Westlake senior Jessi Amerie, were strutting down the aisles, letting their nerves fall behind them as their curls bounced in the dim light.

The stage lights flashed on and dozens of girls in cowboy boots danced in the opening number. The pageant had begun.

The Miss Texas High School America pageant took place on July 16. The contestants competed in three categories: personal interview, where the judges get to know each girl; fun fashion, where the girls get to show off their sense of style; and evening gown presentation, where the contestants get to show their poise and grace. After participating in only two previous pageants and placing second in Miss Austin Teen USA, the third time was the charm for Jessi.

“When they called the other girl first runner up, I didn’t really know what emotion to feel because that had never happened to me before,” Jessi said. “It didn’t feel real. I just wanted to get my crown on and not take it off.”

Miss Texas Teen, along with Miss Austin Teen, were the first stops along the road toward her current reign. Since winning the title of Miss Texas High School America, Jessi has kept busy with her sponsors and supporting her platform. As a role model, she is in a charity organization called GET MAD, Girls Engaged to Make a Difference. Through that organization, she is training for 32 hours to become a peer advocate for the Love is Respect Organization, which tries to prevent teen dating abuse and help girls who are going through abuse. She will continue to support that cause and looks forward to spreading awareness.

“It is so rewarding to be on the other side of the phone and try to help someone get through an abuse situation,” Jessi said.

Although Jessi said she thinks the job of being a pageant queen is rewarding, there is an important component of preparation. Interview training, working out, finding the ideal wardrobe and walking the skilled pageant walk are all key parts of the process.

“I keep tripping during my walking training because I have to cross over my feet and attempt to keep my strides long,” she said.

Along with her various training sessions, Jessi hopes to get lots of support from local businesses to help her on her road in more intense competitions, such as the Miss Texas High School America national pageant.

“I’m also hoping to get more sponsors to help me at nationals in the spring,” Jessi said.

Jessi always has people to cheer her on and make sure she does her best.

“My family is so involved and helps me with everything that I do,” she said. “I love how supportive they are. I don’t think I could have won this pageant, or be preparing for the next one, without them.”

The National Miss High School America Pageant will be March

courtesy photo

Westlake’s teen representative takes state pageant title

6-10 in San Antonio. The girls will have an intense competition ahead of them but also have a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“They shut down Sea World just for the contestants to go have fun in,” Jessi said. “Hello, Shamu!”

Even though the girls are competitors, they are still just teenage girls who have normal relationships.

“I have met so many nice girls but some stuck-up ones too,” Jessi said. “Most of all I have made friends for life. It’s like a sisterhood.”

Jessi is most excited for one new aspect of the Miss High School America Pageant that will add to the growing sisterhood of pageant girls.

“The high school pageants are about to become international, so if I win Nationals, I will get to compete with girls all around the world,” Jessi said.

But for now, Jessi is focused on preparing for the upcoming competition. If she wins Miss High School America, she will win $15,000 in scholarship money for college along with new sponsors to help prepare for the international competition.

“I am doing an 11-week training course to improve my interview skills and public speaking,” she said.

Jessi is combining her interview practice with her platform by speaking to freshman and sophomore girls about dating abuse.

“I am going to talk to a high school a month, so that will end up being 10 local schools by the time of competition,” Jessi said.

She continues to uncover the secrets to being successful in life from competing in pageants.

“I’ve learned so much from pageants, especially about how to speak in public and how to be more confident and therefore not care about what other people say,” Jessi said. “My goal is to win nationals and then take the international title.”

—Olivia Lee

SOCIAL The Pageant Planet Your go-to place for the latest info on titleholders, the pageant directory and wardrobe deals. Not a pageant girl? You can always just laugh at funny interview questions.

Cost: Free

39

2011 Teacher of the Year Janet Espinosa shares experiences from turbulent childhood

A place to call home Katherine Curtis

She says she’s one of the lucky ones.

“A lot of kids who go through the system don’t have a lot of support,” Pre-AP World Geography, AP Human Geography and AP Comparative Government teacher Janet Espinosa said. “It’s easy for them to fall through the cracks. I didn’t, because of my teachers — they helped me with everything.”

After becoming a foster child and having to move from house to house, Espinosa learned that school was the only consistent thing in her life.

She developed strong relationships with her teachers, beginning in sixth grade with Ms. Harmes. These relationships have shaped Espinosa into the teacher she is today.

Here is her story.

O

n Dec. 26, 1963, 11-year-old Janet Espinosa was at her home in Iowa when she received a phone call that marked the end of her life as she knew it.

“I remember that my older sister called and asked me if I was at home,” Espinosa said. “She said, ‘Don’t go anywhere. I’m coming.’ And then she told me.”

Her mother, at age 51, had passed away due to an unexpected Pulmonary Embolism.

“It was out of no where,” Espinosa said. “I remember it was the same year that Kennedy was assassinated, 1963, when I was in sixth grade. That event stuck with me so much. It was in November. And then my mother passed away in December, so in my mind, those two events have become intertwined with each other.”

Espinosa’s family life became difficult. The “bad situation” escaladed as her relationships with her father, sisters and twin brother slowly weakened.

“After my mother passed, our family just kind of flew apart,” she said. “It just flew apart.”

School, she says, was a constant. There, she knew who she was.

“School is a place I went and knew how I was going to be treated,” Espinosa said. “I knew what to expect, I knew that what happened there was going to be consistent. It was my haven, where I could really be myself. I think it took that attitude that ‘what I make of my life is what I make of my life,’ and I get to take credit for that. And I’m not going to hand out blame for the problems, either.”

In high school, as she bonded with teachers and remained active in clubs and extra-curriculars, Espinosa came upon a book that shaped her mentality for the rest of her life.

“It was Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl,” she said. “He had been imprisoned in a concentration camp; he was a psychologist.

He wrote the book, and it was taken way from him. This book is really about how you find meaning when meaning has been stripped away from you. We can’t control what happens to us, or what people do to us. The thing we can control is how we respond. The moment of true freedom is that moment when you decide how you will respond. When I read that, I thought, ‘That makes sense.’ It has kind of been a guiding principle for me in my life.”

After high school, Espinosa moved on to college to study education.

Having personally experienced the impact that teachers could have on students, Espinosa aspired to become one herself.

“I saw that teachers could have a positive influence in so many different ways,” she said. “I always felt like my teachers looked out for me.”

“Congratulations, Janet Espinosa.”

She stood up. The first thing that came to her mind was the speech.

The speech.

She would have to give a speech at district-wide convocation.

As the recognition dinner guests broke into thunderous They say there’s a resiliency applause and smiles, Espinosa’s gene. If there is, Espinosa says it’s “Harmes was a caring teacher who took me home heart raced. In her 36th year of what got her through her rough on the weekends to get me out of a family situation teaching, she had been named childhood.

Rotary Club’s 2010-11 Teacher of “Everyone has heartbreaks and that would have been dangerous for me,” Espinsosa the Year for the Eanes Indepenlosses,” she said. “I just feel like I’m said. “She was the first teacher who really went out dent School District. a resilient person, and I think some of her way to check on me.”

“I felt like it was a tremendous people are more resilient than othhonor,” Espinosa said. “[But] ers. I guess that is what has carried —2011 Teacher of the Year Janet Espinsosa there are so many people that me through.” are so deserving. I know that no Espinosa hopes to instill this matter what time I get here in the resiliency in her own students. morning, the coaches are lined up “I feel like kids sometimes don’t and they are putting their kids through the paces. I know that no matreact well to stuff, and every now and then you’ll see that and say, ter how late I leave there is somebody here, working. I know how hard ‘Bounce back, it’s not that big of a deal,’” she said. “Every once in a people work. I see how hard they work.” while you see a kid slip into bad behavior and I think that is when kids Espinosa’s passion for teaching can be traced back to the spring act out or do things they wouldn’t do, like drugs or alcohol. I think after her mother’s death. She remembers reading on the porch with that people who lack resiliency are more likely to get involved in those her sixth grade teacher, Ms. Harmes. She remembers the fresh air of things. Resiliency is something I hope for our students.” the Iowan farm. She remembers the calm.

Espinosa’s teachers began to keep an extra eye out for her, the first being Harmes.

“Harmes was a caring teacher who took me home on the weekends to get me out of a family situation that would have been dangerous to me,” Espinosa said. “She was the first teacher who really went out of her way to check on me.”

After sixth grade, Espinosa and her family moved to Colorado.

Problems continued at home, and eventually she belonged to no one.

She became a ward of the state.

“I never really found a foster family that I stayed with for a long period,” she said. “I never had a foster family that actually became family.”

Dealing with a great loss and family issues, Espinosa lived two lives, in two different worlds.

School.

And home.

As a child, Espinosa never really had a family.

She had a father. She had siblings, a twin brother, even. She had foster parents. But she never had a family.

“It was one of those situations where the family just fractured and it never really healed,” she said. “It wasn’t like a happy ending where we all just come back together and have Thanksgiving together. We all went and tried to find family elsewhere. I was constantly looking for connections. No matter where I was, I formed friendships and enjoyed the people I was with. When you have had a tough past, you look for that kind of stability. For me, it was marrying someone who had very strong family connections and becoming a part of that family.”

Now in her 11th year at Westlake, Espinosa says that all of her students and co-workers have also become her family.

“For me, school is a refuge, school is a constant,” Espinosa said.

“Someone always goes out of their way for you. I get that feeling at home and at work as well. For me, when I come to work, it’s like coming home.”

—Hirrah Barlas

41

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{ westlakefeatherduster.com } trends + traditions 43

Taking the

cake

In a survey, 800 students expressed their opinions on local food places. These are the restaurants that have earned the title of Westlake’s favorites.

—survey by MacKenna McDonell & Michael Deisher photos by Karen Scott

On this page Best coffee: Starbucks Best fast food: Chick-fil-A Best barbeque: Rudy’s Bar-B-Q Best Chinese: Pei Wei Best fries: Chick-fil-A Best breakfast tacos: Texas Honey Ham Co. Best doughnut: Gourdough’s Other winners Best hamburger: hopdoddy Best vegetarian: ThunderCloud Subs Best gluten conscious: Magnolia Cafe Best shake: Chick-fil-A Best snow cone: Sno Beach Best comfort food: Bountiful Bakery Best dive: Rosie’s Tamale House Best sandwich shop: ThunderCloud Subs Best frozen yogurt: Froyoyo Best pizza: Home Slice Best Tex-Mex: Maudie’s

Journalism students share night of fun at Plucker’s after stressful deadline week

Food for

thought

M

y momma always told me to not play with my food. But my momma never went to trivia night at Plucker’s. Every Wednesday, people gather for some great home-style cuisine while simultaniously pondering the mysteries of life, such as how many noses a slug has.

This summer was the first time I ventured to Plucker’s. I was meeting my friends from Teen Teaching, Squad Texas, to catch up over dinner and a bout of competitive trivia.

We had our sights set on the prestigious grand prize: a $25 gift card to Garden Ridge.

Although we didn’t win anything, it was a success because we all bonded over learning random bits of knowledge. So, last Wednesday, needing a break from the agonizing stress of The Featherduster deadlines, I asked my newspaper comrades to accompany me in this battle.

Trivia starts at 7:30 p.m., so of course we arrived at 7 in order to assure ourselves a prime table by the time trivia started. There were seven of us: seven great minds to answer odd questions, seven brains to work until they were as fried as the oreos we had for dessert, seven brilliant newspaper staffers who

thought we knew it all. Boy, were we wrong.

We humbly declared ourselves the Power Rangers Ninja Force — the most innocent name we could choose. The evening started out with the movie quotes category. Who’s supposed to know that “Behind every man is a woman rolling her eyes” is from Patch Adams (on another note, who’s ever seen Patch Adams)? In that round, we stunk up the place. We literally got three questions right out of 10. We could feel that gift card slipping through our fingertips onto the sticky, barbeque-wing-sauce-covered floor.

As the night dragged on, we discovered our strengths and weaknesses as a team. We rocked the reality TV section thanks to seniors Jenny Messer and Lizzie Friedman. Seven out of 10, that’s right! But when the nerd category rolled around, we looked like clueless valley girls.

Our competitors were drunk, yet somehow smarter than us. How does that work? We understood how they could dominate in the adult beverages round, but in the Family Guy round? We had pros, and they still knew more than us.

And then there was that team. These former teen punks had not lost their spunk.

With tattoos up their arms, purple hair that screamed “emo” and piercings in the weirdest of places, they shouted out at

To read more about how one student embraces her love for her culture and food, scan this.

Chris Bull

photos by Hannah Kunz

Seniors Hirrah Barlas and Caroline Hunt experience the ups and downs of trivia night at Plucker’s Wing Bar. The night consisted of trivia in categories such as sports, video games and movie quotes. “Trivia night is really fun even though I don’t know anything useful,” Hirrah said. “The one thing that did bring me back was the brownie with ice cream.”

the top of their lungs any and every profanity they could think of. They knew every answer, though, and it reminded us of what amateurs we were.

Though we were far from winning, I would recommend Plucker’s trivia night to anyone who likes good food, loud people and fun trivia. All you need is a gung-ho group of people, a good attitude and patience. The first night you go might be rough (we were tied for 15th), seeing as you probably haven’t had any random trivia question practice, but I encourage you to persevere. You will not only increase your knowledge of interesting facts to tell people and show that you are extremely intelligent, but you will leave with a full belly, great stories and memories to share.

—Hannah Kunz

{ westlakefeatherduster.com } trends + traditions 45

What’s in your lunch box?

“Usually I have a sandwich, fruit and a snack. [I bring my lunch] because it’s less expensive and I don’t have to wait in line.”

—freshman Daniel Pousset

photos by Karen Scott

“I usually bring meat but not chicken or turkey, a dairy-free bagel, an apple and cereal I think I’m allergic to. [I bring my lunch] because I’m allergic to everything.

[Some of the things I’m allergic to are] gluten, wheat, milk, yogurt, cheese, bread, eggs, chicken, turkey and butter. I’m actually allergic to Nutella.”

—sophomore Margot Twomey

“I mostly have jerkey and chips and stuff. Pretty simple. [I bring my lunch] for health reasons.

I’m lactose intolerant.”

—freshman Lindsey Head

“I have a sandwich, applesauce and a granola bar. [I’ve brought] my lunch every day since middle school because I don’t want to spend time in line.”

—sophomore Maggie Stapper

“I usually have a sandwich, chips and a drink. I started [bringing my lunch] in ninth grade as a convenience thing; it’s getting so expensive to eat at school so it just makes more sense [to bring my lunch.] I have to save money for gas.”

—senior Austin Nelson

My life in a nutshell Barrett Wilson

Peanut butter and pita: the meal of champions My tongue was blue. The craziest, most careless girl in my seventh-grade science class was hovering over my open mouth with a piece of paper and a hole puncher, and I was about to discover a possible explanation for my oddity, my quirk, my most well-known but at the same time most hidden and shameful secret: my eating habits.

Now, I never thought too much about them until I came to Westlake. At my private middle school, my same classmates had seen me bring a peanut butter sandwich and carrots for lunch every day since second grade. (Unbeknownst to them, I’d been bringing that lunch since kindergarten.) They thought nothing of it, and neither did I. But when I arrived at the Ninth Grade Cafeteria, my friends mocked me for eating the same meal every day.

For several years, I kept the most embarrassing part hidden: I don’t only eat peanut butter for lunch.

It’s also the main course for my dinner. And my afterschool snack. Sometimes, I even eat peanut butter for breakfast.

You might say I’m obsessed with peanut butter, creamy peanut butter, and I can’t really disagree with you. But I do have to add some background information. It might be an acceptable excuse for my large daily peanut butter intake. Then again, it might make me even more of a freak. Well, here goes. Let’s go back to the seventh-grade science experiment.

My friend Caitlin was in charge of dying my tongue blue, carefully placing a piece of paper over this blue monstrosity and counting the number of taste buds within the area of a hole punch. I’ll be honest: I love Caitlin. But she was the kind of kid that parents were afraid to leave in a room with precious china. Or leave alone at all, really. The peanut butter sandwich I’d eaten for lunch gurgled in my tummy with my fate in her hands.

Let me point out a commonly known fact. Most restaurants do not serve peanut butter. And if they do, it’s listed on the last line of the kids menu, grudgingly acknowledged only to satisfy the pickiest of 5-year-olds. However, there are other foods that I eat at restaurants, sometimes even with pleasure. My main requirements for a dish are that it be completely plain, devoid of almost any flavor. They don’t call me picky for nothing, and waiters have had varying responses to me. One waiter in Houston made the infuriatingly passive-aggressive move of nodding when I ordered my pizza without sauce, bringing me a pizza with sauce and refusing to make me the pizza I wanted because that would destroy the flavor of his pizza. While in Chicago, however, a waiter reassured my parents that, “It’s okay, everyone has their own tastes.”

And Caitlin painstakingly counted those taste buds. At the end of class, we compiled a list of everyone’s data. My taste bud count was around 22, while the rest of the class hovered around eight. It was official. I was a freak.

Of course, this data could never be considered the most accurate or reliable. I don’t even know if the number of taste buds directly influences picky eating.

But from that day forward, my family and I had an excuse for me to eat a peanut butter English muffin while my family ate a “normal” meal. I had a good reason to order my hamburgers without any condiments and my salads without dressing.

Whenever anyone hears about my eating preferences, they gasp and badger me with questions, like it’s the weirdest thing they’ve ever heard. But in my day-to-day life, I don’t think about it. When it’s time for dinner, or lunch or a snack, my hand automatically reaches for that tempting jar of peanut butter.

—Julie Dorland

Alum follows passion, named Best New Chef

Barrett Wilson

Left: 2001 graduate Bryce Gilmore prepares bacon in the kitchen of his restaurant, Barley Swine. Gilmore opened Barley Swine a year after opening his food trailer, Odd Duck Farm to Trailer.

Below: This dish from Odd Duck is composed of feta cheese, honeydew melon, tomatoes, green grapes and a slice of grilled bread.

Cream of the crop As a teenager, 2001 graduate Bryce Gilmore spent his time barbecuing and working in the kitchen of Z Tejas Grill where his dad, Jack Gilmore, was the executive chef. Through this experience, the younger Gilmore learned the fundamentals of preparing food in the kitchen and gained a strong work ethic. Eleven years later, Gilmore has already opened two local restaurants: Odd Duck Farm to Trailer and Barley Swine.

“There wasn’t one moment [when I decided I wanted to be a chef],” Gilmore said. “It was really just my experiences towards the end of high school.”

Gilmore, who went to the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, opened his food trailer, Odd Duck, which serves locally inspired American cuisine, in 2009. He then opened another restaurant, Barley Swine, a year later. While Gilmore spends most of his time at Barley Swine, his brother Dylan Gilmore manages and cooks at Odd Duck.

“It took me four months to open Odd Duck,” Gilmore said. “It was really about being mentally prepared. I spent three months working on the trailer and developing a relationship with the local farmers.”

Both Odd Duck and Barley Swine are unique because the menus change daily and most of the ingredients come from local farmers. Gilmore adopted this philosophy by working in restaurants that bought their food locally, allowing him to think about the origin of the food and gain respect for farmers.

“I like to know where my food comes from,” Gilmore said. “I want to know that it was raised responsibly and that the animals were treated humanely. I want more people to think that way, and the only way to do that is to buy locally.”

Gilmore doesn’t like to confine the cooking at his restaurants to one type of food. He incorporates many different styles.

“I like to make food that I like to eat,” he said. “I do whatever sounds good and tastes good. I’ve worked with really good chefs, and everyone does everything differently. I’m still developing my style.”

Although he owns two successful restaurants, Gilmore is most proud of being named one of the Best New Chefs of 2011 by Food &

Wine magazine.

“It was very surprising [to be named one of the Best New Chefs],” Gilmore Karen Scott said. “I’m very grateful. I admired the guys who won this as a kid, and it’s been a goal of mine to be on the cover. It’s a dream come true, and I was able to make it happen a lot faster than I thought.”

Although Gilmore has gone from cooking casually with his dad to being one of the best chefs in America, he continues to bring his original passion to his cooking. “[My favorite thing about cooking is] being able to use my hands and create things,” Gilmore said. “There’s instant gratification, and it’s very fulfilling. I like trying to create something no one else has done.

[By working in a restaurant in high school], I found something to stick with me for the rest of my career.”

—Jessica Stenglein

EATS TruxMap Lite Food Truck Map This app features an interactive map and list of food trailers and trucks in major cities across the U.S., including Austin.

Cost: Free

{ westlakefeatherduster.com } trends + traditions 49

A special

blend Jenalee Scott finds joy while coping with loss

T

hey noticed the sympttoms in August. He was diagnosed in January. In October, he passed away.

And just like that, Jenalee Scott’s life changed.

“It was a total shock because [my husband] had not been sick in the 28 years that I was married to him,” Scott said. “Never went to the doctor, he was fine, healthy. Then, all of a sudden, he started having a lot of bad stomach pains [in 2000].

We went to the doctor, and they told us that he had around four months to live. Then we went to see a specialist, and he said it would be six months to a year. He was in the hospice house, Christopher House, when he passed away.”

Scott, who has worked in the Eanes district as a lunch lady since 1986, greets students every day from behind the counter with a kind smile on her face. But behind that smile is a history of hardship countered by her optimistic view of life.

“I am just a grandma-type lady who works in the cafeteria,” Scott said. “And I love all the students. I have a great time with the young people. I like working here, and I plan on being here for the rest of my time that I can walk in here and move. I see so many classes

photos by Tanner Thompson

go through here — since 1986, gosh how many graduating classes have I seen. It’s really been fun because you meet all kinds of different people. Everyone is different. I just always look forward to the next day.”

Born and raised in Hondo, Texas, Scott lived a relatively straightforward life in a simple town. But when her husband, a Snapon tool dealer, gained business opportunities in Austin, Scott felt a culture shock as she suddenly went from small-town familiarity to the anonymity of the city.

“The thing about living in a small place is you get to know all the police officers, everything and everybody,” Scott said. “I moved to Austin in 1982, and I really didn’t think I would be here this long. [In Austin], you don’t have as many friends. You don’t socialize as much. And I miss that, I really do miss that because you’re almost by yourself. You could say you’re alone. My kids have their lives to live, and they work. Everybody’s tired when they get home. They don’t feel like getting in the car and going and visiting people. It’s been a big change, but I like Austin.”

Scott was forced to learn how to cope at an early age when she experienced a loss in her family.

“My dad passed away when he was 46 years old, and my mother just passed away in ’05. She was a great lady, a feisty little lady.

And I do miss her. Even though you get old yourself, you still miss your parents.”

Scott’s life rapidly and unexpectedly changed when her husband died in 2001 from pancreatic cancer at the age of 68. And again, she felt like she was all alone.

“I was off a couple of weeks, and they actually wanted to give me a longer time, but I was ready to come back to work,” Scott said. “I wanted to be among people and not by myself.

I needed that because my son is here in Austin, but the rest of my family lives somewhere else. So I relied on him and depended on him to keep me occupied for a while, and then you just finally get used to the idea that you’re going to be alone.”

Despite her sudden loss, she adjusted to her new life and was able to appreciate the time she and her husband shared.

“I think I was able to cope with it rather well,” Scott said. “We had a lot of good times together. I guess the happiest moment in our lives together was [when our grandson was born]. They were so close, and I think it was harder on [my grandson] than it was on anyone.”

While in the middle of this healing process, having her family there to support her and knowing that she wasn’t really alone helped Scott stay resilient.

“My family is very important to me,” Scott

With a smile on her face, child nutritionist Jenalee Scott serves a brownie to a student at The Blend in the Chap Court. Scott has been working for Westlake since 1986.

While working at The Blend in the Chap Court, Scott prepares smoothie samples. After Scott’s husband passed away in 2001 from pancreatic cancer, she used her family’s support, religion and optimistic attitude to cope. “I just always look forward to the next day,” Scott said.

said. “I depend on them. Even though I never ask for anything, I depend on them to be there for me. I can say that my son has always been there if I’ve needed him. But I’m going to say that I’ve [been able to cope] on my own.”

The hope that her religion provided her also gave Scott strength as she dealt with her grief.

“Well, I can say [my religion] has been totally effective for me since I lost my husband,” Scott said. “God has been there a lot of times when I’ve asked for help. I really didn’t think I could make it on my own without my husband. I didn’t know where I would be, what kind of condition or shape I would be in. We had just bought a brand-new mobile home, and I had to pay for it. I was scared to death because I had never been put on the spot before. But He’s been there; He’s answered my prayers because I’m doing fine. I’m not living high on the hog, but I pay my bills and buy my groceries, and that’s the main thing.”

Throughout the past 25 years, one of the things in her life that has remained constant has been her love for working at Westlake and playing what she calls a “grandmother role” for the students.

“I have several students that come to the window, and they all yell, ‘Ms. Scott, Ms. Scott!’” Scott said. “They’ll pick on me a little bit, just friendly aggravation. I feel like those kids are aware that I am old enough to be their grandmother, and they enjoy that. I just like Westlake, I’ve been here a long time, I want to stay, and I’m sure I will.”

Coping with the loss of her husband was a trying process, but Scott carried on. She continues to attend church, buy her lottery tickets and be ready with that smile each day.

She survived, driven by her optimism, endless endurance and qualities she obtained as a child.

“Ever since I was a little girl I’ve always been very independent, and I’ve just formed my own life and my own way,” Scott said. “My dad taught me how to fish. He put a worm on my fishing pole, and I would catch the little fish. When I was little, I wore a life jacket constantly to go swimming because I was scared to death of the water. One day my dad told me, ‘You know, it’s time you learned how to swim without that life jacket.’ He wouldn’t let me have it, and he took me down and threw me in the water. And he said, ‘Now I think you better swim.’ And I did. But I had already learned, really, how to swim without a life jacket. I just had never taken it off before.”

–Zelda Mayer

{ westlakefeatherduster.com } trends + traditions 51

Snack attack You eat every last crumb of the cupcake you brought to lunch.

Option 1

298 calories

Your math teacher hands out candy during the test, and you choose five Rolos.

You bake cupcakes topped with black and orange frosting. You lick the spatula.

65 calories

110 calories

You grab a handful of M&Ms from the bowl in your house.

108 calories

Total: 791 calories While your parents are handing out candy to trick-or-treaters, you steal a couple of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

210 calories

With a little here and a little there, calories can quickly add up, especially on Halloween. It’s surprising how a few healthy choices can change everything. For proof, just look at the math.

—Hailey Cunningham

Option 2 Helping put together the gloves of popcorn for your younger brother’s class, you nibble on the handful of popcorn that “fell on the floor.”

30 calories

Total: 275 calories You munch on some chocolate-covered pretzels designated for the trick-ortreaters.

100 calories

You snack on the sugarfree Jell-O you brought.

10 calories

You take a lollipop from your English teacher’s candy stash.

60 calories

When stopping by the Mum Room, you snag a handful of candy corn.

75 calories

EATS photos by Karen Scott

Livestrong.com Calorie Tracker This app allows the user to keep track of their intake of calories, fat, carbohydrates and protein. It features a large food database and a personal weight tracking diary.

Cost: $2.99

{ westlakefeatherduster.com } trends + traditions 53

You got Sno Beach employee gets a sweet taste of Austin eccentricities Arms filled with technicolored syrup bottles, I scrambled to return flavors like sour green apple, chocolate and banana to their proper places in the labyrinth of about 72 bottles.

It was one of my first shifts as an employee of Sno Beach, and I was desperately trying to get the hang of quickly and efficiently serving the throng of customers avidly awaiting their icy treats.

The hot June air streamed in through the open window of the trailer as I dodged in and out of the three other experienced, 20-something-year-old girls working with me.

That’s when I saw them.

Mouth agape, I stopped short to stare out the back window to see a pair of legs dangling from the top of the trailer.

Looking around frantically, I tried to meet the gaze of one of my co-workers. Unfortunately, they were all too preoccupied with serving the 4 p.m. rush to see me practically short-circuiting, syrup bottles still clutched in my hands.

As the “new girl,” was I allowed to make an announcement that there was a person on top of our snow cone trailer? Did I have the authority to say, “Hello everyone, I thought you might want to know that there is a living, breathing person making their way across the roof of the trailer”?

Unfortunately, my “new girl” timidity got the best of me, and after recovering from my short but severe brain implosion, I attempted to continue business as usual. It was only a few days later that I discovered that the legs had belonged to an avid “planker” who found his perch atop the giant purple snow cone that resides on the roof of the trailer. Furthermore, he had asked one of my co-workers for permission to scale the façade of the trailer, so it seemed everyone was aware of the planker.

Everyone except for me, of course. Looked like my minor heart attack was in vain.

But somehow over the summer, this fearful, trembling newbie that had a knack for spilling flavors all over the trailer and its employees blossomed into an actual functioning worker.

Instead of staggering under the weight of ice blocks, I now carry them with ease, sporting biceps that give the allusion that I’m actually athletic. I can now take the customers’ orders, make the snow cones, give the customers their change and maybe actually make a pretty good tip here or there.

I now hardly bat an eye when a man dressed in a giant, full-body cupcake suit asks to film himself ordering a snow cone to demonstrate the irony of a pastry buying a frozen dessert, or even when a flamboyant customer inquires what syrup flavor goes best with vodka.

—Hillary Hurst

FAQ Is the trailer air-conditioned?

Contrary to popular belief, we are not burning to death in what is essentially a small metal box. We have AC along with two fans at both our Barton Springs and Guadalupe locations.

What is in the flavors? How do you make them?

It’s a secret. (I have no idea.)

Personal favorite flavor combinations?

Blackberry and Pomegranate, Blue Hawaiian and Bahama Mama, Sweet Tea with Fresh Lime and Pineapple and Mango.

When does Sno Beach open/close for the season?

We open March 1 and close Oct. 31.

Does your hand ever get numb from working the ice machine?

I eventually lose most of the feeling in my hand after the first few snow cones.

served

Rude customers. Irrational bosses. Nasty bathrooms. Greasy food. These ingredients can make for a horrific day for almost any employee in the food industry. At the time they might make you boil, but encounters with these usually serve up the funniest stories for those of us not wearing a name tag.

—Jenny Messer and Julie Dorland

“One time a co-worker had left his shirt at work. We decided the logical thing to do was to put it in a big container full of water and put the contaner in our walk-in-freezer. He had to thaw the block of his iced shirt next to our toaster for a few hours.”

—junior Matthew Lee, Jamba Juice “The funniest thing that’s happened to me at work — there are several. One time I asked a drive-through customer if they wanted a treat for their dog, but it was a child in their backseat. Another time, my co-worker and I were both wearing a headset for a drive-through, and they also work as walkie-talkies so we were talking back and forth with it. However, I didn’t know a car came to the menu outside, and I was just laughing into the headset like a lunatic as my friend was singing “Friday” by Rebecca Black. The driver was definitely freaked out.”

—senior Mikayla Waters, It’s a Grind Coffeehouse “One time I was trying to throw ice cream behind my back and accidentally hit a guy right in the middle of his forehead, and he got really mad… We’ll leave it at that.”

—senior McCall Weber, Amy’s Ice Cream

“One time a customer came in, and they said, ‘We’re not from around here. Our friends told us about this dish. It’s like something melted in a bowl. Have you ever heard of it?’ And we were like, ‘Do you mean queso, sir?’ They were like, ‘No, I don’t think that’s it. Just bring us something melted in a bowl.’ They had really thick New York accents.”

—senior Chris Bull, Tres Amigos “The worst thing [happened] at work opening day. My manager went crazy and accidentally poured too much ice cream in the milk shake machine. It ended up sort of exploding, and every time we made a milk shake, my manager insisted on singing, ‘My milkshakes bring all the boys to the yard’ because he is crazy weird.”

—senior Julia de Souza, P. Terry’s “I was sitting down during a break with my managers, Michelle and Jay. Michelle was feeling super tired that day. I don’t remember what exactly we were talking about but Jay said something about his glasses. Michelle responded with ‘have you ever thought about getting laser hair removal?’ I almost spit out my water. Jay looked down at his arm hair self-consciously, and I started cracking up. Michelle obviously meant laser eye surgery.”

—junior Christy Goldberg, Z Pizza Seniors Hillary Hurst, Ellen Stice, Paige Euwer, and Elena Reynolds wait for customers on a hot September day.

photos by Allie Carlisle

{ westlakefeatherduster.com } trends + traditions 55

Pigging

L photo illustration by Karen Scott and Emily Mitchell

et me just throw this out there: I’m a terrible cook. I feel stupid every time I watch the Food Network, and I’ve never actually made a meal for myself.

That’s what pizza guys are for, right? I generally try to stay out of the kitchen so that I don’t embarrass myself. So when the editors of The Featherduster asked me to pick the hardest recipe I could find, cook it and write about it, I assumed it was going to be nothing but following instructions, so I mindlessly agreed. What a fool I was…

The first step of this “project” was finding something difficult to cook. With the help of Google, I was directed to a page titled “Difficult Recipes for Master Chefs.” Searching for the most obscure recipe on the page, I hit the jackpot with “Stuffed Pigs’ Trotters with Morels (mushrooms).”After reading the recipe to its full extent and not understanding a word, I gave the author of the website the benefit of the doubt and assumed that the dish must be worth the effort. Though, any dish is difficult to prepare for someone who has trouble scrambling an egg.

It was hard finding time to cook. After all, according to the recipe I needed at least five hours. On Labor Day, I decided to throw on an apron and a chef’s hat for authenticity purposes (of course) and took a glance at the recipe to begin. I hit my first roadblock in a matter of seconds. All of the measurements were in the metric system. Another perfect example of the rest of the civilized world making it harder for us ignorant Americans. I never thought my knowledge of dimensional analysis would come in handy, but science has got to be good for something. I converted every measurement to numbers I could process, and then it was time to get cooking.

“Dice 100 grams of carrots and 100 grams of onions.” Dice… that means cut, right? I took out the biggest knife I could find and slowly and carefully sliced through about a quarter of an onion.

My dad stood and watched anxiously, making sure I didn’t sever a limb. Much to our relief, my appendages remained intact and I moved on to chopping the veal sweetbreads. I searched the kitchen for what I thought were sweet pastries. At this point, my dad (the ‘chef’ in the family), who I’d instructed to remain silent during the cooking process, burst out laughing. I allowed him to speak, and he informed me thatveal sweetbreads are the thymus glands of a calf. He held up a gooey glob of red guts. For such an appetizing name, the sweetbreads did not live up to their hype.

“Wow, this is a lot of work,” I said to my dad, careful to maintain eye contact with the blade of the knife.

“There’s a lot more work to be done,” he said. I groaned. Are the chefs on The Food Network always smiling because they enjoy punishment?

After screwing up and wasting two perfectly good eggs, I separated the yolk from an egg white, drained and soaked the morels and conjured up a “knob” of butter (which is neither metric nor customary, just some silly British measurement). The dish was prepped and ready to go.

out

Aspiring cook tries in vain to create culinary masterpiece, goes hog-wild

Step 1:

concoction.

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius (about 320 degrees Fahrenheit). At least that was easy.

Step 2: Put the pigs’ feet in a pot with the diced carrots and onions and pour in white wine, port (Portuguese alcoholic stuff), and veal stock (basically veal-flavored water). Then put the top on the pot and cook in the oven for three hours.

Step 3: Fry the sweetbreads in butter for five minutes and add onions and morels. I didn’t know much about frying things, but I knew what a frying pan was, so I threw it on the stove and dropped my “knob” of butter into the center. I spread it around and threw in my chopped sweetbreads along with onions and morels. I must be a “master chef,” I thought. It shouldn’t be this easy.

Step 4: Puree the chicken breast with the egg white and cream. Yet another fuzzy cooking term I was unsure of. There’s a puree button on the blender, but the chicken breast looked a little big for that. I scoped out my cabinets and found a blender-like object with a sharp blade in the center. It was the food processor. I unknowingly threw the chicken in along with the egg white and the cream, and pressed on. In one fell swoop, chicken, cream and egg white splattered on my face. Luckily, I had quick enough reflexes to shut off the machine in time to salvage most of my ingredients, but not in enough time to salvage the pink goo that was now all over my face. The slimy egg white ran over my eyelids as I tried to spit out chunks of raw chicken. I could feel my skin caking up as the glop dried, and I ran to the sink. As I doused my face, it hit me; I’d forgotten to lock the lid on top. Stupidity, not a lack of culinary expertise, was the cause of this disaster. With determination, I clicked the lid on tight and made a thick pink paste.

Step 5: Mix chicken puree with sweetbread mixture. I dumped the puree into the same bowl and mixed it up with the sweetbreads, the onions and the morels. It slowly morphed into a very unappetizing glop of pink intermittently littered with brown chunks. It was as if I’d put steak in a bowl of cherry yogurt. I quickly threw that in the fridge so that I could avoid looking at it and waited for the feet to finish cooking.

A few hours later, I took them out of the oven. The meat was falling off the bone, and the tantalizing smell of freshly cooked pork filled the kitchen. I had to let them cool before I could stuff them with my pink

Step 6: Stuff the feet with the chicken stuffing and roll tightly in foil. This was another roadblock. The feet we had bought were actually split in half when we bought them and there was no way to stuff the foot and leave the foot intact. So I put the stuffing in between two halves of each foot and made sort of a pig foot sandwich.

Step 7: Cook in the oven for 15 minutes. I was almost there. I could smell the finish line. Fifteen minutes passed, and I took my masterpieces out of the oven. They weren’t quite beautiful, but they’d do. It was dinnertime.

Right off the bat, the feet were hard to eat. They were mostly skin, fat and cartilage and therefore yielded about two bites of meat. Those two bites were lodged in between thick bones that had to be snapped just to get a glimpse of the meat. “I shouldn’t have even bothered cooking the feet,” I thought. The stuffing just tasted bizarre and didn’t really go very well with the feet. If you’ve ever eaten chicken paste, you know what I’m talking about. It was grainy, and the visual package of the “cherry yogurt” and browned pigs’ feet didn’t help much. I could tell that my family was politely eating it just because I’d cooked it. That didn’t bother me; even I was a bit nauseated. For all that time and effort I put in, I walked away from the table still hungry and unsatisfied.

So, was my mission a success? Well, yes and no. I made a mediocre meal for my family that even I, the master chef, didn’t find very appetizing. I think picking a more conventional recipe would’ve been wiser.

At the same time, it helped me, as a culinary beginner, learn how to prepare and serve a dish, no matter how disgusting it might’ve been.

It’s kind of a thrill to start with a group of untouched, bare ingredients and to watch as the power of modern cooking technology brings them together to make a recipe come to life. Will I be cooking meals for my family every night from now on? No, probably not. But Domino’s Pizza just lost about a quarter of their weekly income.

—Andy Brown

EATS Cupcake Maker Using this simple app, you can mix and match batters, decorations and frostings to create your own masterpiece.

Cost: Free

art by Emily Mitchell

{ westlakefeatherduster.com } trends + traditions 57

TLC

: The looney channel So extreme, we think it’s crazy

The Learning Channel shows “Toddlers and Tiaras,” “My Strange Addiction” and “Hoarding: Buried Alive” have grabbed the attention of a large TV audience across America. For some reason, the guilty pleasure of watching other people with unusual problems is fascinating to non-strugglers. Does TLC actually teach us anything, or are these shows a free pass to fame for the subjects? Each show has its own premise. But when analyzed from a distance, they all share a common psychological thread.

—Sarah Berg

Art by Brad

Dunn

Toddlers and Tiaras

Everything is about beauty, glitz and glam when it comes to pageants for toddlers, unless you are one of the toddlers’ dominating mothers. Then, everything is about making a normal little girl look like a plastic Barbie doll. One droopy smile or a lackluster performance can leave a little girl, or her mom who’s living vicariously through her, without a chance to win the title of Ultimate Grand Supreme Queen. From watching this show, I see that little girls shouldn’t solely be judged on beauty, if beauty means caking on makeup, gluing on false teeth or spray tanning and teasing hair into some unnaturally shaped 1950s hair

style. Despite all the drama, this show is one of my favorites because of the non-stop entertainment. Such strong desire for a plastic crown and the possibility of a small cash prize is dumbfounding. The mental health of these moms is questionable while they put their daughters at risk of feeling unworthy when she doesn’t win the title of Prettiest Face. I love this show for the crazy moms and sassy toddlers with the absurd longing for perfection. It’s solid entertainment, especially if it’s not happening to you.

Star rating:

My Strange Addiction Addiction can capture and terrorize its victim.

Eating drywall, pulling hair out of a shower drain, sleeping with a blow dryer, eating dish soap or acting like a baby are some of the strange addictions that are explored on the show. Though it may be embarrassing to expose an abnormal craving for the world to see, it’s exciting to watch their bizarre issues. This show, unlike some others on TLC, does a thorough job of helping the subject pinpoint the

psychological reason behind their addiction, whether it be buried pain or an old habit they haven’t overcome. It’s interesting when there is an explanation for their behavior, but I wish the show did something more to help them finally quit. This show opened my mind to what people struggle with every single day. You can’t fake these addictions, so even as crazy and abnormal as it is, it’s all real.

Star rating:

Hoarding: Buried Alive Hoarding is an illness usually resulting from something traumatic in one’s past. This causes them to fill their void with anything they believe has value, which is pretty much everything. In this show, nothing is sugar coated and that’s what makes it so good. The addiction turns the hoarder’s house into clutter–stuffed rooms, with piles that are physically impossible to walk between. The conditions can sometimes be so hazardous that children

have to be taken from their homes and put into the hands of Child Protective Services. This is by far the best TLC show, especially for psychology nuts like me. The stress at the end of every show goes way up when a professional organizer and psychologist are brought in to help control the addiction.

Though this process is devastating for the addict, it is key to understanding their struggles.

Star rating:

TV TLC Network You can watch recaps of your favorite shows, read blog posts for any episodes you missed, or check the schedule to see what is airing next on TLC. Cost: Free

GAMES Harry Potter: Spells With the Harry Potter Spells app, you can get a wand, join a House and cast spells with just a swish of your finger across the screen of your iPad. Cost: $2.99

itch ell

recognized by Webster, while Daniel Radcliff, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson are now household names. More than 10 countries (including 300 schools in America) have official Quidditch teams. Conventions have been and will continue to be held in honor of Harry Potter.

Theme parks have been constructed. The films are the most popular in the world, surpassing the James Bond and even Star Wars series. The books have been printed into more than 400 million copies that are in circulation today.

Perhaps, however, the most important way in which the world was changed by Harry Potter was the sense of community that spawned from the story. The camaraderie between Harry, Ron and Hermione spanned far beyond the pages of seven books, uniting a generation of readers from all walks of life. We are a generation that dreamed of receiving a Hogwarts letter with our name on it.

We are a generation that grew up with the three wizard protagonists, from elementary through high school. It seems like we’ve always had these characters and their ongoing adventures to guide us through growing up.

It is now 12:01 a.m., Friday morning. The lines have been ushered from the parking lot to the theaters, all of which are filled and showing only The Deathly Hallows Part Two. As time seems to slow by the second, some cheer from their seats while others sit silently, simply trying to take in the scene. No matter what they are doing individually, everyone is united — feeling for perhaps the last time that sense of community that changed the world and this generation. It is the end of an era, the end of a legacy; but in some ways the story will be carried on forever.

—Hillary Hurst and Camille Lewis il y M

t’s 8 p.m. on Thursday, July 14 at the Barton Creek Mall. For the past eight hours, what started as a small group has slowly progressed into what is now a bustling, amoebic throng of people clad in black robes, chattering excitedly amongst themselves. As the hours pass and a line solidifies, some run around brandishing homemade wands while others sit with their noses buried in a book, conserving energy for the night ahead. By the end of the weekend, the final installment of the Harry Potter series would earn $476 million from people all over the world in lines like this.

But for most avid fans, this is a time for reflection. As they wait to enter the theater, having mastered this routine over years of midnight showings, some may realize, with a sad nostalgia, that this will be the last time. They are prepared to make the most of it, knowing that in some strange way, a chapter of their life is coming to a close.

Twenty-one years before the scene mentioned above, Joanne Rowling sat in a coffee shop scribbling on a napkin. A single mother living off of welfare at the time, Rowling wrote of a boy living in a cupboard under the stairs. She had been on a train when the idea for Harry Potter just popped into her head, the writer has said on many occasions.

After being turned down by multiple publishers, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was finally published by Bloomsbury in 1997. At the time, Rowling couldn’t have known the impact that first book would have on the world.

Fourteen years, six more books and eight movies later, the world was entirely changed. The books have been translated into at least 67 languages. Words like “quidditch” and “butterbeer” might as well be

art b yEm

I

The impact of the Harry Potter phenomenon on our generation

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Gone but not Mysterious aura of local cemetery mystifies

W

forgotten

ind rustles the trees. Twigs snap from the soft steps of small animals moving about in the woods. Trees enclose you, and for a moment, you feel truly alone. But you’re not. You’re at the Roberts Cemetery in Barton Creek West—in the company of the dead.

The houses behind it often give off some light, but not enough to see where you’re going on a cloudy, starless night. The ominous metal gate eerily resembles that of a concentration camp. The tall trees cover the site, not allowing any light to enter…or escape. A dead baby was the first buried here in 1898, and it is rumored that its restless spirit still haunts the site. Some grave sites are less than six feet deep due to the dry, hard soil, and there are lumps where some of the coffins are laid.

You’re that much closer to the dead. The rotting, forgotten dead.

Bee Cave used to be a quiet little town long before it turned into sprawling developments. Pioneers came through and settled here, bringing with them culture and heritage that many took to their graves.

There are 91 people buried here who died between 1898 and 2004.

Some of the dead have families that survived them, living to tell their stories. But some of them are lost forever, their memory faded from the face of this earth. It’s those spirits who you might hear whispering in the trees, their stories untold.

If you walk into Roberts Cemetery late at night, and you listen to the symphony of nature and the somber song of the creaky metal gate, you can’t help but feel like you’re not alone. Look at their graves. They only show a name, a birth year and a death year, but the people buried here deserve much more than that. They were cedar choppers, kiln burners, soldiers, ranch owners and homemakers. They are more than just numbers; they are the forgotten past — the past that was paved over by highways and neighborhoods. I implore you to take a risk.

Take a step back in time. No distant car engines running, no airplanes flying overhead, no electricity. Just the smooth, verdant hills lined with cedar trees completely surrounding you, as it used to be. The past is yearning to tell its story. And if you listen closely, maybe you’ll be able to hear it.

— Andy Brown

Karen Scott

family The changing faces of families today The 1950s painted a picture of the perfect family life. Men came home from war, grabbed their hometown sweetheart, got hitched, and settled into a steady life. Images of the white picket fence, two-and-a-half kids and a dog arose everywhere – the perfect, happy nuclear family was born.

That was all a lie.

Now it’s the soccer moms with the minivan full of screeching little angels, the dads who come home with the bacon, the nice cars. As well as this picture of the nice two-story, four bedroom, four bath, three-car garage house. The perfect, happy suburban middle class lifestyle.

This too is all a lie.

No family is perfect. Sure, some families met and still meet those descriptions. But lots don’t. So why do we strive for that image that our society has created of the perfect family? Today the face of the “nuclear family” has changed and will continue to change. Family is family, no matter who comprises it.

The divorce rate in the U.S. is roughly 50 percent. Half of all marriages end in divorce. Everyone knows someone whose parents are divorced. Heck, my parents are even divorced. These days we hear the word divorce so much it’s almost lost its magnitude. “They got a divorce,” sounds as normal as “Her dog died.” Sadly the impacts of those statements are nearly the same. Divorce is not something to be taken lightly. Like author Mary Kay Blakely said, “Divorce is the psychological equivalent of a triple coronary bypass.”

But out of the old comes the new. Through divorce, new families are created composed of step-moms, step-siblings, boyfriends and girlfriends. Through divorce single parent households and custody

agreements are created. Divorce generates a social stigma of a family that does not fit the perfect family mold— that divorce isn’t normal and there must be something wrong with the people involved. Obviously people don’t go into marriage saying “Until divorce do us part,” but some divorces are for the betterment of the family. In our society today, as tragic and as hard as divorce is, 50 percent means that it is becoming normal.

With gay marriage and more homosexual couples adopting or having children of their own, same-sex parenting is also a new face of families in our generation. Among this diversity are parents who never married and grandparents raising their grandchildren. These types of families are changing the face of our generation.

Just as 50 percent of marriages in America end in divorce, that means 50 percent survive. There are people who are happily married and stay happily married. The point isn’t that marriage is bad and divorce is good. The point is that it doesn’t matter how your family came together, it’s that they are your family and you shouldn’t want to change your family to fit some sort of mold society creates.

Families aren’t perfect. Every family has its bouts of issues or problems. There is always some sort of skeleton in the foyer closet. In our community we are lucky to have a large amount of families still intact.

But we also have a diverse community that should welcome every type of family, whether you are on your third step-parent, or have two dads or just a mom. The need for normalcy isn’t necessary.These new types of kin have torn down the white picket fence to create the new families of our generation.

—Danielle Brown

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{staff editorial}

chunk A

of change

and a leap

of faith

This summer, Eanes ISD purchased approximately 1,700 iPads at a cost of $817,000.

This money came not from the district budget, but rather from technology bonds which were approved by voters. We think that the school board, as well as the students and teachers who have implemented the Apple product into their academic lives, deserve recognition and praise.

With the new technological additions, Westlake has solidified its role as a member of the global movement for environmental awareness and educational change. The initial implementation of the program can be attributed to the organization in terms of iPad distribution and aid, but even more so to the adaptability of students and teachers.

Though the levels of knowledge regarding the iPad vary among both students and faculty, the patience and eagerness to learn has transformed many classrooms into one of genuine 21st century skills.

Despite the excitement surrounding the new technology, there are various downsides to the iPad program. Textbooks are not available like many thought they would be, while playing games is a constant temptation and cheating is easier. It is important to recognize these set-

backs, but also to note the striking willingness to extend the boundary of academic engagement, risking failure in order to succeed in all aspects of education. Because the administration, faculty and students have not hesitated to utilize what is literally at their fingertips, we have advanced our technology skills, interacted in alternative educational venues, added new outlets to our range of learning opportunities, and of course, saved paper.

We believe the enthusiasm for change has been a driving force in the triumphs of the Westlake Initiative for Innovation. The WIFI program has challenged both students and teachers to find what methods and applications work best for them, further adding to the goal of resourceful college preparation. Participants of the WIFI program have been proactive in their exploration of new apps, effectively using the Apple technology to its fullest.

Though the year is far from finished, we believe the iPads, coupled with the ability of faculty and students to look beyond their academic routines, have made a significant impact on the way we work, think and discover both individually and together. If for those changes only, the iPads were worth every cent.

Going public First-day nerves consume ex-private school student My dad pulled up to the curb and there I was–on my own.

The back of the tan building was somehow intimidating and blank at the same time. Teenagers were all around me, but I didn’t see anyone.

Anyone I knew, at least.

Not wanting to be early, I had convinced my dad that we needed to leave the house at 8:15. No earlier. I was trying to avoid the moment of entering the school, realizing that I had minutes and minutes that dragged into eternity until school started. That, and no one to talk to.

I didn’t anticipate the opposite: late. The left-turn light at Westbank Drive and 360 was still on summer mode. It stayed green long enough to allow three or four cars to pass through the intersection. Ten to 20 cars inched forward, waiting for the next light cycle.

My feet twitched as I stared at the clock in my dad’s 1994 Toyota Camry.

Not a Westlake car.

I was counting down the minutes, green numbers. A scene formed in my head: walking into advisory wearing the pink, turquoise and green dress I had made myself. Not a Westlake dress. It was 8:50, all the eyes in the classroom on me. Late. They wouldn’t know who I was. But they could see: not a Westlake girl.

8:35. Back to reality. We passed through the intersection, finally, and drove past the front of the school to the ninth grade dropoff. Students were everywhere–walking with friends from the parking lot, meeting up with friends at the front doors and talking in groups of friends in the courtyard. Everyone had something in common. No, not bleach-blonde hair and designer purses. Friends.

After my dad dropped me off, I found my locker and put my backpack inside. I carried my binder to the third floor of the Ninth Grade Center. 8:40. I was barely on time. I sat in the back and listened to lectures about the dress code and school rules. The teacher handed me my green schedule. The two girls next to me had fifth lunch too, and our lockers were near each other. We agreed to meet there for lunch together.

The bell rang. It was time for Spanish, all the way in the main high school. This is when I discovered what would make me walk up and down hundreds of more steps than was really necessary my freshman year. The main high school and the NGC are connected in one way: the

first floor. I had to get from third-floor advisory to third-floor Spanish.

This involved descending the stairs to the first floor, walking through the hallway to the other building and then ascending another set of stairs to the third floor. Ridiculous.

Speaking of ridiculous. There I was, navigating the halls of this huge school, and everyone was wearing backpacks. It sounds normal, but I was horrified. I wasn’t in private school anymore. I followed the unspoken rule of filing down the hallway on the right side, clutching my binder to my chest, cursing myself for making the simple mistake of leaving my backpack in my locker. Not a Westlake girl.

I sat through my first class. I met one of the girls in my advisory for my first lunch. I was the first student to get to my first newspaper class.

After school, my mom’s Nissan minivan broke down. Not for the first time. Since my dad was at work, my mom, middle-school brother and I were stuck at school for at least an hour. With the air conditioning of the car not working, we went to the NGC cafeteria. We sat on the floor of the huge empty room, leaned against the lunch tables stacked against the walls and opened our backpacks. Everyone else was at home, updating their Facebook statuses and watching TV. And there we were, doing homework on the floor of the cafeteria.

The next day I had to go back again. I wore jeans and a t-shirt. I went to my second theater class and my second chemistry class.

I wore my backpack to all of my classes.

Months passed, and I began to write for The Featherduster. I went to my first football game, my first pep rally. I survived freshman midterms, which weren’t too scary since my private school had given finals in seventh grade. I took a much-needed break from homework over the winter holiday and came back for a second semester.

I didn’t have name-brand clothes or perfect hair. I didn’t become snobby or stuck-up. I found that not all Westlake students are their stereotype. In fact, most of them aren’t.

I made friends. I was the one stopping to talk to someone in the courtyard, walking the hallways with friends and in a group at lunch.

What do you know? I was a Westlake girl.

—Julie Dorland

“There I was, navigating the halls of this huge school, and everyone was wearing backpacks. It sounds normal, but I was horrified.”

—senior Julie Dorland

Claude Barker

63

Footloose remake not as bad as it seems

Getting their Lead actor Kenny Wormald and director Craig Brewster answer questions about the new remake of the movie Footloose at a round circle with the press.

in the door Karen Scott

I first heard about the remake of Footloose from a friend’s Facebook post. She put up a link to the trailer with a caption that read: “Why are they trying to replace Kevin Bacon? This is just wrong.” That is the exact thought that went through my head when I showed up to the press screening at the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar. I was greeted by the director, Craig Brewer, and the lead actor, Kenny Wormald, playing the classic character Ren McCormack, who both shook my hand and said a few words about how they hoped I would enjoy the movie. “Hmph, as if,” I thought to myself as I dodged the cameras and the lights filming the entering audience to find the last and worst possible seat in the house: the dreaded front row. Already, I was bitter that I would be sitting for two hours watching a Kevin Bacon-less Footloose and that I would develop a neck ache in the first 30 minutes. In my mind, I came up with negative things I could say about the movie like: “It it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” or “History shouldn’t repeat itself.”

My scowling was interrupted by a friendly staffer passing out tshirts. They were bright pink with Footloose written in cursive on the sleeve and the slogan: “Dance your ass off” written in big black letters on the front.

I took a medium.

Brewster, Wormald and a petite blond lady who I assumed had some sort of importance to the film took their places on a small makeshift stage right in front of me. The blond commanded the audience to put on their shirts for a group photo. The audience obliged. After the posed photo with the members of the audience that actually got desirable seats was through, they had a small dance contest among volunteers from the crowd. The volunteers, all clad in their pink tees, listened through the rules and the “winner takes the prize” offer and began to dance. Let’s just say they, well, danced their butts off. I have to admit this was the point I began to “loosen up,” if you will, and lose some of that negative energy I was honing in on this event.

After the winner was announced, the director was left standing alone on the makeshift stage. Brewster started a speech addressing the question that everyone was thinking: why?

He told a story relating back to his youth saying that Footloose was the first movie he felt really related to him and that he had watched the film every year since the original came out in 1984. He also explained how he was willing to take the “wall of hate” that came along with making this film and to face the begrudging people who refused to let the classic go. I decided to let my preconceptions about this movie pass.

If he was willing to tour the country explaining over and over why he decided to make the movie, I could at least let my image of a glorified Ren McCormack slide to the popcorn-covered floor. Brewster left the audience and took his seat as the movie began.

I watched the 113-minute film with an open mind. And you know what?

I liked it.

Comparing it to the original, it is what you would expect of a movie being released in our time: it was slightly racier with more explosions, short skirts and colorful language. But it was different in its own way.

There were slight changes to the characters themselves as well as tweaks to scenes from the original since it was set in modern day. The dancing was also modern, with break dancing and hip hop. Cinematography wise, it was very well-filmed.

The acting was so-so with a cast of up-and-coming actors who you’ve probably never heard of. This was on purpose. In an interview with Brewster and Wormald the next day, Brewster said he wanted a new, fresh cast that no one really knew because that’s how the original was at that time. Kevin Bacon, Sarah Jessica Parker and Loriel Singer were new to the industry and later became household names. Brewster said he hopes the same will become of the new cast he chose.

This also wasn’t Brewster’s first go-around on a music-based, American South-set film. He has directed other films like Black Snake Moan starring Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci, and Hustle and Flow starring Terrence Howard, Anthony Anderson and Ludacris. So theoretically, Brewster was the best one for the job.

Of course, this movie, in my opinion, doesn’t beat the original. But I don’t think that was the point. The new Footloose is a tribute to the classic storyline brought to our own generation. I think the purpose was to make the beloved plot of the upheaval of a religious Southern town that banned public dancing by the youth accessible to teenagers today.

I was entertained, which says a lot. My hard-headed opinion was changed, but I’m definitely not saying it was movie of the year. To me it wasn’t a waste of my time. And hey, I got a free t-shirt out of the whole thing. As to Kenny Wormald, I’d be interested in seeing his career progress. But the man I will always see as the punch dancing Ren McCormack will be Kevin Bacon.

—Danielle Brown

Milkduds and

mayhem

For more student movie reviews, scan this code.

Brad Dunn

Girl recalls horrible experience with hooligans in movie theater

About a week before school started, my good friend and I went to see the new Jesse Eisenberg comedy, Thirty Minutes or Less.

However, today I will not be writing about this mildly offensive, very disappointing and onlysort-of-funny film, nor will I be writing about how amazingly blue and dreamy Jesse’s eyes are.

Instead, I will be writing about the immature, annoying, self-centered blockheads who filled the dark AMC theater and made me wish that the movie’s title was equal to its running time.

The first five minutes of the film were pretty peaceful. There were a few laughs here and there, despite the unnecessary overuse of R-rated language. That’s when disaster struck.

The sound cut off, the screen went black, and every light in the theater went up. As the confused chatter of the audience filled the room, an employee entered and stated that he was very sorry, but due to technical difficulties, the movie would have to be reset. A minor inconvenience that we could have gotten through very easily with any other crowd. This bunch, however, immediately erupted.

“I’d feel better if I got a 50 percent refund!” one man jeered. “Yeah, and bring us some free food!” shouted another. One boy,

in words that I will not repeat, decided to announce to the entire theater that he wanted to see a naked woman on screen. Honestly?

It was five extra minutes out of their days. It wasn’t as if these losers had anything better to do with that time.

Everyone in the theater was given a coupon for a free, small popcorn. When life hands you free snacks, you don’t turn them down. Although, I didn’t feel like most of the people in that theater really deserved it.

Everyone exited to claim their complimentary treats during the five minutes of film they had already viewed. I assumed, after this incident, that the crowd would be quieter for the rest of the movie. Unfortunately, I was dead wrong.

First off, every kid’s movie has that little boy or girl who likes to repeat every joke he or she finds amusing. I assumed that, this being an R-rated movie, I could avoid this irritating voice. However, I learned that day that not only do children like to talk to the movie screen, but teenage boys as well. Every joke that managed to make me chuckle was made just a little bit less enjoyable by the chatterbox in the back row. I wanted to shout “Grow up already!” I instead bit my tongue, knowing

that such an outburst would ruin the movie for the other people supposedly trying to watch it.

The most annoying person in the theater was not one of the two teenagers texting in the seat in front of me, but the man sitting directly behind me. At one point, I heard a noise that, at first, sounded like a loud ticking.

After listening to it a bit longer, however, I recognized the sound as beat boxing. I turned around, wondering who on earth would do such a thing during a movie, and discovered that the man was also wearing sunglasses. In a movie theater. Seriously, if the screen is too bright and the movie is so unappealing to you that you have to drop a beat in order to keep yourself entertained, just do everyone a huge favor and get out.

Let this be a message to all moviegoers: if you pay $8 to see a movie, please, please just watch the dang thing! I don’t care how horrible you think it is, how bored you are, or how funny you think your jokes sound. Texting, talking, swearing or making idiotic noises just makes you look like a big jerk.

—Jaimie Pitts

65

ielle

Dan

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Brow

Couches in classrooms

Sitting in those hard, blue, plastic desk chairs constantly throughout the eight-hour course of the school day can really be tough on one’s derriere. Luckily, there are those few wonderful teachers who offer their students relief in the form of a sofa or loveseat in the back of the room. A couch in a classroom is a simple way for a teacher to say “School can be tough, but let’s try to have fun in here.” We are grateful for the laid-back classes where one can be comfortable without having to wear tacky pajama bottoms.

Brad Dunn

Chintzy clips When President Obama strolled out of the White House with the American Jobs Act in his hand, it wasn’t bound together by some fancy-schmancy plastic coil, nor was it placed in an official Presidential seal-covered binder, no — it was held together by a clip that the media described as “chintzy.”

Well, Fox News, we’d like to see you hold 200 pages of standard-ply paper between your teeth. Do you think it’s easy to keep the future of America’s jobs together and able to withstand winds up to 12 mph? The bull clip cradling the Act between its two plastic jaws of strength did better at its job than Fox News’ fact Bra dD unn checkers. Hey, at least he didn’t settle for a paper clip. Give respect where respect is due.

Bronies “My Little Pony, My Little Pony. Ahh-ahh-ahhahh, I used to wonder what Emily friendship could be.” This theme Mitche ll song for the animated TV series My Little Pony Friendship is Magic has attracted a wide number of audiences, one being “bronies” (bro ponies) — men who are fanatic about a TV show meant for little kids. Now, why are guys, ranging from the high school to middle aged men, so infatuated by ponies who teach the important lessons of friendship? Could it be the pony names, such as Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash? Or, could it be the cuteness of these animated animals that draw men to virtual fantasies rather than reality?

Whatever the reason, we respect all bronies’ choice of television because FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC.

Top Girl

Emily Mitchell

Yes we see you, the girl who sits in the middle of the Chap Court with her eyes glued to her iPad. Most girls are cuddling with their boyfriends, or giggling as their phones get stolen by boys trying to flirt with them. But instead you remain in your virtual world, throwing out pick-up lines to your Top Girl boyfriend. Maybe he’s a rapper or an interior designer. Maybe he has a large amount of manliness points that makes it impossible to even consider setting him down. Maybe he’s given you three gifts that increased your “hotness points” by 10. In addition to your obsession with this digital male, you’re captivated by your modeling career. “Crowdstar Models” is hiring new models and they want you? You’re flying to New York and using up your energy points to perform as a hand model? Wake up call. It’s not real.

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