LH Feature Magazine

The Little Hawk

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Sticks & Stones

Road to Recovery

Understanding the power dynamics of words and who gets to use them can be a tricky balancing act, even for those involved in reclamation movements.

Imagine waking up unable to remember three weeks of your life. For Bella McBride ‘16, a devastating car accident made that reality.

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VEG*N

Generation XXX From Utah’s legislature to the cover of TIME magazine, Internet pornography’s effects on teenagers have entered the national debate stage.

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a blanket term that includes vegetarian and vegan.

for a there are more than 1 million vegans in the U.S.

reason ethics. health. the environment.

sophia schlesinger ‘16 vegetarian

sofie lie ‘17 vegan

Sophia Schlesinger ‘16 and Sofie Lie ‘17 considered ethics, health, and the environment when they chose to depart from omnivorism.

Story on page 10.

PREVIEW

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spring into soup

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sticks & stones

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By Sonali Durham & Nova Meurice

Fresh vegetable soup is the perfect way to celebrate spring. We tried creamy asparagus soup and Thai coconut carrot soup, accompanied by fresh bruschetta.

By Nova Meurice & Sarah Smith

Understanding the politics and power dynamics of words and who gets to use them can be a tricky balancing act, even for those involved in reclamation movements.

road to recovery

By Caroline Brown

Imagine waking up one morning unable to remember the last 3 weeks of your life. For Bella McBride ‘16, a devastating car accident made that reality.

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generation xxx

By Celeste Chadwick & Madeline Deninger

From Utah’s legislature to the cover of TIME magazine, Internet pornography’s effects on teenagers has entered the national debate stage.

2 Little Hawk Feature Magazine

COVER PHOTO BY SONALI DURHAM

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The Greening Movement

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alumni profiles: katrina & Cora ‘15

By Olivia Parrott

The United States is split on what has been called the top global threat: climate change. Iowa is in the same position, but teachers at City High are working to change that.

By Caroline Brown & Lucy McGehee

Katrina Scandrett ‘15 is studying beauty and hairstyling in Des Moines while Cora Bern-Klug ‘15 is taking a gap year in Ecuador and documenting the experience on her blog Ecuacora.

Caroline Brown Feature Editor 2014-2016

This issue of the LH magazine is very bittersweet. After four long years of working on this staff, the time has come for me to pass on the baton to a new Features editor. I am fully confident that the new editors will be great ones and that The Little Hawk will carry on its tradition of greatness for years to come.

For the seniors’ last issue, we tried to create some stories about trending issues, such as the way climate change is taught (Olivia Parrott), common dietary habits (Sonali

Durham), the new lives of some of our very own alumni (Lucy McGehee and I), as well as a dangerous rise in Internet pornography (Madeline Deninger and Celeste Chadwickw).

Be sure to check out the online version to all of these stories, we have some awesome photos and videos to go along with the print version.

Have a great summer, Little Hawks, and be sure to add journalism to next year’s schedule :)

april 29, 2016 3

Spring into Soup For more recipes, visit the littlehawk.com

By Sonali Durham & Nova Meurice

4 Little Hawk Feature Magazine

Creamy Spring Asparagus Soup from wholefoodsmarket.com

Ingredients: • 1 tablespoon butter • 1 large leek, white and light green parts only, cleaned and cut into 1-inch pieces • 4 cups chicken broth • 1 medium Yukon gold potato, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces • 1 bunch asparagus, woody stems snapped off, spears cut into 1-inch pieces • 1/3 cup sour cream • 1/4 teaspoon sea salt • 1/4 teaspoon black pepper • 2 tablespoons chopped chives Directions: • Melt butter in a medium pot over medium low heat.

• Add leeks and cook, stirring often until tender, about 10 minutes.

• Add broth and potatoes and bring to a boil.

• Reduce heat, add asparagus and simmer until potatoes and asparagus are tender.

• Remove pot from heat ad set aside to let cool slightly.

• Carefully transfer soup to blender in batches and purée until smooth.

• Return soup to pot and bring to a boil.

• Remove from heat, whisk in sour cream and season with salt and pepper.

• Ladle soup into bowls, garnish with chives and serve.

• NOTE: you may wish to strain the soup after blending to remove fibers. april 29, 2016 5

sticks and stones Understanding the politics and power dynamics of words and who gets to use them can be a tricky balancing act, even for those involved in reclamation movements.

This story contains mature language and may be offensive to some readers.

6 Little Hawk Feature Magazine

By Nova Meurice & Sarah Smith Gina Appleby was only in fifth or sixth grade when a classmate first called her a b----*.

“It’s been used against me and almost all of the female population at one time or the other, but it didn’t feel good,” she said.

Because of her negative experiences with the word, Appleby decided at some point during middle school that she wasn’t going to let it hurt her any more. Appleby began using “b----” as a term of endearment or a greeting to her friends.

For Appleby, it is no longer a bad word. In fact, she has attached an entirely new meaning to it.

“A b---- is confident, comfortable with her sexuality, comfortable with asking for things like a promotion, or trying to take control of a meeting in a work force,” Appleby said. “She just knows what she wants and is able to say no.”

Appleby no longer uses the word as an insult because she feels that its intent as such is to degrade assertive women. Instead, she only uses it in a positive context, and has found that doing so has helped her better articulate her feelings.

“I think that with reclaiming it, in a way it’s forcing everybody to think about why they don’t like something,” Appleby said.

“It used to be like, ‘She dates a lot of guys, what a b----’, or ‘She’s trying to get a promotion; what a b----’. Now that people are reclaiming it, it’s no longer an umbrella bad word. People have to use other words to describe how they feel.”

Since Appleby has changed her use of the word, her perception of it has also changed.

“Recently, when people use it against me, I’m like, ‘You are absolutely correct, sir. I am indeed a b-----,’” Appleby said. “Even when people are trying to be insulting, I can’t take it as an insult anymore. It’s been reclaimed so extensively that I’m just like, ‘You’re right! Hell yeah!’”

Appleby is part of a growing movement of young women attempting to reclaim the word b---- through a process known as verbal reappropriation, where a word commonly used to degrade a group of people is changed within the group so it carries positive meaning. In the process of reclaiming a word, many people are caught between positive and negative connotations while both definitions of the word are circulating. Although Eva Sileo ‘17 sometimes uses the word b---- negatively, she also uses it to describe her close friends.

“It’s never a hostile thing. A pet name is the best description,” Sileo said. “We’ve come up with a lot of variations of it and it’s just become a loving inside joke. It changes the dynamic and allows us to take the power back.”

Sileo also continues to use it as an insult for both men and women.

“There is that connotation, like, ‘This is made for women but I’m using it for men,’ which made me feel powerful. But now it’s just become like any other description to me,” she said. “It may have started as an insult but it’s now evolved into just someone I’m not happy with.”

For Appleby, she sees using the word b---to address someone male as an insult towards women, rather than a step towards degendering the word.

“It’s definitely being used on [and by] men to emasculate them,” Appleby said “Like, ‘You’re such a little b----,’ because how dare you be compared to a woman.”

Because people are using the word in new situations, Sileo sees “b----” as having a differ-

april 29, 2016 7

ent weight than it originally carried.

“It’s come to mean a different thing than it used to mean,” Sileo said. “It’s just like any language: It depends on the context and it depends on tone.”

The context in which a reclaimed word is used also changes Appleby’s perspective on whether the word is constructive or not.

“If it’s an acquaintance who calls me a b----, I get pretty defensive even if it’s a joke. A lot of my reasons for being defensive is not my benefit: I worry about people who don’t have the friend group I have,” Appleby said.

Although English teacher and writer Alina Borger-Germann has often been exposed to writers challenging the negativities of specific expletives, she still finds it difficult to see a future where the word b---’s primary connotation is positive “In the literary scene right now, if you go to any literary magazine, you’re going to find younger women writers who are working really hard to reclaim language like that. But for me, I’ve accrued this experience over a lifetime of

those words that are consistently negative,” Borger-Germann said. “I have a really hard time imagining the word b---- is ever going to be truly reclaimed. People say things like ‘me and my b----es,’ but there’s no context under which I would want to call my closest friends that word. Does that make me a total prude? That’s okay if it does.”

Having spent her life writing and speaking assertively, BorgerGermann has often been called a b-----. For her, the label has never been positive. However, BorgerGermann feels that the word has started losing its effect on her.

“I feel a little immune to it at this point because to me, it just means you have zero respect for a women in power,” she said. “That’s your deal, not mine.”

Because she has so often seen the word b---- so often used to disempower women, BorgerGermann has little interest in reclaiming it. She also feels that the sense of power that women may gain by reappropriating the word is fragile.

“It can always be snatched back at any time by the people in power,” Borger-Germann said.

“Even the formerly disempowered can revert back to the [negative] meaning.”

Like Borger-Germann, Appleby does not attempt to reclaim certain words because she believes that their established meanings are too strong to be truly overcome. In her experience, “f-----” is one word that cannot be reclaimed at this time due to its primarily hurtful intent. “[F-----] is being used by the same people who don’t think about why they use the word, either because they use it without thinking, because they grew up like that, or because they don’t even consider why they have a problem with that person—they just want to make that person feel bad,” Appleby said.

In any case where one would say a reclaimed word, Appleby thinks it’s extremely important to ensure that everyone in the conversation is comfortable with hearing it. She tries to follow this rule with words such as “f-----” or even more successfully reclaimed expletives such as the word queer.

“It’s a really easy thing to do, just checking in with people,” Appleby said. “‘Can I say this

“A BITCH IS CONFIDENT, COMFORTABLE WITH HER SEXUALITY, COMFORTABLE WITH ASKING FOR THINGS LIKE A PROMOTION...SHE JUST KNOWS WHAT SHE WANTS AND IS ABLE TO SAY NO.” GINA APPLEBY ‘17

8 Little Hawk Feature Magazine

word?’ might seem like a super stupid question, but it’s not me that makes the decision [that the word is offensive], it’s them.”

While slurs such as “f------” or “d---” continue to have an ambiguous status, despite reappropriation efforts, the LGBT+ community has successfully reclaimed the word queer. Since the 1980s, the community has used the word that was once a slur as a blanket term for people of identities other than cisgender and/or heterosexual. [while there seems to be conflict in the perception of most other words, queer has been pretty successful introduced back into language without a negative meaning.]

“I think a lot of people have decided that people abusing the word are going to have to do better if they’re going to try to insult them,” Appleby said.

Borger-Germann attributes the word’s successful reclamation to its adoption by academics.

“I think part of that reason is that academia latched onto the word. Because there’s queer studies or queer theory, and that’s all using the language queer. It’s hard to be use it as an insult when it’s something that a college professor majors in.”

Appleby has been to several pride parades, where she has found solidarity among people who wear their queerness as a badge of honor. She believes that the success of the reclamation of the is due in part to that supportive nature of the LGBT+ community.

“I think that it’s in that kind of situation where it’s really easy to reclaim words because it’s easier to think objectively,” Appleby said of pride parades. “You’re in a situation removed from insults and where confidence is super high.”

While Appleby and her community identify with the word queer, she feels that only people who have been degraded by the word can choose to reclaim it.

“Queer has never been used as a slur against me offensively, so I can’t be part of that group that decides whether or not to take it back,” she said. “I have to let people that it’s been used against decide that.”

Despite the relative success of

some word appropriation, who can use what reclaimed word has remained a source of controversy.

Politics of word reclamation are perhaps nowhere more rife with tension than with the n-word.

Max Otoadese ‘17 experienced this controversy first hand as one of the few black students predominantly white English class that read A Raisin in the Sun. Some of his classmates argued that all people should be able to say n----because it was socially acceptable to call a white person a cracker, which they felt was the n-word’s equivalent. Otoadese, however, disagrees. “[The weight] wasn’t the same at all, not even close,” Otoadese said. “When you’re out and about and someone says ‘cracker,’ I don’t think that anyone takes it seriously.

When I try to put some historical context to it, I can’t really.”

In contrast, the n-word is fraught with history. According to an Anti-Bias Study Guide from the Anti-Defamation League, the term emerged in the 16th century, and was used as to degrade and dehumanize African-Americans. Even after the abolition of slavery, n----continued to serve as a racial slur and a reminder of slavery and Jim Crow. It wasn’t until after the Civil Rights Movement that AfricanAmericans began reappropriating the word or its variations.

Because of this history, Max believes that only black people should use the word.

“If it’s used by black people to other black people, it’s not usually derogatory because there’s a mutual understanding that they’re the same thing. Like, it would be hypocritical to be calling someone else something that you are too,” Otoadese said. “It can incite anger if a white person says it to a black person because a majority of situations, it has a negative connotation to it. There are a few situations like if you’re close friends or something or it’s pretty obvious that no harm was meant by it, but in general, white to black is just a much more tricky situation using that.”

Salwa Sidahmed ‘19 has found that the resurgence of the word n-----, both in the African-American community and in hip-hop culture, has led to some confu-

“[RECLAIMED WORDS] CAN ALWAYS BE SNATCHED BACK ANY TIME BY THE PEOPLE IN POWER.” ALINA BORGER GERMANN

sion among white people about who can use it. Nevertheless, both Otoadese and Sidahmed agree that white people shouldn’t use the word n-----.

“If you’re not being affected by that word, you shouldn’t tell someone who is [being affected] if they should or should not be offended by that,” Sidahmed said.

“I know that everyone thinks that it’s changed with racial slurs but it hasn’t.”

While Otoadese and Sidahmed agree that it’s not acceptable for white people to use the word n----, they still are conflicted about who exactly can use it.

Otoadese, who self-identifies as “mixed,” feels conflicted about using the word.

“This whole situation for me is extra difficult. I just don’t say anything about it. I don’t use it towards anyone and I don’t get offended if someone says it to me, just in general,” he said. “Especially because I’m mixed, I didn’t know if some people would get offended because I’m not 100 percent black.

I just decided that I didn’t want to deal with that, and I decided not to use it.”

Sidahmed, however, believes that ‘n-----’ is a derogatory term for all black people, so all black people should be able to use it.

“I’m North African, Sudanese, and I’m black and probably none of my ancestors were slaves but the slur itself is used against the whole race,” Sidahmed said. “It’s used against people because they’re black, so I think that any black person can use it.”

Some people, such as advocate and former Fox News commentator Jehmu Greene, believe that no one should use the word n-----.

Both Otoadese and Sidahmed, however, disagree.

“It carries a lot of weight, even today, because it’s still being used as a derogatory term,” Max Otoadese ‘17 said. “But if a word is just avoided and never used, I think that it just gives the word more power, because there are always going to be people that use it. If it is going to be used in that derogatory way it will be just that much more offensive.”

Otoadese also sees public avoidance of the word as denial that racism exists.

“Just because you don’t use the

word doesn’t mean that you’re not racist,” he said. “Anyone can make their own analogies to that; just because you don’t say something doesn’t mean you don’t think it.”

Because there is still so much taboo surrounding the word n----, Sidahmed educates and corrects people where she hears it misused.

“I’m sometimes kind of scared to tell them not to [say n-----] even though it’s wrong because you don’t know how they’re going to react, but usually I do anyways because sometimes they change their mind,” Sidahmed said. “And I’m not trying to start a fight, I just want to educate them.”

Other students feel that efforts should be more focused on culture surrounding reclaimed words.

“The language itself isn’t the oppression, it’s the culture,” Sileo said. “Protesting a word is, at best, symbolic.” *While “b----” is ubiquitous, both in the vocabularies of high school students and in pop culture at large, we have chosen not to print the word as not to comment on the status of its reclamation.

april 29, 2016 9

veg*n for a reason

By Sonali Durham

sophia schlesinger ‘16 vegetarian

since 2008 for 8 years total for reasons of ethics and taste “the treatment of the animals is one thing, and that’s definitely an argument that I think is pretty popular, and then there’s the question of sustainability. the beef industry is not even a little bit sustainable.” occasionally eats local, humanely raised poultry “I figure if you know where the meat comes from, I don’t think there’s any harm in that.”

10 Little Hawk Feature Magazine

PHOTO BY SONALI DURHAM

student perspectives

Sophia Schlesinger ‘16 and Sofie Lie ‘17 considered the environment, ethics, and health when they chose to depart from omnivorism. (Veg*n is a blanket term for vegetarians and vegans.)

R

aw. Paleo. LCHF. Eating ideologies of all types proliferate across Internet forums and niche-market protein bars.

Proponents of these diets claim they are healthier, more eco-friendly, or more ethically responsible. For vegetarian and vegan students at City High, the same motivations have led them to make admittedly less extreme choices about what food they eat.

Sophia Schlesinger ‘16 became vegetarian she was 10 years old. Although she occasionally makes exceptions, she has avoided eating meat ever since.

“It was mostly because I didn’t particularly enjoy the taste of meat,” she said. “And the more research I did it seemed like there were a lot of things fundamentally wrong with the [meat] industry as well, so I decided to try letting it go for a while and see how it went, and then I just never started eating meat again.”

For Schlesinger, personal preference and concerns about the consequences of raising and eating meat motivated her choice.

“The treatment of the animals is one thing, and that’s definitely an argument that I think is pretty popular,” she said. “And then there’s the question of sustainability. The beef industry is not even a little bit sustainable.”

A broad base of research backs up Schlesinger’s consternation about the beef industry. According to a 2015 article from the Washington Post, beef comes in second, behind only shellfish, for highest greenhouse gas emissions per unit; 1,000 calories of beef creates 19.18 pounds of greenhouse gases. In addition, a 2006 report from the United Nations found that livestock farming constitutes the single largest human use of land, and that greenhouse gas emissions related to livestock are responsible for about 18 percent of all global warming—more than all transportation combined.

Sustainability is also a concern for Sofie Lie ‘17, who is vegan. Veganism is a dietary principle that calls for avoiding all animal products, not just meat.

“It was kind of for environmental and moral reasons that I was attracted to the idea [of veganism],” she said.

Lie was vegetarian before she was vegan, and reverts to vegetarianism when she travels and vegan food is more difficult to find. Travel is one of several challenges that come along with veganism for Lie, who reverted to veg-

etarianism when she traveled to Portugal and Mexico this year.

“Actually sticking to the diet is difficult.

And then the other part is kind of the misconceptions of veganism. It’s like a label: “vegan.”

There’s a lot of advocating for veganism that I don’t necessarily agree with, especially on the Internet. I guess everything’s more intense on the Internet, politically or any idea,” she said.

“I don’t exactly agree with the idea that everybody has to be vegan. A lot of people do other sorts of environmental activism, and that’s just my way of contributing.”

Because Lie’s veganism is at least in part environmentally motivated, she doesn’t consider herself a strict vegan, but rather aims for balance.

“I wouldn’t call myself strictly vegan. Like, these shoes are not vegan,” she said, indicating her suede tennis shoes. “I think that it’s better to have a pair of shoes that lasts longer than 10 pairs that don’t, because vegan leather is not very long-wearing. I don’t think being a strict vegan is necessarily that much better than being a loose vegan.”

Schlesinger makes similar exceptions to strict vegetarianism that are in line with her values.

“My mom has a friend who raises chickens, and I figure if you know where the meat comes from, I don’t think there’s any harm in that if you know for sure that it’s not contaminated and isn’t loaded with hormones,” she said. “So I’ll eat that if my mother makes chicken, and sometimes fish. But I try to avoid eating meat if I don’t know exactly where it comes from.”

Vegetarianism and veganism can introduce a need to think more carefully about what nutrients are present in food, because components like iron, protein, and vitamin B-12 are typically obtained through meat consumption in an omnivorous diet.

“I’ve had problems with iron deficiency on and off, and lack of protein,” Schlesinger said. “I am definitely not the most physical person, but exercising is just really difficult because I don’t have a huge amount of protein in my diet. As I’ve started to develop an exercise schedule, I’ve been eating a lot of eggs, mostly for breakfast.”

Lie faces similar challenges with veganism, but has worked out a set of foods that meet her nutritional needs.

“For breakfast I usually have oatmeal or

sofie lie ‘17 vegan

since 2015 for 1 year total; vegetarian for 1 year before for reasons of ethics and health people do other sorts of environmental activism, and [being vegan] is just my way of contributing.” may return to vegetarianism in college “it is an effort: I have to go out and seek vegan food, and check ingredients all the time. I think in the near future i’ll go back to vegetarian but stay mostly vegan.” toast,” she said. “My food is always the same.

Then for lunch I go home—I run home, I have like 10 minutes to eat. I usually have tortillas with avocado, or whatever is in my house. Then for dinner, it depends. I eat a lot of sweet potatoes, and hummus, and Indian food. I take B-12 tablets because I think you can only get that from eating actual animal products.”

For Lie, staying vegan isn’t a problem except in circumstances where food options may be more limited; she isn’t sure whether staying vegan will be possible in college.

“I’ve never craved meat itself, or those type of products,” she said. “Sometimes I’ve been like ‘I want that cheese!’ But it’s not a craving that makes me eat it. It’s not a problem at all for me.

I don’t know why. I think it’s just because I get enough food that I like.”

Schlesinger sees a problem with the culture and industry of food in general.

“Half the time the meat that’s branded as a certain animal isn’t purely that animal; you don’t know what all goes in your meat.

Then there’s the hormonal thing, which is an entirely different world of food. Things that we shouldn’t be eating, and that are sold to the common consumer… it’s disappointing,” she said. “For me, there’s that rule of making sure you know where your food comes from before you eat it.”

april 29, 2016 11

Road to Recovery

By Caroline Brown

12 Little Hawk Feature Magazine

PHOTO BY CAROLINE BROWN

D

riving down snowcovered Highway 63 one January morning, Bella McBride’s life was changed forever.

As the ground became more slick coming over a bridge, she was unable to keep control of her car, running off the road and crashing into a tree.

“Immediately someone ran out of their house and flagged down the next car and he sat with me while I was unconscious until I got into the ambulance.”

After Bella was identified, her mother, Shannon McBride, received what she described as one of the worst phone calls imaginable, after talking to her daughter only 20 minutes before the accident.

“They called me at work. I was expecting her around 12 or 12:30; I knew she would stop home and let our dog out, but I was expecting her to come to work at any minute, and then I get a phone call from a sheriff who says that my daughter has been in a terrible car accident,” Shannon said. “I ask if she is okay and he can’t tell me, and he says he doesn’t know.”

Shannon then drove four hours up to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, not knowing if her daughter was alive.

“I remember they gave me that slip of paper and the room number when I got there. I was with my brother and [Bella’s] boyfriend, his mother, and her best friend Helen. They all stopped at the desk

to find out where the room was, and I couldn’t stop. I just ran down the hallway,” she said. “I don’t remember the next few hours, so I couldn’t tell you exactly how [the doctors] broke it to me. I was just in shock. I wasn’t fully there. But I know that when I saw her, even though she had a breathing tube and a feeding tube and a unicorn horn, we called it, and a neck brace, I was just glad she was still with us.”

Bella’s coma was trauma induced, but doctors kept her under for a few extra days while she was healing. When she woke up four days later, she was diagnosed with Diffuse Axonal Injury, one of the most common and devastating types of traumatic brain injury and a major cause of unconsciousness and persistent vegetative state after head trauma. She also had a laceration on the back of her head that was about 12 inches long. Bella’s short term memory has suffered as a result. She woke up January 22, but was incapable of remembering anything until February 8.

“I don’t remember that weekend at all. The earliest memory I have before that is New Years.

I asked my mom multiple times ‘Why am I here?’ and because my memory was bad, she would just repeat that I’d been through a lot.”

Both Bella and her mom recall that there was one day where Shannon could tell that Bella was back. Even while she was under, when family and friends would touch Bella’s hand, she would

squeeze back.

“I could definitely tell the difference between when she was in the coma and when she was just sleeping” Shannon said. “I feel like she knew certain voices, like mine and my brother’s and sister’s. I feel like she did know, but because of the brain injury her short term memory is so affected. She would’ve known at the time, but it’s nothing she would remember afterwards.”

Initially it seemed that these were her only major injuries, but after a physical therapy session Bella realized there was something else that was terribly wrong.

“They had me get on all fours and I noticed that there was some pain in my right knee, and it immediately brought tears to my eyes. So I got an MRI on my knee, and [it turns out] I tore my MCL, PCL, and my meniscus,” she said.

Doctors predicted Bella would be in the hospital through March, but she surpassed many of the goals set for her, and was released at the end of February.

“Her recovery has been really rapid,” Shannon said. “There was a chance that she’d still be in a coma today; they just didn’t know. So the recoery is still ongoing, but the next year is where we will see the most changes.”

Bella credits the support of friends and family for keeping her mentally driven.

“I just set my mind to something. One day I was like, ‘I want to walk today,’ and I walked,” she

said. “But a lot of the challenges have been due to my lack of independence, just because I can’t get around without my mom.”

Her mom affirms that mobility and independence have been the biggest challenges, but she considers this experience to have brought them closer together.

“We have always had a good relationship. We’ve talked about, let’s say, if she were a boy, or if we didn’t have a good relationship, how much tougher this would be,” Shannon said. “It’s easy to kind of be upset that your life has taken a different track, but then it’s easy to be very grateful that you’re still here. You can be more grateful for smaller things now.”

Bella adds that she never would’ve appreciated a working knee before her accident. She also struggled with her emotions once she was taken off her medicine (which kept her emotions balanced). Recovering mentally was a challenge for both Bella and her mom.

“I had actually never been in a car accident and never pictured myself being in one, but of course getting in a car, there’s always that chance. You think about that, but never did I think something like that would happen,” Bella said. “But I hope because of my situation and people helping me so much that I have a future of helping people because it really did help me strive so much.”

april 29, 2016 13

GENERATION

xxx From Utah’s legislature to the cover of TIME magazine, Internet pornography’s effects on teenagers have entered the national debate stage.

By Celeste Chadwick & Madeline Deninger

This story addresses a mature subject and may be offensive to some readers.

14 Little Hawk Feature Magazine

U

tah’s Senate voted unanimously that the state was facing a public health crisis in February 2016. This “crisis”, however, is not a virus, a diseased crop, or a contaminated water source. The fear is of something affecting millions of teenagers across the country: Internet pornography.

By declaring porn a crisis, Utah’s Senate aims to protect children from the sexually explicit material that is so readily available on the Internet.

“As soon as young people get access to the Internet and they can move around the controls, they’re going to see it,” Wendy Maltz, a retired sex therapist and social worker and author of The Porntrap: Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography, said.

According to Pornhub’s annual report, the average age of first exposure to Internet pornography is 11, well before puberty for some children. Steve* was in seventh grade when he first encountered pornography.

“I faked being sick from school one day, and I was bored so I looked it up,” he said. “It was definitely not what I expected; it was better.”

Early exposure to pornography can influence the way a young person approaches sex.

“I would say that most gender studies scholars agree that mainstream pornography that is widely accessible and free is tremendously harmful,” Maryna Bazylevych, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Women and Gender Studies at Luther College, said. “It promotes objectification and degradation of women and piggy-backs on various oppressive regimes, such as sexism, patriarchy, racism, looksism, and ageism, among other things.”

Along with sex, teenagers’ romantic relationships can feel the effects of a view shaped by pornography. According to stoppornculture.org, 88.2 percent of top-rated pornographic scenes contain acts of aggression.

“What’s happening is you have a generation of young people who are getting that early exposure to pornography and then being handicapped when they start dating and want to develop a sexual relationship with another person,” Maltz said. “They get handicapped in terms of not having taken the time to learn about bodies, how to create a relationship, how to be tuned into another person, court-

ship skills. They end up mimicking what they’ve seen in porn, which is a very distorted perspective on sex.

It’s distorted toward aggression, degradation, exploitation, and even violence.”

For Steve, porn created unrealistic expectations about sex after being exposed to it at a young age.

“At first I thought that’s what sex was actually like,” he said. “It wasn’t until I discovered different kinds of porn in clearly staged situations that I realized that wasn’t the case.”

Pornography not only has ramifications for men, but for women as well.

“When girls are exposed to messages in which they see other women and girls being objectified, they are at risk of defining their own worth in terms of their appearance,” Melinda Green, Associate Professor of Psychology at Cornell College, said. “This is called self-objectification. Increased levels of self-objectification are associated with many significant negative psychological consequences including eating disorders, body dissatisfaction, anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem.”

Pornography is not a taboo topic for many teenagers. According to a survey conducted

by Barna Group published in the Washington Post, 90 percent of teenagers think about pornography in a neutral, accepting, or encouraging way.

“People are afraid to say they feel uncomfortable with pornography. I think there’s a sense sometimes that young people have that they’ll be seen as prudish or religious if they say they don’t like porn,” Maltz said.

These attitudes are a cause of concern for Maltz, who has worked with patients struggling with pornography addictions.

“I think you have to be really careful what you take into your eyes. We think in terms of what we take into our mouth in terms of drugs and what we ingest,” she said.

“You see something with your eyes when you’re looking at pornography that goes directly to your central nervous system and affects your sexual arousal directly. You have to think in terms of what you are ingesting with your eyes that’s

*name has been changed to protect privacy

“YOU SEE SOMETHING WITH YOUR EYES WHEN YOU’RE LOOKING AT PORNOGRAPHY THAT GOES DIRECTLY TO YOUR CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM AND AFFECTS YOUR SEXUAL AROUSAL DIRECTLY. YOU HAVE TO THINK IN TERMS OF WHAT YOU ARE INGESTING WITH YOUR EYES THAT’S IMPACTING YOUR BODY.” WENDY MALTZ

impacting your body.”

Research conducted by the National Institute of Health has indicated that pornography can stimulate the brain’s pleasure centers in the same way that cocaine and opioids do. Viewing pornography triggers a dopaminergic response that causes a person to feel positive emotion and a desire to seek out the activity again.

Because sex is an essential part of human survival, the brain’s reward centers react to pornography in the same way they would to foods high in fats or sugar, which are also essential for survival. In the same way that an obese person can demonstrate an addiction to food, pornography can become an addiction, a topic explored in the 2013 movie Don Jon. “Even with a pack of cigarettes, there’s a warning label that says ‘Caution: This can be addictive. It can cause harm to you. You can get lung cancer.’

There’s no warning on pornography. There’s no body that regulates it,” Maltz said.

U.S. law prohibits minors from viewing any kind of pornographic material. However, keeping it out of reach of children can prove difficult, and determining what does and does not qualify as pornograpny isn’t always black and white.

Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Potter Stewart famously said in 1964 that he can’t define pornography, but that he “knows it when he sees it.” “[Accessing porn] is really easy,” Steve said. “Honestly, it’s a little too easy.”

Part of the Utah Senate’s efforts are driven by a motive to require Internet providers to allow pornograpny only through an opt-in basis. This effort will not be made without opposition. Pornography defendants express that they have a First Amendment right to produce content without restrictions. Passed in 1998, the Children’s Online Protection Act (COPA) required distributors of content deemed harmful to minors, including pornography, to take measures to restrict access to the underaged.

The act was eventually overturned in 2009 after the Supreme Court litigated it three times.

“If it was a neighbor who was showing pornography,

april 29, 2016 15

the exact type of pornography [teenagers] are seeing online, to someone under 18, they would go to jail as a sexual perpetrator. So how come this is happening and it’s so tolerable and even facilitated?”

Maltz said.

The pornography industry has

16 Little Hawk Feature Magazine

turned into a multi-billion dollar business. In the United States alone, annual pornography revenue is $13 billion, and it continues to grow. New content is being produced every day; a new adult video comes out every 39 minutes in the United States.

With over 107 million visitors to adult sites every month, online pornography’s prevalence is due in part to the Internet Age. However, Maltz doesn’t believe that society’s views have necessarily changed.

“Everyone’s taking selfies and posting things on Instagram. Is

that to say that people are more inclined to take pictures of themselves, or that they’re just more able to take pictures of themselves?” she said. “I think that technology has created a revolution in sexuality that’s relating with a product, pornography, over a person.”

The Greening m ov e m e n t

By Olivia Parrott

The United States is split on what has been called the top global threat: climate change. Iowa is in the same position, but teachers at City High are working to change this. april 29, 2016 17

D

espite the fact that 97 percent of the scientific community believes in human-caused global warming, 19.7 percent of Iowa science teachers believe climate change should be taught as fact and counterevidence should be refuted, according to a survey reported by IowaWatch.org from a survey by Cedar Falls High School.

City High science teachers are working towards thorough climate science education in order to inform the generation that will deal with its effects.

“Every single student becomes a voter. Every single student is a consumer,” City High science teacher Kevin Koepnick said. “And we can’t possibly have an educated populace that is able to make responsible choices if they don’t understand what’s happening in the world around them. That is not a political statement. That is simply a statement of scientific literacy.”

Although most U.S. science teachers address climate change, according to a February 12, 2016 study by Science Magazine, lack of training in new climate change science inhibits effective education.

The study attributed minimal to limited school budgets, political opposition, and an insufficient grasp of the science. The study also found that teachers are intimidated by the conceptually difficult and controversial topic, partially because in the United States, new science recommendations include a Common Core of English and math skills that many states can’t meet.

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) were developed several years ago by 26 states and have been adopted by 16 states.

These, along with the Iowa Core, are the only teaching standards.

Adopted by the ICCSD, the standards serve as guidelines for what each student should learn in their science classes by the end of their high school career. They fit the de-

18 Little Hawk Feature Magazine

scription Science Magazine called for to improve teachers’ knowledge: “teacher-tested, standardsaligned educational materials that document the basis for the scientific consensus about human-caused climate change.”

“NGSS is actually very well written,” Koepnick said. “It’s very strong in what we should make sure that everyone is exposed to.

It’s not about climate change; it’s about planetary systems. It’s about, ‘This is how the system works.’ We understand how the system works: If you push this button, this happens. We’re pushing the carbon dioxide button,” he said. “It really is a system, and you can’t change it.

There are things about the systems that we have to try to help people understand.”

According to the Science survey, only 30 percent of the 1500 teachers said they emphasized that global warming is “likely due to natural causes.”

Only 30 percent of middle school teachers and 45 percent of high school teachers correctly identified the degree of consensus of the scientific community of human activity as the predominant cause of global warming as 81 percent to 100 percent.

Koepnick is part of the minority who teaches without mixed messages that climate change is human-caused. He also spends five weeks of his AP Biology class teaching about climate change, well over the one-to-two-hour average of science teachers across the country.

“I use every possible tool [to teach about climate change]; I use data sets from NASA, NOAA (Na-

tional Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), and the National Parks Service. We do our own studies based on those publicly available data sets. We use every possible thing,” Koepnick said.

“Arguably, because of the effect of climate change on the ecosystems around the world, the entire AP Biology ecology unit—which is actually two units—is either directly or indirectly focused on climate change. It’s just unavoidable.”

City High science teacher Mary Lestina also teaches the scientific consensus: the fact that the Anthropocene, an epoch that started around 1960, is seeing the largest release of greenhouse gases recorded in history. In two of her classes, Weather & Climate and Ecology, she emphasizes student-led research.

“The students really behave like scientists,” Lestina said. “They look at the temperatures and see what’s happening over time.We focus globally, but we break it down into how [climate has] been changing individually in different areas. The amazing thing that they come to the conclusion about is that even though [the planet has] just been rising a few degrees Celsius globally over the Anthropocene, globally [temperature] is increasing 10 degrees here, or decreasing five degrees here, and so we’re getting more dramatic changes,” she said. “And so they start to see that those slight changes are really a bigger picture and pattern in different parts of the world.”

Although Laura Cornell ‘16 hasn’t taken either of Koepnick’s or Lestina’s classes, she feels she found

“THE STUDENTS ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR RIGHT NOW.” MARY LESTINA

more instruction from the news than from her biology class. Cornell volunteers with the nonprofit organization NextGen Climate, which works with community members and politicians to find solutions to climate change.

“I remember being appalled by the statistics I learned about pollution in a video we watched in biology, but that’s all I really remember about learning about climate change in school,” she said. “The news has given me greater confidence to talk about climate change than school.”

Both Lestina and Koepnick see the effects of global warming as a major problem for future generations and feel every student should be educated about climate change in order to create solutions instead of exacerbating the problem.

I think it’s really important because it impacts [the students] dramatically,” Lestina said. “We’re a part of the generation that is observing the changes, and the students are a part of the generation that’s going to have to make the changes to alter what’s going on with climate change right now.

The students are the most important factor right now,” she said. “If we don’t address it with them, then they don’t know what potential impact they’ll have in the future too.”

On April 10, 2015, for the second time in five months, West Virginia altered its standards to consider doubts about the scientific consensus in its method of climate teaching. This came after a contention the previous year which modified the state’s Next Generation Science Standards.

This is a common phenomenon among states whose economies depend on coal, oil, and gas profits—commodities known to emit greenhouse gases. Political actions and statements of value commitment about climate change education in these states may be laced with profit motives.

Cornell comments on these overt actions from coal, oil, and gas companies.

“Their actions are criminal,” Cornell said. “To profit from destruction of the earth and endangering of people’s health is so shameful.”

Koepnick uses his expertise in the science field to explain a political controversy that he says has no room for debate.

“The causes of climate change are simple: We’re taking carbon that nature sequestered hundreds of thousands of feet underground hundreds of millions of years ago, and releasing that carbon into the atmosphere much, much, much more quickly than it could ever be released into the atmosphere by nature,” he said. “That causes an increase in the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide absorbs heat. It’s just a heat sink, it’s just a specific heat problem right out of your Honors Chemistry exam. The climate can’t not warm.

Whatever people want to say about cycles and nature, the nature of the chemistry of the atmosphere is that if you do this, it must warm; it can’t do anything else.”

Teachers may be teaching mixed information or misinformation because fewer than half of U.S. science teachers received formal climate science education in college. Koepnick and Lestina both received formal climate education and work to stay educated on the subject.

“I read everything. I study everything. I watch everything,” Koepnick said. “I have a head start on some people because my background is in the sciences, and so that means that I maybe understand things at a different level.”

Koepnick recognizes the struggle many people from his generation have with grasping the science and concepts of climate change.

Only 50 percent of U.S. adults believe human activity is the predominant cause of climate change,

the lowest of 20 countries surveyed, according to a February 2016 study from Science magazine.

“What we also have to keep in mind is that I am your parents’ age.

None of this was understood when we were in high school, so everything that everyone has to learn about this has to be from science that is within the last 30 years. Most people who are voting haven’t been in the classroom in that long,” he said. “There’s no reason that they should understand it if it’s presented to them by people who have an agenda. And if that agenda is making money, or getting your vote for some other reason, you’re not necessarily going to get the whole story.”

The evolving nature of climate science means continuing teacher education is essential, especially when climate change misinformation also comes in the form of “global warming skeptic org an i z at i ons ,” a term used by the Union of Concerned Scientists to describe prominent organizations “actively working to sow doubt about the facts of global warming.”

These organizations, key players in the fossil fuel industry which are acting off of the principle of profit, seek to misinform the public about global warming to delay action on climate change.

“When things are reported in the news, it’s important to remember that the reporters very seldom have any background in the sciences at all,” Koepnick said. “People could get wrong conclusions and end up disbelieving science when they [have the science] explained

by someone who didn’t even understand it to begin with.”

In order to evolve the education with the climate science, and as a response to the Next Generation Science Standards, the ICCSD curriculum will be overhauled beginning next school year. The goal is to implement a different course sequence starting in two years.

“There are standards that we need to make sure that every single graduate has been at least exposed to, if not mastered,” Koepnick said.

“Everyone’s doing it now, but it’s going to become much, much more overt and in-print where people can easily see it. There’s change on the horizon.”

Cornell believes the ICCSD could do a more thorough job of educating its students about climate change.

“We could focus more on humans’ role in climate change and alternative energy solutions,” Cornell said. “This issue doesn’t have to be partisan at all. The district has absolutely no reason to resist teaching it in fear of ‘leaning left.’”

In addition to changes to the science curriculum, the One UN Climate Change Learning Partnership, which was launched at the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Summit, is a collaborative initiative which supports countries in designing and implementing solutions to climate change. The initiative calls for a holistic approach to the subject, drawing upon subjects like economics, culture, policy, law, and sociology.

“I think we should definitely talk about the effects of environ-

“THERE’S NO REASON THAT THEY SHOULD UNDERSTAND [CLIMATE CHANGE] IF IT’S PRESENTED TO THEM BY PEOPLE WHO HAVE AN AGENDA.” KEVIN KOEPNIK

mental policy in government classes and how climate change disproportionately affects people in poverty in the U.S. and especially in third-world countries,” Cornell said.

Koepnick agrees in that climate change escapes the realm of science when it begins to permeate quality of life.

“It’s one of those things that’s so pervasive in biology as soon as you begin to look outside cells and individuals, and begin to look at systems that involve people,” Koepnick said. “The population unit in Introduction to Biology and AP Biology—the effect of climate change is inescapable when you consider how rapidly the world’s population is increasing, and how many billions of people live within five or six feet of current sea levels.”

However, Koepnick emphasizes the importance of foundational learning to give context to a subject that is “conceptually difficult.”

“Do I think that in life science climate change is a vitally important topic? Yeah, but I also think inheritance is pretty important too,” he said. “We have to try to devote an appropriate amount of time to everything. If you don’t understand basic planetary science and some basics of population biology and some basics of evolutionary biology, climate change doesn’t matter to you. There’s no reason why it should, because you can’t see any of the outcomes of climate change,” he said. “If you know a little bit about populations and how they grow, if you know a little bit about extinction, then all of a sudden you realize that a warming atmosphere means a warming ocean, and warming ocean changes weather patterns, weather patterns affect where crops can grow and the sea level, then all of a sudden you start to see that this is a complex picture, and that the outcome isn’t the same for everybody.”

april 29, 2016 19

UP TO BIG THINGS

Katrina Scandrett class of 2015

20 Little Hawk Feature Magazine

Beauty School QUEEN

Last year’s homecoming queen is now training at the Aveda Institute in Des Moines.

By Caroline Brown

S

ince she was a little girl, Katrina Scandrett ‘15 has always loved styling hair, from braiding her little sister’s hair at eight years old to giving her friends updos for prom at 18. But it wasn’t until December of her senior year that she decided it was a possible career choice.

“I was debating between going to a fouryear college for elementary education or going to Aveda, and I really just couldn’t decide. I kind of knew deep down that I wanted to do hair, but I didn’t think that realistically it was a career for me,” Scandrett said. “I didn’t think I would be successful, and I didn’t really understand what I was getting into.”

After visiting a career fair, Scandrett became far more interested in what beauty school had to offer. Looking back on her choice, she describes knowing that it was the right one.

“I was always that person who offered to do other people’s hair just because I really liked doing it,” she said. “When you find what you love to do, it just feels right. When I came to Aveda, all of my stress and anxiety went away and I felt like who I really was.”

Last October, Scandrett began training at the Aveda institute in Des Moines, Iowa, to become a licensed cosmetologist. It is about a 15 month program which consists of seven phases.

“In each phase you have class days, and you have clinic floor days, and you have intro.

Right now I am in the third phase, and it was all on color and chemicals,” Scandrett said.

“So we did a lot of perms and relaxers and tons of hair color. There’s a cutting phase, a spa phase… Intro covers everything.Then we have two phases [that are] just reviewing for

the Iowa State Boards. Another one we have is for building up your resume and figuring out where you want to go. They really try to help us network and get a job before we are finished with school.”

Initially, Scandrett chose to train at Aveda because it is a higher end of the industry. However, throughout her training, she describes having fallen in love with what Aveda stands for. Aveda’s mission is to stay environmentally healthy, and 98 percent of Aveda’s products are naturally derived, according to their website.

“We did a lot of practice on each other and on our manikins of people with different hair situations and different stylings and how you can mix different products together for each unique type of hair, and texture, and what they’re looking for. That’s when I started to realize, ‘Wow, these products actually work,’” Scandrett said. “Aveda itself is all about enhancing your natural beauty; it’s enhancing all you are. The idea is not that you need these products to make yourself look good, but that you already look good, and Aveda is helping you to look even better.”

The Aveda Institute describes their mission “to care for the world we live in” not only with the products they endorse, but by giving back to society as a whole. Scandrett elaborates that a portion of the profit from the Aveda’s products goes towards providing clean water for impoverished countries.

“During Earth Month (April) we also do fundraising. We have this huge fashion show and all of the money goes towards Earth Month,” she said. “Aveda as a corporation does this, it’s not just our institute.”

Another benefit to having naturally derived

products is that it is less damaging on customers’ hair. Scandrett believes this is an asset no other beauty line is able to offer.

“Instead of chemicals ruining your hair, natural flower and plant essences actually protect it because it’s all-natural, and it is earth friendly,” she said. “I didn’t like the way it smelled at first because I was all into the synthetic stuff, but now I love it. The one thing I struggle with is that because it’s all-natural, it’s really hard to get unnatural colors into people’s hair, like bright purples, pink, orange and blue.

So if I could change anything about Aveda, it would be adding a line for those [colors] that’s more about fashion than being natural.”

Scandrett discloses that the greatest challenge of studying beauty is the judgment that comes with it.

“I think there’s this stereotype that if you’re in beauty school you’re dumb,” she said. “But a lot of people don’t even know all of the training we go through, especially at Aveda. There’s the Aveda curriculum and there’s the Iowa State curriculum which is just the standard cosmetology program. So there are a lot of things we are learning, and it’s very tricky and so much harder than I thought it would be. There are a lot of people who think that it isn’t a real job, but everyone needs a haircut.

Everyone get’s their hair cut. Hair stylists will be needed for a long time.”

Once she has completed school, Scandrett plans to leave Iowa.

“Right now I am thinking Minneapolis.

I have visited Chicago, and I’m about to visit Omaha,” she said. “I wanna be on the more upscale end of things and be in an Aveda salon for sure.”

april 29, 2016 21

Cora Bern-Klug Class of 2015

22 Little Hawk Feature Magazine

Cora Bern-Klug ‘15 has been volunteering in the dense rain forests of Ecuador for the past 3 months, gaining strength, knowledge, and a broader view of the world.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CORA BERN-KLUG

Cora the Explorer

S

tories and images of books falling off of shelves, buildings crumbling to just their foundations, and landslides taking everything in their path filled Cora Bern-Klug’s Facebook timeline while taking a quick visit back home from Ecuador.

“I couldn’t really believe [the news of the earthquake]. My grandma actually died so that’s why I’m here [in Iowa City],” Bern-Klug said on April 18th. “If she wouldn’t have died I would have been 30 miles away from the epicenter of the earthquake. So she’s really looking out for me.”

None of Bern-Klug’s friends were hurt, but aftershocks have been sporadically felt.

Authorities report that the death count has reached 570 and is predicted to rise. In response, the World Food Program, a United Nations supported initiative, has donated enough food for 8,000 people in the heaviesthit areas.

“I’ve never been to any place that had a connection to a natural disaster,” she said.

“I’ve been to some of the cities [in Ecuador] that were hit and it is just weird to have a connection to a place now. ” Bern-Klug is a volunteer for a program called Un Poco del Chocό at a rainforest preserve that contains the rare banded ground coocoo. Birders flock to the preserve to feed the birds and see their unique dance. Volunteers like Bern-Klug are needed to keep paths clear, make trials, and keep up various gardens around the preserve.

On a typical day, Bern-Klug wakes up at 7:30, eats a breakfast consisting of bread, jam, and cream cheese, and then starts working at 8 clearing areas or building various things such as stair cases. She works with an Ecuadorian man named Christian from a local town. “[Christian and I] are pretty close. I speak only Spanish with him everyday. [He speaks

By Lucy McGehee fast] sometimes and I don’t catch on,” BernKlug said. “I’m actually starting to understand what he’s talking about most of the time now.”

According to the World Bank, in 2010 32.8 percent of the population in Ecuador was living below the poverty line. That percentage has decreased to 22.5, which indicates that Ecuador’s economy is improving. In addition, Bern-Klug noted that the transportation system in larger cities, such as the capital city Quito, is very good. For just $2.25 she traveled from central Quito to the airport on the outskirts of the city.

“The poverty level is not as bad as I thought it would be,” Bern-Klug said. “The infrastructure is really good. They’re really stepping it up, but now with this earthquake I’m worried they’re going to lose some of [the progress].”

Bern-Klug still notices that poverty is evident in certain areas, however.

“I was at Christian’s house and his mom was cooking us breakfast and their kitchen consisted of two gas things [stoves] with a few pots and pans and a few this and thats.

Christian made the table that they had out of wood,” she said. “Their sink was outside, and their toilet is underneath their house.”

The attitude in Ecuador is very positive, despite having very little in some aspects, notes Bern-Klug.

“Our neighbor who is a 15-minute walk away doesn’t own a car and doesn’t have a stove, just a wood-burning fireplace that they cook all their stuff on,” Bern-Klug said. “He just has a lot of fruit, but you know, everyone’s just so damn happy.”

To raise enough for a budget of $95 a week that includes a living space, food, and reliable running water, Bern-Klug worked for Active Endeavors and Hoover’s before and afterschool program before her departure. “[I don’t pay] as much as the other students, who pay around $150 a week,” she said.

“Where we are the running water is reliable and hot, but in the closest town about an hour away I have some friends that live there and they say you get running water for an hour a day and it’s usually cold.”

Another important element in preparation was language. Bern-Klug took Spanish in elementary school, junior high, and high school.

In addition, she also used the app Duolingo to brush up her Spanish skills. Even with all of these provisions, she still has found some aspects of Ecuadorian life hard to adjust to.

“The food has been the hardest adjustment. We have a lot of processed food in America. [In Ecuador] we eat vegetables and rice and pasta and that’s it. So for the first month I had a very upset stomach,” she said.

“Also, this is just a me thing, but I can’t wash my clothes—I wash it all by hand there—so everything just seems perpetually dirty, so that kind of sucks. But other than that it has been good.”

Bern-Klug lives with three students that study biology.

“They’re all kind of crazy-kooky-sciency, but they’re also just pretty fabulous people.

I’ve gotten close with the two from Holland.

One’s like an older brother. We give each other a lot of crap.”

Before senior year, Bern-Klug made the decision that she would take a gap year between high school and college.

“I really liked high school, but I kind of felt like I put way too much effort into high school,” Bern-Klug said. “I knew the woman that works at the preserve and I was just like ‘Hey, can I come down?’ and she was like ‘Yeah.’ And then I was like ‘Here I am.’ It’s definitely one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.”

Bern-Klug will be in Ecuador for a month and a half longer. Upon returning, she plans to hang out with friends and attend the University of Iowa to study elementary education.

april 29, 2016 23