Lunar New Year celebrated on campus

was very impressed with how fast the students were able to learn the steps and formations.”

On January 19, a Lunar New Year event was hosted on campus near the pancake. Running around the pancake, Ms. Kline’s students performed a beautiful dragon dance.

“I was really nervous at first,” freshman Joanne Ly said. “But after a while, I got used to the crowd and had a lot of fun. I got to interact with a lot of other students during the performance”

There was a planned 45 minutes for the performers to learn and practice. But, the dragon dance teacher and others from the cultural association took a while to check in since it was their first time visiting the campus. Being delayed, the performers were only given around 20 minutes to learn and rehearse the dragon dance, which was new to most of them.

“The students were able to learn it quickly and did an awesome job performing,” Kline said. “The dragon dance teacher

Kline and many students were excited to see an event like this on campus. Lunar New Year is the biggest celebration in most Asian countries and in the Asian American community.

“I was surprised when I first saw the dragon dance performance. I did not expect that schools in the US actually celebrate Lunar New Year,” sophomore Lily Tong said. “I, absolutely, fell in love with the Chinese calligraphy table at first sight. As someone who used to practice at a young age, I was magnetized because I missed the feeling of writing on red paper with a Chinese brush.”

Since October, Ms. Kline, Ms. Stone, Mr. Toribio, and Ms. Chu, have been working together to make this event come together. They got in contact with the Culture Center of Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles to help arrange this event, who were happy to help them celebrate Lunar New Year.

They set up tables for students to try Chinese calligraphy and had presentation boards that explained Lunar New Year. There were also speakers that explained the significance of the dragon.

“[The pitch was] received by Ms. Stone and Mr. Toribio with great enthusiasm and support,” Kline said. “[They] have expressed great interest to have this event again next year.”

According to Cal Matters, California’s Covid State of Emergency was declared about three years ago and has been renewed five times throughout the pandemic. Now, Newsom believes that California has enough resources to survive the pandemic without the State of Emergency: “With the operational preparedness that we’ve built up and the measures that we’ll continue to employ moving forward, California is ready to phase out [the State of Emergency],” Newsom said, according to Cal Matters.

Californian floods

BY STELLA CHEN

From the end of December to mid-January, California had been flooding, a result of climate change and atmospheric rivers colliding. As greenhouse gases trap the Sun’s heat, the warmer air is capable of holding more moisture. Because of intense rains, parts of Northern California, Southern California, and California Central Coast have been flooding. President Biden declared a major disaster declaration as a result of the intense rain — the damages’ cost has risen up to the billions and at least 19 were killed. It is likely that California’s intense weather — dry droughts, heavy rains, and heat waves — will continuously worsen.

Nuclear fusion ignition achieved in laboratory

BY JACOB GUTIERREZ

On Dec. 13, the United States Department of Energy announced that fusion ignition had been achieved in the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California. Fusion ignition is a major breakthrough in the field of fusion power, as it produces more energy than is required to sustain the reaction itself. Fusion energy, unlike nuclear fission energy (used in nuclear power plants), cannot fail in dangerous meltdown events, and unlike fossil fuels, does not produce carbon dioxide. The development of fusion technology has been cited by many as a solution to problems posed by various types of modern energy sources such as the inconsistency of solar and wind power, atmospheric harm from fossil fuels, and danger of radioactive waste from nuclear power plants.

Iwas never really the best at drawing. It wasn’t until seventh grade that I started doing graphic design for fun.

I wanted to get into live streaming games, but I wanted to make my stream layout look nicer first. I followed YouTube tutorials and recreated those designs. One layer at a time, I got familiar with Photoshop and developed an eye for design. I made posts where other streamers could ask me to make them free graphics for their streams. I didn’t care about the money at the time; I just wanted to have fun while helping others.

In March of 2020, quarantine began. With this sudden abundance of free time, I spent most of my days doing what I love. From spending more time with my family, to making more and more graphics, it felt like free time I never had much of. Although I had a lot of fun creating graphics for free, I also wanted to make money in order to buy a new guitar. I started by putting up commission information on Fiverr, but my progress felt too slow. I moved to Reddit, where I found most of my success. The forum was much more specific to my niche. Throughout quarantine, I spent nearly every day working on commissions.

My Junior year started and I knew that this would be the year where I would have to show colleges my passion. I was looking for internships related to my future career path. As I was walking to the career center to print something, I stumbled upon a flier about a Website Designer internship. Being a Full Stack Developer is my current goal and this seemed to be the perfect fit. It was looking for a designer, but was also going to teach them how to code through the internship. Knowing that this was a rare opportunity, I applied. I sent in my resume and asked the school’s career counselor for tips. A few days later, I was accepted, which made me ecstatic.

Although making graphics for others and working on my internship was fun, I also still have a passion for working on my own projects. My current project is a website that teaches English speakers how to speak Cantonese; many of my friends wanted to learn, but were frustrated with the lack of online resources. I felt the need to solve this problem. But, working on this project made me realize that I had very limited knowledge of programming and it would not be enough to make this big project happen. As a result, I started taking many courses, such as Harvard’s CS50W, which helped me gain more experience.

In the end, I did not decide on making graphic design a career, but I am glad that my current career choice utilizes it. I could both apply my creativity, and help my community at once.