September 2021

TJTODAY vol 7 issue 1 sept. 2021

thomas jefferson high school for science and technology 6560 braddock rd. alexandria, va 22312

NEW YEAR They thought they would be losing a year socially, but with the help of virtual platforms, students from the Class of 2024 forged lasting friendships anyway. Now, they’re ready to see those bonds translate into inperson school.

new reality

ABSTRACT On Jefferson’s practice field, seniors Drew Kim and Caroline Chen rehearse choreography for the couples section of MEX. “I’m really excited for couples MEX because of the great job our choreographers did!” Kim said. “This is my third time in MEX and the entire performance definitely feels more special this time since it’s my class’s last year at TJ.” PHOTO // E. Lee

STAFF EDITORIAL BOARD

Print & Online Editors-in-Chief Broadcast Executive Producer Team Leaders Aafreen Ali Annika Duneja Anuj Khemka Rachel Lewis Christina Lu Nathan Mo

Sahishnu Hanumansetty Elaine Li

Social Media Manager Yoo-Bin Kwon

Eric Feng Aarya Kumar Sai Mattapalli Robert Stotz

Advisor: Erinn Harris tjTODAY is the official newsmagazine of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. The staff is deeply committed to a code of journalistic ethics that demands the exercise of accuracy, good judgment, and impartiality. The content of tjTODAY is determined by the editorial board. Unsigned

editorials reflect the majority opinion of the staff of tjTODAY, but not necessarily the opinions of individual editors.

The tjTODAY staff would like to thank the Jefferson community for coming together to work towards a return to normalcy and helping us better tell your stories.

tjtoday.tjhsst @tjhsst_media

@tjtoday_news

tjTODAY

CONTENTS tjTODAY vol. 7 issue 1

sept. 2021

6 8

4 cover story 06

PIXELS TO PEOPLE Class of 2024 students carry friendships made through social media and virtual class over to an in-person learning environment

features 04

CRACKING THE CODE Senior Lauren Delwiche breaks down gender barriers in computer science, becoming the first female lead sysadmin at Jefferson

sports 08

UP TO THE ULTIMATE CHALLENGE Senior Kareem Jaber turns his ultimate frisbee playing experience into amateur coaching for Jefferson’s league-less club team

entertainment 10 SHANG-CHI AND THE AGE-OLD BATTLE BETWEEN MONEY AND RESTRAINT Entertainment reporter Max Vetter reviews the latest Marvel movie, ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.’

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Delwiche works on hardware and manages the servers in the syslab. “As sysadmin leads we’re also in charge of directing the team and spending more time with the hardware,” senior and sysadmin co-lead Shreyas Mayya said. PHOTO //Christina Lu

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The responsibilities of a lead sysadmin include the constant monitoring of sites and requests. “When I was a sysadmin, I was in charge of Ion, so if the mail servers went down, that was somebody else’s problem. Now, as a lead sysadmin, I’m responsible for both,” Delwiwche said. PHOTO //Christina Lu

en I was a m. Now, as a

CRACKING CODE

SCI-TECH 5

by Sai Mattapalli and Robert Stotz

Senior Lauren Delwiche breaks down gender barriers in computer science, becoming the first female lead sysadmin at Jefferson

E

THE

ntering the program for the first time was terrifying. It wasn’t the content. It wasn’t the nerves. It was the environment. To walk into a lab full of men, you don’t see yourself anywhere.

admin event was the beginning of a According to her, the lack of female deeper investment into the areas I was sysadmins in the past isn’t because interested in,” Delwiche said. of a gap in knowledge or skill, but because students are anxious about This pursuit slowly but surely protreading into environments where they gressed. Joining clubs such as Cyber- aren’t represented.

Patriots, this investment in computer Three years ago, Lauren “If you’re a freshman or sophomore science led to the development of a Delwiche was a freshman navi- passion in Delwiche. interested in becoming a sysadmin, gating the predominantly-male then do it. Females are just as good at conditions of Jefferson’s sysad“I think my entire freshman year CS as guys. There’s no actual differmin program. Today, she is has I wouldn’t have called myself a ‘CS ence in skill, only in confidence. We secured her spot as not only the kid.’ Once I hit sophomore year, it just had our understudy program last 38th lead sysadmin, but also the was a combination of participating in year, and had one female who joined first female sysadmin lead in the Cyberpatriots and my work with the us there: I want to see that number program’s history. sysadmins: my motivation kept accel- grow,” Delwiche said. erating,” Delwiche said.

LEARNING CS

Computer science was a fairly new concept to Delwiche as she entered Jefferson. Having only had a year of experience, Delwiche went out on a limb and self-studied her way to the top, and eventually, higher.

“I ended up taking the skip test kind of on a whim, and I actually passed. It was my APCS teacher freshman year who told me sysadmins were looking for people. Showing up to the sys-

ONE OF A KIND

Even as Delwiche moved up in the sysadmin program, she couldn’t shake the feeling of individuality within the space. Both as an understudy and a sysadmin, the lack of females in her line of work made any personal end goals entirely uncharted.

SETTING AN EXAMPLE

Despite not having a female role model to work towards, Delwiche managed to make history within Jefferson. Now, she strives to be that role model for rising female leaders to look up to.

“I am living proof that if you’re passionate about something, then it “That is a big thing for me, to be doesn’t matter what gender you are. that representation. For some young- You can work hard. You can be in that er females who are interested in CS, position. You can do it,” Delwiche having that model is very important,” said.

Delwiche said.

com

f virtual

wisdom

B

iology teacher Kathleen Morrow used group projects, jokes, and fun assignments to foster in-class interactions, but it was the students who ultimately made the difference.

“Some students were very quiet at the beginning of the year, but they ended up becoming friends with more extroverted students,” Morrow said.

“I love that about TJ. Extroverted students don’t just play together, they actually pull in the introverts and make friends with them.”

PIXELS TO

PEOPLE

By Anuj Khemka, Aafreen Ali, Nathan Mo, & Annika Duneja

During the pandemic, sophomores Melissa Brown, Zumi Rieske, Ishara Shanmugasundaram, Medha Gupta, Yasmin Kudrati-Plummer, and Erin Chen (top left to bottom right) developed their relationships on Discord calls PHOTO// Zumi Rieske

Class of 2024 students carry friendships made through virtual platforms over to an in-person learning environment

A

t first, for sophomore Ishara Shanmugasundaram, the person about to walk by her is just another face in a mask. There’s something familiar about their round glasses and the dark bangs, but Shanmugasundaram can’t pinpoint it. The person stops and stares at her for a second, and flashes a curious look.

Then it clicks.

It’s sophomore Melissa Brown, a once-virtual friend, forged through hours of Messenger chats and Discord calls. Shanmugasundaram and Brown have only seen each other on computer screens and smartphones, but as the pair move closer together, conversation rife with inside jokes spills out. And when they throw their heads back in laughter, they appear lifelong friends.

“I remember the first time I saw Mel in person, I did not recognize her at all, and I felt so stupid.

But then after that, it was like, ‘I know this person so well, there’s no reason for me to feel awkward around you,’” Shanmugasundaram said.

First Meetings

Even after a year filled with gray icons and silent breakout rooms, students in the Class of 2024 found ways to connect with each other. Brown and Shanmugasundaram— along with fellow sophomores Medha Ghattu, Zumi Riekse, Yasmin Kudrati-Plummer, and Erin Chen — form a group of six friends who have their origins in the Class of 2024 Discord server.

“I met all these people [through messaging them] and realized, ‘Wait, even though we’re online, I can still make friends,’ and we formed a friend group,” Kudrati-Plummer said. “We have good energy. We all

COVER STORY 7 know how to bounce off each other in a way.”

After messaging each other individually, the six friends made a group chat together and eventually decided to watch an animated television series called ‘Winx Club.’ It was through ‘Winx’ that their group dynamic sprouted wings and took off.

“We watched one episode but it was so bad. It was more like a joke, like ‘let’s watch the Winx Club’ and we just never did,” Chen said.

“They’re our [shared] childhood memories.”

Growing Closer

The sophomore six soon became virtually inseparable.

They played truth or truth (dare wasn’t possible) so many times that everyone soon knew each other too

well to continue. They spammed their chats with inside jokes and details about every day. And when classes allowed for it, the group hopped on joint Discord calls to listen to Olivia Rodrigo’s newest hits.

“It’s just nice to have someone that you can talk to when you’re online and more than just for class,” Riekse said. “It’s great to have people who you genuinely enjoy talking to and who can be your friends.”

Beyond the online platforms at their disposal, the flexibility of virtual learning meant that the group could talk to each other anytime they wanted. Whether it was 3 p.m. or 1 a.m., the six set group chats and calls alight with their constant chatter.

“If we have a problem or we don’t know something or we need help with something, we can go to each

other and we’ll know that there’s always someone to help,” Riekse said.

In-person Dynamic

Though the group has had trouble finding times to meet in-person so far during the school year, they remain as close as ever. Encounters in the hallway and during lunch show no sign of the discomfort that may come with the transition from pixels to in-person.

“With some people, who they are online and who they are in person is totally different,” Shanmugasundaram said. “But with these people, I’ve talked to them so much about myself and they’ve also talked to me so much that I feel like I know them so well.”

From left to right: Erin Chen, Yasmin Kudrati-Plummer, Melissa Brown, Ishara Shanmugasundaram, Medha Ghattu, and Zumi Riekse

At the 2021 Virginia High School State Competition, senior Kareem Jaber rifles the frisbee past a Marshall High School player.

“The main thing about [ultimate frisbee] is just having fun. There’s not as much competition [as] there [is] sometimes in football or other sports,” Jaber said.

PHOTO // K. LeClaire.

up to the

ULTIMATE Senior Kareem Jaber turns his ultimate frisbee playing experience into amateur coaching for a league-less team of Jefferson students

T

he first blow came on Aug. 23.

Longtime coach and former professional ultimate frisbee player Jared Seyler notified an ultimate frisbee team comprised of Jefferson students that he would have to give up his role for the season.

Then, on Sept. 2, even worse news: the team couldn’t compete against other schools because they didn’t have enough girls to participate in Fairfax Ultimate’s fall mixed-team league.

With just 10 days before the intended fall season start date, the team found themselves without a coach, a league, or any idea of how to fix their issues.

challenge

by Aarya Kumar and Eric Feng

Fast-forward to the present, though, doing,” Jaber said. and the team hasn’t crumbled under Jaber teaches the team skills, organizthe unfortunate turn of events — far es drills, and shares his personal game from it. Twice a week, the disc still flies experience. Months of playing in sumfrom one end of the field to another. mer youth leagues and adult leagues A STUDENT STEPS IN helped Jaber develop the skills needed At the core of the team’s resilience is to coach Jefferson’s amateur team. senior Kareem Jaber: player, captain, “I have enough knowledge to create a and, all of a sudden, coach. The twogeneric plan to run practices. The main and-half year ultimate frisbee veteran focus is to get fundamentals down, and was thrust into the role when the team then we’ll focus on a few drills that the failed to find a suitable adult replaceteam struggles to perform,” Jaber said. ment for Seyler.

Without a competitive scholastic “I’m kind of just throwing myself league for Jefferson to compete in, into open water with a bunch of Jaber and other members of the sharks, trying to figure out what I’m

SPORTS 9 team play instead in a five-onfive league, which has matches on Sunday afternoons. Though Jaber sometimes plays against his Jefferson teammates, he still provides feedback to the team when coaching practice.

“After a point is scored, I’ll stop for a second and ask [the team] what went well and what didn’t.

Sometimes I’ll have them go back to where they were, and we’ll walk through where we could improve,” Jaber said.

COLLABORATIVE COACHING Jaber’s actions have not gone unnoticed. His teammates see him as a natural leader and appreciate his efforts to develop the team.

of it. It’s just the cracks and little things that he misses that we help fill,” senior Charles Morse said.

Despite the new responsibilities, Jaber still has a passion for ultimate frisbee. The supportive community and friendly environment is a big part of the sport’s appeal.

The team gathers around the frisbee in a huddle after a practice. “Even without a school sponsor, we can still run this club. In [a] way, that tightens the community of people who do it. They’re really dedicated or they’re really interested in trying it out, and I think that strengthens the team,” senior Kareem Jaber said.

PHOTO // K. Jaber

“Everyone’s really honest; there’s no faking injuries like in pro soccer. We’re just having a great time, and in the end, it’s not about whether I walk out as a winner or a loser, but the experience of playing frisbee,” Jaber said.

“Kareem does everything from planning the practices to bringing all the gear, coordinating outreach events, and communicating with the Fairfax frisbee league. He is also a very calm leader and doesn’t yell out instructions,” sophomore Virginia Heretick said.

As a student, Jaber is more welcome to suggestions on technique and types of drills than most coaches would be.

“I think everyone trusts me to understand things [on] a deeper level, but that doesn’t mean that I know more than everyone. There’s a lot of things that I’ll screw up, then someone else will give me advice, and I’ll fix it,” Jaber said.

Jaber occasionally forgets to teach certain drills or techniques during practices, but his team reminds him when this happens.

“There’s been times when he’s forgotten something that we should do and we’ve reminded him

Senior Roope Kettunen passes to his teammate during a four lines formation drill using the runs and passes that he’s learned after playing for the ultimate frisbee team with senior Kareem Jaber.

PHOTO // K. Jaber

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SHANG-CHI

by Max Vetter

A

and the age-old battle between money and restraint

t least for the first half, “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” was on track to being one of the better Marvel movies and certainly the best of the post “Avengers: Endgame” (2019) era. The relatively small scope (or at least as small as you can be when your villain is an immortal superpowered gangster) allowed for a much more compelling story with substantially more creative fight choreography. Unfortunately, like all of Marvel’s projects, the absurd budget seems to have gone to the filmmakers’ heads. By the end of the film, “Shang-Chi” morphs from a tight and emotional adventure into yet another VFX filled mess which ultimately rings hollow.

“Shang-Chi” is, first and foremost, a story about the conflict between father and son. Xu Wenwu (played by Tony Leung) is a crime boss granted immortality by the mystical “ten rings”, an absurdly powerful set of artifacts that have allowed him to create a global syndicate of assassins. His son Shaun (Simu Liu), having escaped his control, now lives a content life of mundanity as a hotel valet with his friend Katy (Awkwafina). This doesn’t last long, however, because Wenwu tries to have Shaun murdered. This spurs Shaun (whose real name is ShangChi) into action, setting him on a journey to get revenge against his father and save his sister.

The story, as it is, is quite engrossing. It’s not terribly deep, but it acts as an effective vehicle for Tony Leung’s stellar performance and some truly exceptional action sequences. While Simu Liu doesn’t bring too much in the way of characterization, he makes up for it with raw physicality. His martial arts prowess is quite something to behold — he can perform complex fight choreography without the aid of a stunt double, something that few actors can pull off well. The fight choreography scenes are also aided by having better camerawork than most of the rest of the MCU’s hand-to-hand combat scenes. Now the second unit directors don’t need to compensate for

PHOTO// MARVEL STUDIOS

the actors’ lack of skill anymore with copious shaky-cam, and can instead focus on visual clarity and more precise framing.

If the film kept up this trend of small-scale, more highly choreographed action with a strong emotional throughline for the entire runtime, I’d be more than happy to give “Shang-Chi” an enthusiastic recommendation. Unfortunately, that’s where the movie stumbles. Over the course of the second half of the film, all of the things that made “Shang-Chi” special dissolve away. The personal stakes that drove the characters in the beginning become more muddled with the introduction of possible world-ending consequences, the action scenes become more cluttered with armies of extras and giant CG mush, and the camera work and editing has to compensate by becoming much more sporadic and messy. What results is an ending reduced to nauseating visual soup, made all the more disappointing by the film’s great potential.

If you’re just looking forward to watching the next big Marvel movie, I’m sure you’ll like this one just fine, perhaps even more than most of the others. If not, I’d recommend checking out other Hong Kong action flicks like “Police Story” (1985) or “Dragon Inn” (1967).

ENTERTAINMENT 11

I

Tony Leung in other roles

PHOTO// MARVEL STUDIOS

f you found Tony Leung’s role in “Shang-Chi” as compelling as I did, then I implore you to give his Hong Kong career a chance. Leung has worked with many of Hong Kong’s finest filmmakers, but of all his collaborations, perhaps his most fruitful was with renegade filmmaker Wong Kar-wai in the 2000 masterpiece “In the Mood for Love”.

In “In the Mood for Love”, Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung give two of the finest romantic performances of all time in a torturous ballet of glances. The premise is simple: in 1960s Hong Kong, Chow Mo-Wan (Leung) and Su Li-Zhen (Cheung) find out that their spouses are cheating on them with the other person’s partner. They catch feelings for each other in a romance that they could never possibly commit to because of the surrounding gossip. What follows is a study in the mechanics of desire, where Mr. Chow and Mrs. Su try to find solace in each other while still recovering from the betrayal of their partners.

What drives forward this theoretically repetitive sequence of events is largely the excellent performances and superlative filmmaking. Every look is delivered with such painful reservation that it’s impossible not to sympathize with the heartbreak of these characters. This is heightened by the lush color palette which sensualizes each frame.

I cannot recommend “In the Mood for Love” more highly.

Watch it on HBO Max.

SIGNS OF SUCCESS “

I got active in climate studies this summer through an internship where I did research on the atmosphere and, specifically, clouds.

Climate change is such a dire issue. Our planet’s gonna keep warming unless we do something about it. I’m definitely not someone who’s doing everything right. We’re all contributing to this problem of climate change. Personally, what I could do is be more aware of the small things: energy usage, water usage, and how much trash I use.

“

PHOTO by Anuj Khemka REPORTING by Rachel Lewis

WHAT I’VE LEARNED Anika Rekulapelli Junior

“

Now that it’s junior year, I’m realizing that I have to take advantage of my lunchtime and my bus rides. I just think it’s important to get your work done on time as much as possible, to participate in class, and to create connections with your teachers.

One of my interests is American Sign Language club. I really enjoy the language because it’s spoken by using signs, as opposed to spoken verbally. I think because our country is very diverse, it’s important to be accommodating of other people. If there’s someone you know who speaks Spanish, it’s important to know a little bit of Spanish or if you encounter someone who’s deaf, it’s important to know a bit of American Sign Language.