September 2018

TJTODAY

THOMAS JEFFERSON HIGH SCHOOL FOR SCIENCE AND TECH || ALEXANDRIA, VA SEPT. 21, 2018 || VOL 4 ISSUE 1 || www. tjtodayday.org

THE MAGAZINE

6560 BRADDOCK RD. ALEXANDRIA, VA 22312

NEW

NORMS

Overcoming hurdles, sophomore Kristen Heller finds her spot on the varsity football team.

6

NEIGHBORHOOD BUS STOPS

Rerouting of bus routes creates longer commutes

7

NEW AP RUSSELL Volita Russell becomes the fourth Assistant Principal

7

SWITCH TO EXPERT TA Physics department changes homework platform

CONTENTS EDITORIAL BOARD Editors-in-Chief MiJin Cho Sabria Kazmi

04

Blitzing the Boundaries As the first female varsity football player, Kristen Heller overcomes hurdles and sets an example for future female players.

BROADCAST EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

CROSS COUNTRY SEPT. 8

Lynn Nguyen

STAFF REPORTERS Justin Chang Pratika Katiyar Irina Lee Grace Mak Shruthi Nyshadham

ADVISER Erinn Harris tjTODAY is the official newsmagazine of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology published by the journalism staff. 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.

ON THE COVER ENGINEERING DESIGN SEPT. 14

Letters to the Editor 03

How Do I Submit a Letter?

Step-by-Step process for submitting a letter to the editor.

Features 06

What’s New?

Expert TA, neighborhood bus stops, and the arrival of Assistant Principal Volita Russell.

Look for our regular, 28-page, full-size issue on Oct. 29.

What I’ve Learned 08

Keep Calm and Carry On

Learn what Junior George Carson thinks about stress and how to deal with it.

WHAT’S ONLINE || SEPT. 21 03

Have You Seen What We’ve Been Doing?

The tjTODAY staff has been posting to tjtoday.org daily since school started. What have you missed?

TEACHING BEYOND THE FRESHMAN’S GUIDE RETIREMENT TO SURVIVING TJ

THE COLLEGE CODING COMPLICATION

Submit a Letter to the Editor WHY WRITE A LETTER?

Letters should be no more than 300 words, refer to a specific article, and include the writer’s full name and email address.

HOW DO I WRITE A LETTER?

• You want to speak out.

• Visit www.tjtoday.org.

• You want to persuade others.

• Select “Get in Touch’ on the top menu.

• You want to be heard.

• Select “Submit a Letter to the Editor.”

• You have an idea.

• Fill out the form and click submit.

• You want to educate the public.

4

SPORTS

Blitzing the

“” F*** You.

W

ritten on the weight chart taped to her locker, these two words marked Kristen Heller’s 16th day as an official player on the varsity football team.

Determined not to let the comment define the beginning of her first season on the team, the sophomore quickly scribbled it out. Two days later, she came from an afternoon practice to find the same two words on her chart, prompting her to report the incident to Director of Student Activities Rusty Hodges.

“I knew it probably wasn’t anything personal,” Heller said. “The amount of people who know me is pretty small, so it was probably just someone who had decided that it was entertaining. I don’t really get why they thought it was acceptable. But I don’t really take it personally.”

The only female player on the football team since 2012, Heller has become persistent in overcoming hurdles, and has a nonchalant attitude toward those attempting to bring her down.

Boundary MiJin Cho and Pratika Katiyar || EDITOR, STAFF WRITER

Grace Mak || STAFF WRITER

Who’s the

BOSS?

Introducing this year’s varsity football captains.

Jun Chong

“[Honestly], I did not [intend] to join the football team.

However, in the summer [before] freshman year, my friend told me about the football situation at TJ and I decided that I wanted to make an impact in the program.”

Sohail Mohanty

“I like that in football you don’t have to hold back anywhere; you just go for it. I tend to hold back a lot when I’m talking to people or when I play soccer. So I thought that football would be able to help a lot with soccer, other sports, and just life in general,” Heller said.

In deciding to join the team, she went to her first green day on June 25, and continued attending for the rest of the summer until tryouts.

“It wasn’t awkward when I showed up.

[Jefferson football] is co-ed, even if there weren’t any girls on the team,” Heller said.

“Everything [in football] is planned out to last detail,” Heller said. “[Coming] from soccer, football is taking the precision of the little things that you do in drills to the next level.”

Reactions As the season approached, however, she experienced mixed reactions from her family and friends.

“My mom [said] go for it. But my dad, who’s more into academics, understands that sports are good, but he doesn’t like it when sports come before academics,” Heller said. “Then my relatives were like, ‘Are you sure you want to do that?’. It was weird,because they’re not from as diverse an environment as we have here in DC; they have a bit more bias just from where they’ve grown up.”

On the other hand, her peers encouraged the idea of Heller being a part of the team.

The Beginning With prior experience as a left wing defense on the JV girls soccer team, Heller knew she wanted to play a fall sport. Looking at the Colonial Athletics list, she skimmed past golf, cheer, volleyball, cross country and field hockey; only one sport caught her eye.

In training with the other players, she began to gain insight on the finer details of the game and appreciate what sets football apart from soccer.

“Football has been challenging [at times] but I’ve never regretted being on the team because of my teammates, and I know they always have my back.”

Matt Cohen

“Football ingrains in your mindset that nothing is handed to you, so you have to work for everything, Keep working hard enough, and you’ll see results.”

PHOTO // Ikhwan Do

“For the first game where we wore [our] jerseys to school, people would come up and ask, ‘Oh, are you on the football team?’, and then they were just like, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s cool.’ They were really, really supportive,” Heller said.

Challenges Just ten days in, however, Heller was practicing proper form for tackling when she tripped and hit her head on the turf.

“I’ve never actually played on the field because I have a concussion. I just came to every practice and stood and watched as everyone else went through the motions. A lot of football is remembering how to do something, so I [am] still learning even if [I’m] not playing,” Heller said.

NEWS |||| Sept.

MAY 21, 10, 2018 03 5 SPORTS

As the first female varsity football player, Kristen Heller overcomes hurdles and sets an example for future female players.

PHOTO // MiJin Cho

It was during this healing process that she found the note on her weight chart. Heller doesn’t see the incident as an attack against her as an individual, but rather as a celebration of her defiance of gender stereotypes. “[People ask me], ‘Why would I join a football team?’ It’s a guy thing; why would I purposely go onto a field just so that I could bash other people? And then I try to explain to them that that’s not really what football is like. That might be like a small portion of it, but I know that that’s not what [football] is to me,” Heller said.

Football, to Heller, is not just a game, but a way for her to let go and stride towards her goals. In getting past demeaning notes and battling a concussion, she plans to support other girls interested in playing for the team.

“I’d say just join [football] because you’re going to end up regretting it later on if you don’t join now,” Heller said. “And it’ll be a story to tell; even if you’re on the edge about it, it’ll be a story to tell.”

6

FEATURES || Sept. 21, 2018 7

FEATURES

What’s

NEW?

The new year brings a switch to Expert TA, the removal of neighborhood bus stops, and the arrival of Assistant Principal Volita Russell. __________________________ NO NEIGHBORHOOD BUS STOPS __________________________ Due to long, exhausting commutes to and from Jefferson, lasting anywhere from 30 minutes to over an hour, parents of several students rallied together and proposed to reroute existing buses in order to

get their kids home at an earlier time. As a result, Fairfax County Public School administrators ecided to honor the request. However, the decision took many others by surprise, as it left a number of students with far greater problems than before, as neighborhood bus stops were completely eliminated. Senior Dheeraj Jassal was one of many students impacted by the sudden change.

__________________________________ PHYSICS SWITCHES TO EXPERT TA __________________________________

For more, visit tjtoday.org

Photo courtey of T. Kim

Senior Dheeraj Jassal exits his bus at the bus depot.

With the elimination of neighborhood stops, Jassal is now forced to travel for a longer period of time daily.

PHOTO // MiJin Cho and Sabria Kazmi

________________________ NEW AP VOLITA RUSSELL ________________________

1

In a decision to add a fourth Assistan Principal to the administrative team, Jefferson hired Volita Russell to fill the position. Having previously worked for charter schools in the District of Columbia for 13 years, Russell welcomed the change to a public school in a different county.

Most of all, the shift in school environment, brought anticipation for a new year and new beginnings.

“I was looking forward to the first day... the day I got the call...the day I got my

ID picture,” Russell said. “You value your teachers, and you value your staff and your school community, so I looked forward to being a part of that value system and adding to that value system.”

In the past, the schools she worked with were much smaller, with the largest school containing no more than 300

students. As a result, Russell experienced a feeling of disconnect with the larger, and in some aspects more impersonal, community at Jefferson.

However, a smaller community also meant less resources for the students within it.

For more, visit tjtoday.org.

Ask any Jefferson student to recall junior year, and one memory will jump out every time: WebAssign.

The infamous physics homework platform has become somewhat synonymous with junior year, but its sevenyear reign came to an end when the physics department transitioned to a new product called Expert TA this year.

“We found a vendor called Expert TA that seemed an improvement over WebAssign in terms of feedback from students, videos, and tutorials,” Jefferson physics teacher Steve Scholla said. “[Expert TA] was also more friendly in terms of cost

per student.” The price of WebAssign increased after Cengage bought the company in 2016 but didn’t uphold the unofficial deal that the physics department had with them before the acquisition.

“We were paying a very discounted rate [of] ten dollars per student,” Jefferson physics teacher Adam Smith said. Cengage refused to uphold the official deal [and] the increase in cost frustrated Jefferson physics teachers, as did the poor customer support they experienced with Cengage’s Webassign.”

For more, visit tjtoday.org.

KEEP CALM AND

CARRY ON “

PHOTO // Lynn Nguyen REPORTING // Lynn Nguyen

It’s okay to feel dumb all the time. I mean, we go to the best high school in the country. Basically it’s full of people who are going to be smarter than you. And I mean, there’s nothing you can do about that. YOU CAN’T ALWAYS BE THE BEST. I just learned to accept that and move on to do the best you can; be as good as you think you can be.

Last year, one of my friends was going through some really, really bad depression. And so it was kind of a shock when he was starting to feel suicidal.

It was really hard to deal with that.

He’s one of the greatest guys I know.

And it was devastating to hear that he was so depressed. People are just pushing themselves to the point where they shouldn’t be pushing themselves.

PEOPLE ARE SO STRESSED BY STUFF THAT, IN THE LONG RUN, DOESN”T MATTER.

“

I’ve found really good ways to deal with stress. Overall, it’s good to TAKE A BREAK EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE, if you don’t feel like it. Maybe just take a break. And if you’re overwhelmed with homework, maybe tell your teacher that and just say, ‘Look, I don’t know if I can handle this right now. I’m just going through a time where it’s kind of hard,’ and just talk to them about it.

Just see what you can do.

JUNIOR

GEORGE CARSON || WHAT I VE LEARNED