What’s with the Stuffed Animals?
Zoe Siamon, Staff Writer
September 16, 2019
Why do so many students suddenly have stuffed animals? Why are they covered in little pieces of tape? Is it for a class? If you are a student at Oakton, it is likely that you’ve found yourself asking one of these questions this past week. As it turns out, the explanation is fairly simple. Anatomy ...
Colleges Reforming the System
Payton Wozny, Editorial Board
September 15, 2019
As the college application process grows increasingly more important and stressful for juniors and seniors, many students are stressing over SAT or ACT scores. In the United States, standardized testing plays a major role in determining students' capabilities and an even bigger role in determin...
Screens Before Sleep
June 9, 2019
With all of the time I spend being on my phone, I was completely unaware of the affects it has on my overall health and happiness. Recent studies are showing a dangerous continuing trend of insufficient sleep across children and young adults- the culprit? Screens. According to data from the American Acade...
What does movie violence portray to today’s youth?
June 5, 2019
For someone who grew up in Vietnam, I basically was raised with the notion that violent movies are ruinous to your mental health and will make you a bad person. And growing up, I believed that. At face value, it makes sense that there should be a correlation between indulging inappropriate films and turning...
The Truth Behind Genetic Modification
June 5, 2019
Humans have been altering foods to their liking ever since the Prehistoric Era. Crops have been cross-bred with other plant species to create a more desirable product to satisfy ever-evolving tastes and desires. The culture of alteration changed forever when scientists Cohen and Boyer were the first ...
This is the sixth extinction
Wendy Gao, Editorial Board
May 12, 2019
This past Monday, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) released their global assessment on the current ecological state. In their report, the committee of scientists revealed the obvious - humans are, indeed, killing the Earth. Their stateme...
Is Stress Stressing You Out?
Payton Wozny, Editorial Board
May 12, 2019
Many people are constantly looking for ways to manage their stress. Although stress affects us in many obvious ways, like causing procrastination, it actually has major effects on our physical health, so it’s critical to avoid stressors and manage unavoidable ones. With finals season swinging into ful...
How too much screen time affects your health
Aubrey Harrell, Editorial Board
May 6, 2019
There are warnings everywhere about the dangers of technology. Starting in elementary school it’s preached to us through guidance counselors health classes that technology can be a dangerous tool used to bully and a field day for suspicious strangers to deceive impressional youths, but perhaps less discus...
Why it is impossible to be systematically racist to white people
Sally Park, Staff Writer
May 6, 2019
Racism. It’s something that occurs ever so frequently even in such a modernized, industrialized, and developed nation as America. However, as we grow as a society, the meaning behind racism seems to have been misinterpreted and twisted. Debates about reverse-racism, police brutality, and other correl...
The Stress That’s Trying to Help
claudia messina, Staff Writer
April 26, 2019
Every student knows or has experienced the stress related to the end of the school year. With final exams, end of year projects, AP testing, and keeping up with classes, there's a lot to stress over. On top of that, there are also the SOL’s. SOL stands for standard of learning, it is a state inst...
Has media made it easier to forget?
Courtney Te, Editorial Board, Publicity Manager
April 21, 2019
Media has a habit of looking for the newest trends or news and forgetting about other stories they deem irrelevant. It is the age we live in—refreshing the page over and over again until something new sparks our interest. The internet has molded all of us into having short attention spans; typically...
FAQs About Starting the College Process
Olivia Garrone, Editorial Board
April 11, 2019
Questions about college cross every Oakton student’s mind. For juniors especially, the time has come to get serious. Even for sophomores and freshman thinking, it’s never too early to start researching college! If you have questions about how (and when) to start the process, have no fear. All of t...
