The clever wordplay in the Femtastic Team’s name, conceals a serious club beneath the surface. They are a newly established group that already has a many members. Their flyers have been posted in many places around the school, such stairwells, hallways, and the cafegymatorium. Further, the founders Riya Saha ’17, Isabelle Mah ’17, and Caitlin Tsang ’17, sent out an email to further inform us about this recondite club. As a result, on the day the club started, many people flocked to room 300. Caitlin, Isabelle, and Riya, proved willing to share information about their femtastic team via email.
Category: Student Life
For many students, one of the biggest goals in their high school career is to receive a decent score on their SAT or ACT. Although people have different definitions of what is considered adequate, BSGE students have standards set fairly high. Along with diploma grades and extracurriculars, the score on these standardized tests weigh heavily on a student’s future. It can the deciding factor for the colleges one gets accepted to, and thus the rest of their life.
Every Friday after school, students can be heard cheering as they pelt each other with dodgeballs in BSGE’s cafegymatorium. The dodgeball club has become a huge success, attracting about 100 students from grades 7 to 12. When asked his opinion of this club, leader Malcolm Sherman-Godfrey ‘17 said, “it’s exceeded my expectations.” Originally, the club was a way to gain Activity hours for CAS, which is a requirement for the IB Diploma. Juniors and seniors joined out of the convenience and freedom that the club provides, unlike in official school teams which require regular commitments from the student. However, after several months of dodgeball, the club has started to attract students as a genuine interest rather than an obligation.
On Friday, December 16, 2016, the club held a dodgeball tournament to raise money for charity, in which students created their own teams consisting of five players. Admission cost $10 per team. One of the tournament’s objectives was for students to engage in a more competitive, physical activity. Many students were excited for the tournament on Friday, ready to have their names signed up to participate. Others showed up as onlookers.
Imagine you’re going to math class and you start sweating, but as soon as you make it into English class, you start freezing. Many students at BSGE face the problem of fluctuating room temperatures every day. Some classrooms that suffer from this are the yoga room, which is always experiencing rise and fall of temperature, room 206, which is very cold, and rooms 416, 311, 205, and 402, which are extremely hot. How do BSGE students adapt to these weather changes and what influences these changing temperatures?
Although there are numerous ways to approach this problem, many students, such as Lidia Layme ‘22, agree that the best bet is to “carry a light sweater.” One can even, as Ryan Guerbi ‘21 says, “wear the same sweater everyday because it is helpful. No one will judge you…hopefully.” Also, be mindful to make sure that your sweater isn’t too thick. If it is, it can become heavy as you grow tired throughout the day, or it might produce too much warmth in the cold classrooms. Further, make sure not to lose it. If you do, check the lost and found on top of the piano in the cafeteria, under the stairs, and in the library.
The holiday season is a time when students expect to relax with their families and receive gifts, but the children in the HIV/AIDS ward of Elmhurst Children’s Hospital aren’t as lucky as the students in BSGE. Most of them are from low-income families, so their parents can’t afford to get them presents for the holidays.
BSGE’s Helping Hands’ Committee organizes the yearly toy drive to buy gifts for these children. In previous years each advisory has been assigned only one child to raise money for, but this year an advisory can have up to three. In order to meet their goal, the advisories raise money for their children, making sure that they get gifts they want for the winter holidays.
Bake sales have been producing money for the toy drive during every lunch period.Alice Aronov ‘18 explained that they are “the best way to raise money in our school because everyone buys” from them. She continued that they also give “a teamwork kind of initiative.” Ms. Meisler added, “[a] bake sale is always good because everyone can contribute something and everyone feels like they’re doing something for someone else.” Meril Mousoom 21’s advisory was assigned two boys, both in preschool. One wanted a Hot Wheels “Ultimate Garage” and the other a Captain America backpack. Bake sales allowed her advisory to raise $167 dollars and they “…currently have enough money to buy presents for the kids.”
At some point in their life, every student will have been affected by procrastination. According to the dictionary, procrastination is the action of delaying or postponing a task. In the case of a student, procrastination usually takes the form of avoiding doing homework and other assignments or studying for important tests. Especially for those who are new to the BSGE’s workload, procrastination can become a common trait. Far more than half the students at BSGE admit to being procrastinators at one point or another.
Procrastination occurs in a variety of different ways, and can lead to bad experiences in class along with deteriorating grades. “I end up staying up really late trying to finish what would have been easier without the stress and rush,” said Kayla Powers ’20. Similarly, “I have had to do rushed jobs in advisory, or totally forget the homework and have my grade go down,” said student Dart MacVeagh ’21. These are only some of the consequences students have had because of their procrastination. A general response from those who considered themselves procrastinators said that their progress on their homework and academic performance gradually decreases as they procrastinate.
From Monday, October 31st to Friday, November 4th, BSGE’s senior council organized its annual Spirit Week. Spirit Week, According to Jennifer Shin ’17 and Kyra Richardson ‘17, two members of the senior council, this was a chance “to get everyone of all grades to participate” in a school-wide event. The goal was to make each day easy to partake in, learned after the unfortunate “Fancy Friday” of last year, a day where very fewstudents participated. Flannel Friday took its place as “it was easy to participate in and everyone has a flannel; the whole point of the week is to get all grades to join,” Jennifer explained. With the event’s more simplistic nature, it gave more freedom to students so that everyone could join.
This year, the week consisted of:
What is biotechnology and how important is it? “The biotechnology course is designed to give students background on the essential fundamentals that will implement students on future science courses,” said Dr. Helfenbein, BSGE’s biology teacher. In essence, the course educates students on the ways we conduct our in-depth investigations on the workings of the natural world.
Have you ever wondered why the world works the way it does? How things connect and correlate with one another? Chemistry encompasses all of human life. It helps students become more aware of the world around them through their senses, as well as learn about themselves as a functioning being. Learning chemistry is a key element to our society. It can even aid technological advancements, develop the medical field, and assist in biological breakthroughs!
Transitioning into a new school is difficult, especially one as demanding and rigorous as BSGE. In order to make that transition smooth, all new students should remember these seven suggestions:
- Be polite; stay to the right! If you’re not on the right side, you’re on the wrong side.
- The school hallways are very small, so the general rule is to stay to the right so that you help minimize the amount of traffic (especially with only three minutes between classes).
- Say hello to your new best friend: your locker.
- Not everyone is privileged enough to have a ten minute commute to and from school, and no one wants to injure their back with tons of binders and notebooks everyday. Before leaving, think to yourself: do you really need your whole binder? Can you just bring a few sheets home to complete your work? Get everything you need to finish homework and study, then leave the rest in your locker! Your back will thank you later.
- Stay organized and on top of things.
- If you didn’t know, there are calendars on the first floor for teachers to write big assignments on so that we are not bombarded with too much work within one week. However, this does not always work in our favor. There will be weeks in which you’ll have three tests, five quizzes, and a paper due, and it will be solely up to you to get everything done. With this amount of work, life will be much easier if you actively use a planner – whether a physical book or your phone’s calendar app. This way, you will be able to correctly prioritize and optimize your time and energy. If you don’t have a planner, you can buy one from Margaret Pasach, the parent coordinator, for only $5.
- Communication is key!
- While it would be nice to understand everything on the first try, that will not always happen. It’s fine to struggle; everyone does. But you don’t have to be embarrassed or or ashamed! Many teachers are available after school to answer your questions. It’s reasonable to feel like you’re bothering them, but remember that teaching is what they do. They want to make sure that you understand what’s going on, and they cannot read your minds to know whether or not you need help if you don’t say anything. If your teacher isn’t free, you always have classmates that you can go to for help!
- Don’t be afraid to get involved.
- If it wasn’t already obvious, BSGE has a plethora of clubs and extracurricular activities that are available for everyone to join! Joining these clubs is a great way to make new friends, especially ones who are in other grades, while doing something after school that interests you. To see the clubs schedule this year, check the front page, and if you don’t see anything of interest, you can always try to start a new one!
- Sleep is not for the weak. It’s for the productive and successful student.
- This one ties into the third tip because it’s important to plan out everything accordingly, especially sleeping. Without enough sleep, you run the risk of being too tired to concentrate during class. If that happens, you’ll not only get in trouble, but you will also possibly miss important information. Especially as growing teenagers, sleep is essential to growth and health, and it isn’t wise to miss out on that because you didn’t manage your time well. Sure, there’ll be a few days in which your workload is too heavy, forcing you to only get three hours of sleep, but try not to make it a habit!
- Grades are important, but they’re not everything.
- Everyone wants to have straight sevens, and it makes sense: the pressure to get good grades is extremely high. However, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s really important. School is supposed to be a place to learn , and while grades do matter, achieving that goal is far more important. Aim for those sevens, but don’t stress out too much if you fall short. It is extremely difficult to get perfect grades, and that’s okay. Just don’t forget to learn from your mistakes and have fun!
Keep these tips in mind to make your experience here as pleasant as possible. After all, you are at school for ten months a year: you might as well make the most of it!
The BACC Rag 