Uni High Gargoyle Staff Blog

The end of my “illustrious” basketball career marked the beginning of a new era for me: the life of a working American. Since my pro basketball contract never came through, I opted instead to get a job for the remainder of the school year and summer before college.

The process of looking for a job is mundane, to put it mildly. Like counting how many wolverines you come across the in the senior alcove, there is not much action.

One must go to the finest establishments in town, such as Subway, and gingerly ask for a job application. The sweet lady behind the counter will be delighted that such a young person is interested in furthering the domination of corporate conglomerates (like Subway) and hand you a one-page, photocopied document.

Now, you must remember to retrieve a handful of these job applications to diversify your search, and then fill them out neatly so that the manager doesn’t sense irresponsibility in your sloppy handwriting.

The truth is every business like Subway and Panera and The Gap gets tons of applications every day. You just don’t see them. They are stacked in a pile in the back room in between the fax machine and red stapler.

In addition, you are like every other high school student who can only work nights after school.

A predicament. What is the solution?

I have two answers:

1. Approach Mr. Sam Smith in the Student Services Office. I talked to him for a few minutes describing the type of work I’m interested in, and over the next few weeks he showered me with plenty of opportunities. I am quite thankful and highly recommend all who are seeking a job to meet with him.

2. You just have to know people who know people. I recently landed a job at Espresso Royale Café, because I knew an employee who worked there. She tipped me off that someone was fired recently and suggested I take the initiative to talk to the manager, who happened to be in at the moment, and express my interest. From there I was awarded an interview, and the rest is history.

The job market can be daunting, but if you use your connections and resources at hand, everyone should be able to find some sort of work.

Justin Park

Posted by Gargoyle Staff at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

All right guys, it’s the last day of school before SPRING BREAK!!!!! I’m SO excited! Now all I have to do is sit through one more day of school before I can be sitting on the beach sipping some fruity beverage out of a coconut and just soaking up the sun.

Or maybe not.

It’s a common occurrence for teachers to schedule tests and papers and quizzes and pretty much anything else you can think of for the last day before break. In fact, it happens so often that even the teachers themselves realize how much work we have to do. Yet they still pile it on.

Now is that fair? We get so completely overloaded with studying and writing that eventually even the best student will make exceptions here and there. “Well, I don’t really have time to write more about this so I’ll just stop here,” or, “I really have to study for history now, I guess I’ll have to give up on math for tonight.” How can we be expected to do our best work when there’s just not enough time to do it?

Not to mention focusing. My friends and I are counting down the hours left until school gets out. No one feels like doing anything at all right now. So how are we supposed to be able to focus and study for our tests if the only thing that’s really on our minds is how much fun we’re going to be having in just a few short hours? (There are about four hours left to go as I write this, but who’s counting?)

So, really, I think that we shouldn’t be expected to take tests and turn in papers at all today. It’s just not fair to anyone really. I mean, how am I supposed to memorize the rest of my flowcharts and figure out what I’m going to pack for California? It’s too much!

Jessica Stark

Posted by Gargoyle Staff at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It’s almost spring break! I for one am definitely looking forward to the amount of sleep I’m going to catch up on. No more getting up at 7 a.m., oh no. We’re talking about 10 at the very earliest, and then staying in bed for at least another half an hour.

I can’t wait.

Still, some people I’ve talked to say that they would prefer half days off to whole days off. And while they might not have meant spring break, I think that this is a valid point.

Half days are extremely fun because everyone meets up at school, and then they go eat and hang out together when school is dismissed. It’s nice because everyone is already together and can move as a group.

Whole days off mean that people have to actually organize something, and then go through the hassle of getting to the place and then finding everyone. Most breaks, people start to complain in the middle that they’re bored and have nothing to do.

On the other hand, you get to sleep in when you have whole days off. (Can you tell that this sleeping thing is completely taking over my mind?)

I remain purely indecisive (as I have been most of my life). Both whole days and half days have good points and bad points, and I’ll take both of them with equal joy.

Michelle Gao

Posted by Gargoyle Staff at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yawn … Oh, sorry, that’s me waking up from the snoozefest called driver’s ed. Every Tuesday and Thursday I ready myself at 6:30 for two hours of sheer dullness and frustration. Driver’s ed is so boring, I have stopped falling asleep in history because, in comparison, history class is as interesting and exciting as the NCAA championship.

It’s easy to pinpoint exactly what makes driver’s ed so boring: the needless repetition and the obviousness of most things taught. Why do they feel the need to teach us things that anyone who has ridden in a car for 15 years should know?

Not only that, there are kids in that class who are so stupid, you wonder how they have survived this long. In response to the question of how many times can a driver under 18 get a ticket in one year before his or her license is suspended, one kid answered, “Twelve, one for each month.” That is, of course, a ridiculously large amount, and the child was dismayed and thought it “bogus” that you could get only three.

So now I pose the question, Why must I waste four hours of my life each week for six to eight weeks, just to get my driver’s permit? Especially when I could have passed the test and gotten my permit without ever having stepped in the classroom where time stands still. Sometimes I wonder if learning how to drive is worth this torture. Then I remember I live in Champaign-Urbana. So I suck it up, sit in the back of the driver’s-ed classroom, and do my math homework while trying to block out the drone of the instructor.

Sarah Pfander

Posted by Gargoyle Staff at 3:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Life is full of choices. Easy ones (Should I have milk or orange juice for breakfast?) and hard ones (What college should I choose?). Sometimes life throws things at you that you don’t like.

I joined the cast of the Champaign Urbana Theatre Company’s production of “The King and I” with excitement. I love being in musicals, and I like performing. I like being in shows in general, because they’re always a lot of fun.

I realized a few days ago that there is a “King and I” performance on April 1 at 7:30 p.m., which is also the date scheduled for Spring Fling. I like dances a lot, too, and I really don’t want to miss Spring Fling. It’s one of the last dances of the year, after all.

So now I can either drop out of “The King and I” to go to Spring Fling, or miss the dance. And I’m obviously going to choose the musical, because I’ve spent way too much time and effort on it already to just drop out now because of one night.

Still, I wish I’d known about the conflict earlier, because “King and I” rehearsals are extremely time-consuming. I’ve been exhausted ever since practices have started, and if it’s this bad now, tech week is going to be absolutely terrible. I had no idea that I would have to put this much effort into it, because after all, I’ve been cast as a wife. I thought that I would only have to go once or twice a week, but I’ve been having to go every day.

It’s extremely tiring.

I’m not saying that I regret doing the show. I love it. I like the singing and the dancing, and I like the people I’ve met. Everyone is amazingly nice. I like the feeling of belonging to something outside of school.

But really. I’m too tired. Next year I’m probably going to do the school musical, and not a CUTC show. The fact that Mrs. Ridenour realizes that homework is an issue should help a lot.

Michelle Gao

Posted by Gargoyle Staff at 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I hate all these rumors and speculations about “that group of sophomore girls.” The “six-pack,” the “SS groupies,” the “preps.” Whatever you call us, we aren’t half as bad as we are made out to be.

But where do these rumors come from, and why do we get such a bad rep? Well, I have heard that it was “this particular group of sophomore girls” who were grinding excessively at the Valentine’s Day Dance. But, I also know that it was in retaliation to the no-grinding rules that were restricting our dancing freedom. And I have heard that this group of sophomore girls have extensive relationships with the senior guys, but that has more to do with the fact that one of the sophomore girls has a senior brother, and they like to hang out.

All in all, when you make any generalization about us, you are probably wrong. Most if not all of us are not looking for random hookups, but actual relationships, and some of us have never even had a boyfriend. So before you say that we are whores, or sexual pot-smoking beings (which we aren’t), remember that we go to Uni, and anything we do is not half as bad as what goes on at other high schools.

Sarah Pfander

Posted by Gargoyle Staff at 3:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Get ready and get excited to celebrate Casimir Pulaski Day this Monday.

Every first Monday of March is the official Casimir Pulaski Day where you and your fellow Illinoisans can celebrate Revolutionary War cavalry officer Casimir Pulaski’s birthday (who was born on March 4, 1747)!

I also highly recommend that you listen to Sufjan Steven’s “Casimir Pulaski Day” on Casimir Pulaski Day 2006. It is quite an excellent song!

Andrea Park

Posted by Gargoyle Staff at 3:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I admit it. I’m a procrastinator. Not to the degree that some others are, but … yes. I procrastinate quite a bit. Example: There’s a paper coming up that I’ve known about for maybe two weeks already, and the rough draft is due in one week on a Monday. Well. No big deal, right? A whole WEEK to write a paper. I’ve got time. I’ll start it tomorrow.

Except that tomorrow … well, there’s a whole five days left. No need. How long could it take? Not long at all. And it’s only the rough draft.

And so it continues, until the weekend before the rough draft is due. At this point, I’ve really got to get it done. The outline’s already formed in my head and everything, and all I really have to do is get it down in words. How hard can it be? So if I start it tomorrow, it shouldn’t take that long at all. Right?

Definitely WRONG.

The rough draft takes much longer than anticipated (maybe because I’m on AIM and Myspace and Facebook at the same time). Now the regret kicks in. Whyyyyy didn’t I work on it for just half an hour yesterday? It could have made life so much easier.

I finally get it done, read over it, and discover that I don’t like it at all. After peer-editing in class, I discover that I only have to fix a few things to tie it all up into a main point. Hmmm. Not so bad. And it’s due in three whole days, so I’ll be fine.

And as expected, I’m frantically trying to fix everything the night before it’s due. Great. After I’m done, I’m satisfied with my work, but I’m exhausted.

This is a bad cycle. A very bad one. And I’ve found myself caught up in it multiple times, but since the paper ends up all right in the end and my grade is decent, I don’t have the incentive to change. (TEACHERS, PLEASE DON’T GIVE ME ANY INCENTIVE.) And look on the bright side! It’s giving me the valuable skill to work under pressure, right? It could save my life in the future!

Or maybe I’m just making excuses. I guess I’d better get started on that history paper due next Friday, then. But there’s a whole week and a day left …

Michelle Gao

Posted by Gargoyle Staff at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

All the time, I hear that Uni’s supposed to be a special environment for kids who’d prefer to be somewhere more sophisticated than the average public school. In some ways, Uni really lives up to this reputation, giving us the right to leave our lockers open, go anywhere on campus during our free periods, and trash the lounge. But while we do enjoy freedoms that students at other schools might dismiss as impossible, in terms of discipline, we’re not very different.

Wednesday morning, I had my cell phone taken away from me, and I will say that it really annoyed me. I had turned it on just to take a picture, and I was planning on turning it back off and leaving it that way for the rest of the day. But when Assistant Director Sue Kovacs came into the lounge and saw me standing there with my phone on, she demanded that I turn it over.

I obviously thought that this was ridiculous. School hadn’t even started, and I had only turned it on for a few seconds to take a picture. If my phone had been on and ringing in classes, it would be my own fault when it was confiscated. But this was totally nonsensical in my eyes.

I don’t see why we have to have rules like this at Uni. It totally disproves the concept that we’re special and less inhibited than students at other schools. My friends at Central and Urbana have their cell phones on all day and have no problems using them when they’re out of class, so why should Uni be any different? I wasn’t even talking on it –– I was taking a picture! I don’t see how that can act as a disruption.

Throughout my stay at Uni, I’ve constantly witnessed foolish rules being put into place. Subbie year when some of my friends and I crossed Green Street during the Engineering Open House, we were suspended from school for the day, even though we’re allowed to cross the street every other day of the year with no penalties. Freshman year, I was accused of harassment because I laughed at a stupid joke someone made in health class. Last year, the administration went ballistic over lists that some boys were making, when the matter should have been dealt with more calmly. And this year (in addition to this cell-phone annoyance), the administration was up in arms about students potentially doing drugs at private parties.

I feel that Uni is overextending its boundaries. The point of discipline isn’t to try to expel as many people as humanly possible, but rather to make sure that there’s a healthy environment between the students and faculty.

“I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves.”
— Ché Guevara

Jono Baron

Posted by Gargoyle Staff at 1:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I would say that when I jumped out of bed yesterday as my alarm went off at 6:30 a.m. it was probably the only time that I was actually excited to get up that early. Why was I so invigorated? Because I, along with 16 other Uni students, was about to go to Springfield to lobby for the Illinios government to provide funding for a comprehensive sex-ed curriculum in schools.

We met up at the Planned Parenthood building in Champaign, piled into two vans, and began the 90-mile trip. I kind of dozed off after a while and woke with a start as our driver braked hard in front of the capitol building. It was a little disheartening to see that the grassy lawn surrounding Illinois’ legislative center was completely deserted, but, as we would soon find out, it wouldn’t be that way for long.

After signing in at the Michael J. Howlett Building, where we each received a very professional-looking orange folder packed with information about Senate Bill 2267 (the bill we were there to lobby for), all 400 or so of us from around the state gathered in the auditorium. Here, we received directions from the campaign manager for SB 2267 and learned some chants that we would use for our rally in front of the Lincoln Statue outside the capitol.

After we had been briefed on basic lobbying techniques, the entire group gathered in front of the Lincoln Statue for a short rally to get us fired up for our big day of politicking. State Rep. Naomi Jakobsson, along with a few other legislators and some other teenage speakers, including Uni’s own Eleanor Unsworth and Annie Fehrenbacher, joined us there and gave us some words of wisdom before we headed out on our own. After about half an hour of chanting and encouraging speeches, the rally dissipated and we headed off to meet our legislators.

We broke off into separate teams with people from all over the state, with each team assigned to certain senators and representatives. Our job, before the day was over, was to give each of these senators and representatives information and petition signatures for SB 2267, find out their current positions on the bill, and, if necessary, use our powers of persuasion to push them toward a vote in favor of comprehensive sex ed.

Despite the huge crowd of lobbyists, the senators and representatives weren’t being very cooperative. Curiously, all of the senators were either having caucuses or meeting all together for the entire day, and most of the representatives were also tied up in caucus when we tried to find them. As a result, my team was unable to talk to any of our assigned senators and only talked to one of our three representatives.

After traipsing around the capitol for about an hour without being able to talk to anyone, we finally found Rep. Mike Bost, a legislator from the Carbondale area. From what was said in our brief 15-minute meeting, it seemed as though he was ready to support comprehensive sex ed but had some hesitation because he had not read the actual bill.

Being strictly pro-life, based on personal experiences since his girlfriend, now wife, became pregnant in her junior year of high school and decided to keep her child, Bost worried that there might be somthing worked into the bill regarding abortion rights. Apparently, this is not an uncommon occurrence in legislation, and the senator sponsoring SB 2267 has been known for such things in the past. Makes you wonder about the true integrity of our government, doesn’t it?

After about two hours of politicking, we met back at the Howlett Building for lunch and from there went to the House of Representatives, where we were formally recognized by Naomi Jakobsson on the House floor. Although cool in theory, our announcement went almost unnoticed, since only a small handful of the reps were actually paying any attention. They were all immersed in their own personal phone calls, and we saw a small group sharing some cake and a bottle of milk. Again, it kind of makes you uneasy when you realize these people having a little party during a House meeting are actually the same people making the laws.

After our 30-second recognition in the House, we met back at the vans and got ourselves mentally prepared for the ride home. I fell asleep still holding my awesome professional-looking orange folder, content that I helped make a small difference in Illinois government. Oh, and also kinda hoping that those people passing around the milk jug will vote in favor of our bill, if not because they were paying attention, then because they’re too busy eating to really realize what’s going on.

Jessica Stark

Posted by Gargoyle Staff at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)