6. Sauerkraut 2025

Teachers have a lot of influence. On the surface, people would notice that they have the ability to control your grades, your workload, and the difficulty or pace of your course material. These powers are pretty common across all learning environments, and they allow for an adequately functional educational system. However, because school plays such a big role in our lives, even the smallest steps taken by teachers can have a huge impact on our school days, our learning experience in the class, and, in some cases, the overall tolerability of our entire high school careers.  For instance, some teachers like to assign seats, and the frequency of seating rearrangements throughout the school year varies depending on the teacher. Something as simple as the seat your teacher chooses for you could determine the course of your entire learning experience. If you’re closer to the teacher, you’ll likely be compelled to pay more attention to lectures, and if you sit next to people you aren’t a...

Pressure holds a lot more power in our daily lives than we realize. I often feel like I can only start my work towards the end of the day or procrastinate until I’m a few days away from the deadline. Then I find myself working faster, the deadline being a motivation for me, and I hardly get distracted from what I am doing. The pressure from the nearing deadline pushes me to focus and put in my best effort, rather than if I allow myself a lot of time. The more time I have the less serious the task feels and I prioritize other activities with closer deadlines.  Pressure isn’t just a last-minute motivator though; it’s a force that shapes our actions, decisions, and even our identities. It has the power to bring out the best in us, pushing us beyond our perceived limits. When we’re under pressure, we tap into a level of focus and determination that might not otherwise surface. Deadlines, expectations, and responsibilities all create a sense of urgency that forces us to rise to the occa...

Silence is one of the greatest powers in the world, it brings peace and time for people to reflect on themselves. However, it can quickly viewed in the opposite way, when in discussion with others. Silence is the most powerful when it creates emotional distance and allows unresolved feelings of tension to fester. I think you are all aware of the silent treatment and how toxic it can be. I think not many people realize how controlling and manipulative the silent treatment can be in relationships, whether it be familial, romantic, or platonic. It can be used as a weapon to help regain power over a person who you believe wronged you . Yes, it may be comforting to the person who is giving the silent treatment, as the “silent treatment” can act as a form of protection, but the effect it has on the one the silent treatment is being inflicted on is intense. The person who is on the receiving end of this type of treatment is left in a state of uncertainty, wondering what went wrong, and will ...

     Exercise. One of the most important and beneficial things in the world. Exercise is something that individuals can use for a multitude of reasons. It can be used as a hobby to take part in it on the side, or to actually wanting to gain muscle and achieving any particular gym-related goals. To me, exercise is a mixture of many different things. I believe that playing sports, having any sort of physical activity outside, or even being in the gym and lifting weights can all be different types of exercising.      So now, let’s answer the question as to why taking part in exercise is even important? When our body exercises, our brain releases chemicals such as dopamine and serotonin . Our body is able to feel rewarded after the strenuous work that we put into these diverse activities. Therefore, these “feel-good” hormones are released in our body, which in turn creates a cycle that makes us want to continue exercising.       Exercising i...

One of my favorite Webtoons is this story called “Eleceed,” which tells the story of a young high schooler named Jiwoo Seo who learns that he has extremely fast reflexes and the ability to move at the speed of light. With his newly gained superpowers, he is flung into the “awakened world,” fighting various supervillains with his other superhero friends and secretly saving the lives of civilians. It’s such a good story—I love the plot, the art, and the characters—and I look forward to reading it every Tuesday when a new chapter uploads at 6 PM.  But to be honest, there’s also so many other stories that literally have the exact same plot. On just Webtoon’s platform, there is literally a whole genre dedicated to stories about people unexpectedly gaining powers and fighting to save the world—this week, five out of the ten new Webtoon Originals contain a main character with some sort of supernatural ability. And let’s not forget about all the comics, books, and movies that have been mad...

Back in October, Hiroshi Shimomoto began to publish weekly chapters of a manga, titled Smother Me , about a thirteen-year-old trained assassin. Compared to most manga series, this work especially stood out because of the thick, messy art style and the brevity of the series—ending after only fifteen chapters published over three months, compared to typical mangas that are published over at least half a year and often contain over twenty-five chapters at least (this fact is also more surprising considering Smother Me was being published officially in Shounen Jump , a major manga magazine in Japan, and online).  With all these factors in mind, and the unique story Shimomoto illustrates, I began reading it a couple weeks after it started being released online. The main plot of the novel is unusual but straightforward: the main character, Akio a.k.a. Snake—given the name for strangling his victims—was sold off at a young age because of his mother’s poverty. From that point on, Akio ends...

This past weekend, my robotics team competed at the FTC States Championship (a robotics competition). With our 15 dedicated members, we were excited to compete and potentially make the World’s Competition too. But things didn’t go as planned. Not only did we fall short, but we performed worse than usual. It was crushing. A team that has become like family was left feeling like all our hard work this season meant nothing. The problem was that we in fact were world-class level. Our engineering, outreach, and strategy were solid. But in FTC, its not just about what you do, its about how well you tell the judges what you did. And that’s where we struggled. The judging process, mean to evaluate forty-eight teams in a single day, has major flaws. It rewards those who know how to frame their achievements in the best light, sometimes even stretching the truth. Some teams took advantage of this, inflating their impact and making their work seem bigger than it really was. Meanwhile, we focused o...