Middle College
March 2023 Newsletter
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Mar 25-April 2: Spring Break
April 7-10: CAASPP Testing
April 13: New Families Night
April 20: UC Davis (Juniors) and Scandia (Seniors) Field Trips
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Juniors + Seniors: Make sure to fill out those field trip permission slips by April 7th!
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Seniors: Be sure to pay attention to emails from your homeschools about upcoming Senior events!
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What's In This Newsletter:
MC Dance, St. Patrick's Day, College Decisions, Holiday Celebrations and More!
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A Red Carpet Gala
On March 17, Middle College held its annual dance in the Bayview Room. The Sunshine Club organized the event, officially themed A Red Carpet Gala, with games, food, music, and a photo-booth included as well.
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A few hours before the dance started, members of Sunshine Club and other volunteers came to help set up the music and decorations. With the help of teachers, the students taped around the room, rolled out the red carpet, prepared the drinks and pizza, and sound-checked the playlist. Then, once it was 7pm, the members walked up the red carpet into the Bayview room to meet Mr. Lien, our strict bouncer. Alongside the help of Ms. Block, the students were able to pull off an amazing job. Thanks to all who made the night a success for everyone!
-Michaela Gonzalez and Steven Acuna-
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On February 17th, the MC Effect Local Club held yet another holiday themed bake-sale. This month, they sold home-made cake pops featuring green frosting to commemorate Saint Patrick's Day. The fundraiser was very interactive, allowing students to decorate their own cake pops with many colors of frosting and sprinkles. Students had a lot of fun decorating and even more fun eating the delicious cake pops. All proceeds went to the Bay Area Rescue Mission and MCEL thanks everyone who was able to attend.
-Devin Gowdy-
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With college decisions coming out left and right, Middle College seniors are feeling a wide range of emotions from anxiety to happiness (but mostly anxiety). To counteract these feelings of anxiety that Seniors feel when they see other people getting into colleges, Ms. Bohorquez created "The Rejection Wall" for Seniors to anonymously post their college rejections. For the MC Seniors, its nice to see that we are not alone. As Senior Clara Sapugay put it, "Misery loves company." For the Juniors, it may be causing more anxiety than it's relieving, but it could be beneficial to have a little "reality check" as an anonymous Senior suggested.
And just as a friendly reminder for the Seniors, make sure to practice self-care during this stressful time and be sensitive to those around you. One way to do this is to recognize that "rejection" can also mean an opportunity for "redirection": as one door closes, consider paying attention to the windows that open.
-Devin Gowdy-
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Snow on Mount Diablo!
By Blythe Jones
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Snowstorms are rare for the San Francisco Bay Area, but in February, a winter storm caused temperatures to drop into the 30s for a few nights, resulting in below-freezing temperatures. Precipitation fell as snowflakes at elevations higher than 800 feet. What resulted was a winter wonderland atop Mount Diablo in the East Bay, Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, Mission Peak in Fremont, Mount Hamilton near San Jose, and the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Although unique, we must consider the impact storms like this have in the Bay Area, mainly because they are so rare. In Livermore, two highways were closed due to weather conditions. In addition, most people do not own snow tires as the climate is moderate. Even recently, rainstorms and snowstorms have flooded parts of California’s agricultural land where people reside, making it hard to do everyday things. Although we are lucky to be able to enjoy it from a distance, the consequences are far from over, due to collapsed infrastructure and flood damage for many cities in California.
Jacob Berenstein and Katie Yeh, two seniors at Middle College, took a car ride near Redwood City to check out the historic snowfall on February 25th. Here are some of the photos they captured:
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Holi is a Hindu tradition that celebrates the divine love between Krishna and Radha— two demigods who were lovers for a period of time. Not only that, but this festival urges everyone to come together as a community regardless of how they feel about each other— good or bad— and play together with colors. While it may seem like Holi is an Indian tradition, it is actually celebrated by most South Asian countries — such as Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh — because it’s a religious festival rather than a country-oriented one. In fact, south Asian living in other foreign countries, like our very own United States, have begun to celebrate this festival with everyone, introducing the Hindu culture to the rest of the world, too.
While most people know Holi to last just one day (when people come together to play with colors), it’s actually a two-day festival. The ritual starts by lighting up the bonfire one day before official Holi. This symbolizes the triumph of good over the bad as we burn anything “evil” in the air around us and welcome everything good. On the day of Holi, people play with colors with their friends and families and in the evening they show love and respect to their close ones with Abeer (the color).
In fact, what’s really fascinating about Holi’s Abeers is that each color represents something; however, there is no one story behind this color-throwing. Krishna himself is represented by blue powder, while red represents love, and yellow is like turmeric - a spice used a lot in Indian cooking and it’s associated with healing.
Hope you learned something new today!
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Why Do We Have Daylight Saving Time?
By Blythe Jones
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We commonly hear the phrase, “fall backward, spring forward,” as a symbol for Daylight Saving Time. In a literal sense, the phrase means we are saving daylight - although we are not... it’s more like shifting it around a little. During this time, we move our clocks an hour ahead, so it stays dark an hour longer in the morning when most people are in bed, and it stays lighter in the evening when people are often out of their houses. In addition, daylight saving time helps us get more waking hours out of long summer days, which means more time for work and play. Although it’s handled differently worldwide, in the United States, except for Arizona and Hawaii, which do not observe Daylight Saving Time, we shift our clocks an hour forward on the second Sunday of March at 2 am. Then, at 2 am on the first Sunday of November, everyone switches their clocks back to standard time. The countries of the European Union use a similar schedule. Their summer time begins on the last Sunday in March and switches back to universal time on the last Sunday in October.
The history of this tradition is usually credited to Benjamin Franklin. While serving as an envoy to France, he suggested that Parisians could save candles by waking up earlier. That’s the same principle as now, except today, it’s oil, not candles. In 1905, a British builder and outdoorsman named William Willett proposed shifting clocks during an early morning horseback ride. He thought it was a shame that so many people slept through the best part of a summer day! Starting in 1918, the US adopted various forms of daylight saving time on and off during times of war and energy crisis. In 1986, a law was passed establishing daylight saving time from the first Sunday of April to the last Sunday of October. That schedule remained in place until 2007, when the Energy Policy Act took effect, and we switched to the current March-to-November schedule.
It’s all so the Secretary of Energy can see how lengthening daylight saving time affects our energy use. Many people have suggested that daylight saving time reduces the amount of energy we use. However, we don’t have enough to prove that it is true. It seems to make sense when families are home at night; they use a lot of electricity. The most energy is used between 4 and 7 in the evening, so it would make sense that moving the clock ahead one hour keeps people out of their houses longer and might help decrease energy use. In addition, some studies show the number of traffic accidents during the early evening rush hour drops during daylight saving time. In 2022, the Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act, which would make daylight saving time permanent, with the main argument being to continue energy conservation and minimize seasonal depression. However, the House of Representatives stalled the bill until the expiration of the previous congress, where the House Energy and Commerce Committee oversaw the bill. So, as of now, we will continue to fall back to Standard Time on Sunday, November 5th, 2023.
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On March 12, 2009, Congress declared Pi Day a national holiday. Celebrating its infamous mathematical constant of π or 3.14159265…, the first official celebration of Pi Day was held by Larry Shaw on March 14, 1988. Shaw worked as a physicist at the San Francisco Exploratorium where the celebration was held, there, they of course ate lots of pie. For those who don't know, pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. It doesn’t matter how big or small that circle is, it’s always equal to pi!
People celebrate Pi Day in many unique ways such as: eating and baking pies, decorating pies, discussing the number pi, throwing pie, etc. Either way there are many ways to show appreciation for pi and also a great excuse to indulge in the treat itself. The only time I really remember celebrating the holiday was in middle school. All of the math teachers worked together to get a bunch of different pies and watch a documentary on the making of Pi Day itself. Prior to that experience I had never really been exposed to the holiday and let's just say it was a very memorable day! I actually ended up not getting any of the pie, but that's okay because I made up for it this year with some blueberry pie. We hope that you all had a great Pi Day and we look forward to the next!
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Productive Habits (Part 3)
By Sarah Grover
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Hello and welcome back to another article in the Productive Habits series. Previously, I’ve talked about calendering and making efficient to-do lists, but this article would be focused on a productive habit of what not to do. In other words, do not multitask.
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While you might have a huge paper due for 3 classes, 2 midterms this week, and you need to finalize an outfit for prom, you would probably convince yourself that you can do them all at once! Although, the truth is, you can’t really multitask unless you’re a computer. In fact, multitasking only makes you less productive, because your brain keeps switching between separate tasks, making it harder to really focus and do your best. It’s easier for your brain to do one thing at a time— which is actually quicker— than it is to do multiple things at a time— which is much slower. When you only focus on one thing, it builds more focus and allows you to go into a deep state of concentration, thus providing the best results. So try to minimize the amount of tasks you need to do, and use your calendaring and to-list skills to help you organize your schedule and recognize which things need to be done before others. Sometimes, a huge factor in multitasking is that people fail to realize which task needs to be prioritized first, which leads to them treating everything as a priority. When you realize what you really need to put before anything else, it will automatically get easier for you to focus on that one thing and not multitask. |
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All of my suggestions for productivity go hand-in-hand, so I hope you try them all out and are able to use what works for you! |
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Editors in Chief:
Devin Gowdy & Jaden Luke
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Steven Acuna Delgado
Michaela Gonzalez
Loralei Rohrbach
Anastasia Prusakova
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Sarah Grover
Blythe Jones
Charlotte Korer
Megan Morales
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Mimi Wilson
Katie Yeh
Kelly Nelson
Mariana Lopez
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