Seniors! End of the year projects are…

Cody Kemble: They aren’t as bad as people make them. Most students just use the projects as something to complain about. By this point in my HS career, I am used to doing these. I know that I have to make time to do them and just go little by little and not just do it all in one night.

Tarrant Sasser: Stressful, but not that bad. I’ve been used to a huge workload around  this time a year from studying for finals. This year with no finals to study for the last couple projects make it feel like a normal ending. Although, sports and work haven’t made it easy. I would probably be done with them already if I didn’t leave town every weekend.

Cristopher Carlson: Kind of pointless. I just feel like teachers make us do them to keep us busy for the last couple weeks of school. It’s hard finding time to get them done with everything going on at the end of the year. Everything is just now starting to get chaotic and busy with graduation coming up and all the senior activities and  Regions for all the sports. They just add on extra stress towards the end of the year that is unwanted and needed. I’d rather take a final test or exam at the end of the year that’s based on what we’ve learned in the class than write an 8 page paper that’s heavily weighted based on one subject or topic.

Jonathan Barron: Overwhelming and overall pointless. Seniors should be able to enjoy their last month of highschool without the stress of heavily weighted projects that affect their overall letter grade. Many of us have already enough on our minds with sports, scholarships, AP exam prep, and passing the classes that are graduation requirements. The whole reason for teachers to assign hefty projects is to accomodate for a final typically and a reflection of what they learned over the year. I can understand that, but overall the majority of us seniors have already lost motivation to do much more and will not try as hard as we would earlier in the year resulting in not our best effort which isn’t a true reflection of what we learned. Therefore, those big projects are essentially a waste of everyone’s time and overall pointless.

Tourism is…

Jenna Miller: I love tourism. I mean, how could you not love it when there’s an extra 10,000 people in your home town crowding the sidewalks and walking out right in front of you when you’re driving. It’s also really fun that during the busiest time of the year there’s road construction going on downtown. It would make no sense to start these projects in the winter when nothing is going on. So thank you Ketchikan for choosing the most inconvenient time to do all this. Sincerely, everyone.

Madison Rose: What this town thrives off of. Ketchikan has sold its soul to the tourist industry and heavily depends for cruise ships to come. Revillagigedo needs these people to come and carelessly spend money so downtown stores and businesses can stock up and make a living. (Along with charter fishermen, tour guides, pilots, restaurants, and basically everyone who lives here.) Many people complain about the tourist season, but Ketchikan has grown a lot from this and without it we wouldn’t be able to provide for ourselves. On the other hand, we continue to entrust in this system and give up more towards tourism, rather than looking for better solutions. We tear down our roads and rebuild the side walks so they are more suitable for the visitors (who come once a year), while the local people are forced to handle construction in their daily lives. Are we actually becoming successful and making progress? Or have we made things worse for ourselves and become so desperate that we are willing to drain ourselves before tourism does.

Liam Kiffer: Tourism Is awesome. Most of the year, downtown Ketchikan is entirely dead. Besides Parnassus Book and Gifts, they’re open year round, 6 days a week. But other than them and a few other stores, downtown Ketchikan is almost completely empty. Tourism wakes up the downtown and makes the city feel alive again. I know people don’t really like tourists because they can be dumb, but I know I’d act the same way I was in a different country too. It’s so fun to see tons of new faces in town and meet new people from all over the world.

Staff Pick 4/24
Prom is…

Cody Kemble: Prom is pretty fun and whatnot, but I’m not a huge fan. I think that prom for dudes, is something you do for your date and your parents. It really isn’t something I sit around and stress about. I don’t really care about it, but I’ll try my best to make it fun for everyone else.

Cristopher Carlson: Exciting but stressful.

Wyatt Barajas: Prom is fun but some parts are overrated. Getting dressed up and taking your woman out on the town for a night is fun. Dancing and hanging out with your classmates is a heck of a time. The overrated parts are the preparation, the getting fitted for a suit and deciding what to do for the night. These are things that no man honestly likes to do and it just tarnishes the experience. Decision making on nights like prom never go easy because of the stipulation that the night has to be perfect. But at the end of the night the good outweighs the bad.

Brendan Wong: Proms is arguably one of the most valued moments in high school. Most people look forward to it as a freshman. I was just never that person. To me, my most memorable time, is playing sports with my teammates. When I look back on high school, dances won’t be the thing I think about, the sports trips and games would be what I think and tell stories and talk about. Granted, prom is something special and I hope everybody gets that memorable time but it just is not for me and that is why I am choosing to go on a track trip instead of prom.

Jonathan Barron: Prom is supposed create memories that last forever and allow us to reflect on high school later in life, but I really don’t want one night to depict what I think about high school. I see girls spending several hundred dollars on a dress that they’ll only wear for one night, people making reservations to expensive restaurants, and spend a whole day getting ready for the event and to me the whole investment in prom is just absolutely ridiculous. I ordered my suit off amazon for a cheap $70, I did not make any special dinner reservations, and I am not spending a huge amount of time to ready myself all because I simply don’t care.

What’s your favorite sign of spring?

Alex Malouf: My favorite sign of spring is the extended daylight. Spring is a good time for me to get caught up with winter projects that never got finished such as boat maintenance, and the extra daylight and improved weather provides some much needed motivation.

Cristopher Carlson:My favorite sign of spring is Easter. Spring doesnt really hit me until I start seeing random bunny and egg decorations around my house that my mom has put up. My family has always kept the same Easter traditions since I was little so thats how I recoginze that spring is finally here.

Micah Britt: My favorite sign of spring is the sun. When it’s bright outside in the morning, the birds are chirping, and there’s a light mist over the grass and trees, this is how I know it is spring. During the winter months it’s harder to get up and go to school, but when I wake up by a ray of sun peeking in through my window I tend to want to get up and go do things.

Jonathan Barron:There is one thing that sets spring different from the other seasons: the positive change in daylight hours. For me, I know spring’s arrived when my 6:30 a.m. alarm shudders me to the sight of sunshine beaming through the windows. In the winter, the lack of sun takes a toll on my mood whereas with the new abundance of natural light causes me to wake up immediately in a brighter mood and ready for the day. This new positive attitude only gets stronger as I peak at the budding trees and mostly sunny skies. Although the cold has only started to suppress, stepping into the fourty degree morning is rather refreshing, much different from winters’ horrid chilly thirty degrees.

Seniors! One quarter left, how do you feel?

Olivia Kinunen:My emotions are all over the place at this point in the school year. Fourth quarter is going to be so busy and us seniors have a lot to look forward to, but I have zero motivation to get anything done schoolwise. High school went by way faster than I expected, but I am more than ready to be done. I’m just trying to get through these last two months so I can move on to new things and meet new people at college.

Tarrant Sasser:I’m in shock. I cannot believe that graduation day is getting so close. It feels like it was yesterday I got my first start in high school football. I would do anything to go back in time and do so much over again. I’m still waiting for someone to wake me up and tell me that this is all a dream. On the other hand, I am ready to turn the page and begin the next chapter in my life, and start fresh again.

Cristopher Carlson: Honestly I’m doing the least amount of work as possible and barely scraping by these last two months of school. I have no motivation left at all, I can barely get myself dressed and ready for school in the morning. I was sitting pretty high on a 4.0 the first semester then just put her right in cruise control and took 3rd quarter off. I’m pretty much the perfect representation of senioritis and i’m just ready for high school to be over.

Brandon Wieber: The time thing has not really hit me yet, but I can definitely feel the anticipation of being done for good coming. Freshman year I did not think high school was going to go by this fast, but one more quarter and it’s crazy. I am very excited to move on to the next chapter in my life and go to college, especially being able to play ball again. It feels good though, learning new things everyday, experiencing new things in life, and being able to go to the next step and be on my own.

Cody Kemble:It’s pretty weird. I remember freshman year first quarter and how I thought that high school was going to drag on forever, but it has been the complete opposite. I don’t really have a ton of motivation in my classes right now so that’s nice. I’m excited to move on to college and have new experiences, but I’ll miss Kayhi, I think that when we graduate it’s going to be something that just sort of happened and then we don’t really look back on it until we’re like in our 30s. It’s pretty hard to put time in perspective right now.