Yulee High School

    Today was a first at Yulee High School!  The Florida-Georgia Blood Alliance was on campus for our first annual blood drive.  Many students had volunteered to donate their blood during school hours. The bloodmobile was full of excited students ready to donate. In fact, the bloodmobile was so busy all day long that they had to rescedule some students for next Monday.

     The bloodmobile is approximately 40 feet long, 8 feet wide and 10 1/2 feet high.  It is fully equipped with 4-6 beds for people to stretch out while they donate and nurses who are ready to help people fill out all the forms.

In past years, students have been off of school on the day of Good Friday. This day, which is the Friday before Easter, is a big day for Christianity and is celebrated by many people in our country.  We should not have to attend school on Good Friday.  If not a day for all in school to be off, it should at least be an optional day for students who are Christians.  What, are they going to make us go to school on Christmas next?  All religious holidays should be optional school holidays for the people who practice that particular religion.  It's absurd to disregard religious holidays and not recognize them as a large part of the lives of most people in this country.

The Journalism class at YHS recently had a photo scavenger hunt and produced some very good photography.  Pairs of students took the required list of 25 items found outside of the classrooms and had to locate and photograph them all within an hour.  The goal was not only to find the items, but to have the top photographs in the class. That was made more difficult by the types of items on the list, like the words "water" and "open" or an example of Braille or a Nassau County vehicle.  The most outstanding photographs were selected as "Best in Show" and poste

Friday Feb. 15th, 2008, was unlike any other Rriday at our school, Yulee High School.  Whenever I arrived at school at 7:30 in the morning, the parking lot seemed empty and crowded at the same time. Students were all hanging out by the vehicles and waiting around, which is unusual for 7:30 because school starts at 7:40, but there seemed to be fewer vehicles than usual in the parking lot.  I pulled in and was stopped by my last year's chemistry teacher who told me that our school had been vandelized. I called my mom and told her what had happened after I talked about it with my peers. All our school locks had been super-glued and toothpicked the night before, and the janitors and staff were having a difficult time getting the doors open. Some of the janitors had to break windows to get some of the doors open. Building 7 - the largest classroom building - was open, however, since one door had been overlooked by the vandals; students with classes in that building weren't affected.  All the rest of the students that morning reported to the gym, where we missed about 20 minutes of our first period. Some students left because they thought that school was going to be cancelled and they didn't feel like sitting in a crowded gym for any amount of time, not knowing how long it would take to get all the buildings open. Everyone was back in class by 8:15.

    It's the first day of February already. Wow!  This year has gone by really fast. When you think about how fast this year has gone by, you start to think about how fast other years will go by, then how fast your life will go by. I wish that in good moments life would move a little slower and I could just take a moment, one instant, to stop and take a mental picture of everything around me.

     February seems to be a very exciting month in my life so far. For instance, today I start my first job which I'm kind of nervous about even though I know I'll probably be fine. Then a new member joins the family this month, my niece, due Feb. 22.  I cannot wait to meet her! Also, my younger brother's birthday is in February and maybe there will be a car for me as well. Yay!

Every once in a while I come into my classes with a negative attitude because of the type of day I am having. I have noticed around me that I am not the only teenager that goes through these types of things; in fact, every day someone is not having a good day in one of my classes.

One of my teachers told me a story about her daughter who had a high school teacher that kept a teddy bear at the front of class. Just one teddy bear.  If someone was having a really bad day, they could walk to the front of the class or just walk by and grab the teddy bear to take to their desk and this teacher would leave that one student alone for the day. The catch was that if you had the teddy bear, no one else could have it.

More now than ever we hear about change. I mean everything is changing faster than we can blink and we keep getting information at lightning speed. Yet, with all of the technological advances and all the potential my generation has, I am constantly let down at the lack of motivation my peers have. It's a given that SATs, ACTs, AP tests, finals, and graduation are on their minds, but isn't it our duty to make the world a better place?

I, for one, think it is, and I take a lot of heat from my peers for informing them how they can get involved in making food, mammogram, animal shelter, wildlife, and literacy donations without even taking out their wallets!  There is a website called hungersite.com where you can click a button and it will automatically make donations that have been prepaid by sponsors. And instead of taking the time to donate, or even acknowledge my presence when I am talking about helping others, they have blinders on, plain and simple.

Ok. So what is the deal with thieves?? Why is it that students at school feel the need to steal other student's belongings?? Last year $60 of my yearbook money, all of my Christmas gift cards, and my iPod were stolen, along with so many other students' belongings. I remember walking into the girls' locker room and all of the girls' backpacks were unzipped. We all freaked out. Even someone's old sneakers were missing. Now that's gross. 

This went on for a couple of weeks. It just baffles me why these people would want to steal our things anyway. Are they really that desperate that they feel the need to take other peoples belongings?? Of course, though, we were told that it was our fault for leaving our stuff out and that we should have kept our things in a locker. The school wasn't able to do anything about the theft. I admit that some of it might have been our fault, but it was our teacher's responsibility to keep the locker room door locked.  After the theft last year. the locker room was usually locked. 

I'm a fifteen-year-old sophomore at Yulee High School who believes that we shouldn't have school on Monday 11/19/07 and Tuesday 11/20/07. I think that going to school for two days the week of Thanksgiving is a waste of our time.  A lot of the students here at school aren't even going to be here. They are going to take the entire week off to go enjoy time with family. Students who do come to school aren't going to want to do anything. The teachers are trying to find fun, learning-enhancing activities to do for the few students that are here. The hassle of coming to school probably isn't going to be worth it. I think that the School Board should give us the entire week off for a Fall Break. I'm sure that'd make all of us happy who have to come on Monday and Tuesday.

    FCAT is the biggest stuggle for middle and high school students.  Being a Yulee High School senior and waiting on FCAT re-take results (I had retaken the FCAT several times) is very stressful.  I came to school today not expecting anything, but all of a sudden I heard, " We got the FCAT results back."  I logged in to FCATParentNetwork.com and received my results. I finally passed the FCAT with a score of 1953! The lowest possible passing score was 1926. 

      This is a huge monkey off my back, and my whole entire family celebrated. As a stressed-out senior, all I need now is to keep my grades up to a 2.0 GPA to graduate. I will be graduating next June, and it's so much easier without the FCAT holding me back. I also appreciate all the hard-working teachers that have helped me in the struggle to accomplish this.