“Jimmy” — MIA
This is the perfect song to dance around in your underwear to.

“Gangsters & Strippers” — Too $hort
Honestly, this is just my cut. Listen to it before your soccer game, SAT, or Sunday morning service with your grandma; it’s the ultimate pump-up anthem. I wish this song played every time I entered a room.

“Like a Virgin Again” — Chris Brown ft. Tyga
After going ham on Rihanna’s face and becoming a public monster, Chris Brown had to seriously step his game up. He comes back with a vengeance on his collaborative mix tape, “Fan of a Fan,” and now everyone gets it in to Breezy. This song is hot.

“Pro Nails (Rusko remix)” — Kid Sister
This is the dubstep remix to Kid Sister’s classic, and is best served extra loud in a dark room with lots of sweaty bodies and glow sticks. Yeeeee!

“Little Wing” — Jimi Hendrix
A masterpiece all on its own, “Little Wing” is a hidden jewel in the great Hendrix legacy. I listen to this song before I fall asleep, or when I need to stare wistfully out the window for a few hours.

“D.A.N.C.E” — Justice
I wish we gigged to songs like this on Purple and White. We’re a creative bunch and I’m surewe could fiure out how to freak to this somehow. Lolz.

“First Things First” — Blu & Exile
This Cali collaboration is killer. Blu’s lyrical storytelling and Exile’s abstract beats ar the perfect harmony, and their “Below the Heavens” album is pure bliss. Gentlemen: everyone knows that you have to have a yellow diamond Jesus-piece and a range to get with girls at the club, but if you have neither, pay close attention to Blu’s game in this song. Then get at me.

“I Can’t Make it Home” — Devin the Dude
The story of my Friday nights. Except don’t worry (grandma I know you’re reading this) no drunk driving. I don’t even have a car. Anyone tryna give me a ride to school?

You’ll know what I mean when you use it he said over his shoulder as he strolled to the idling Cadillac, the one with the tinted windows.

His brother is always saying things like that over his shoulder as he slides into strangers’ cars. He handed it to him roughly, but he knew that his brother had made sure it wasn’t loaded.

Now it lies inconspicuous and mute in the net of his perspiring fingertips. He wonders why guns always look guilty, even before their silence is shattered into fits of rage. He raises his arms and turns slowly to the mirror above his dresser and admires his reflection. He flips his hood over his head so it covers his eyes and curls his lip into a sneer. He is startled and pleased to see the image of his big brother refracted back to him. The reflection speaks:

You’re a grown ass man now, huh?

A million balloons soar in his chest and it doesn’t seem so heavy anymore. The gun covers his face as he cocks it and says bang.

It used to be a lot harder for us to kill each other. In the Stone Age we used rock-headed spears to combat our opponents, and before that we used our bare hands. Only a few decades ago we were fighting each other with pocket-knives and baseball bats. But since automatic weapons and easily concealable hand guns have become more accessible and popular in our society, we’ve learned to kill each other in a split second, a blink of an eye, a flex of a finger, the click of a trigger. To our generation, murder is rolling down a window, taking aim, and driving away. It’s easy to be efficient and impersonal when we kill each other. It’s easy to be a coward. Do we close our eyes when we pull the trigger?

The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that in 2006, 3,184 children and teens died from gunfire in the US. That’s 61 young lives lost every week. Nine young lives lost every day. One young life lost every 2 hours and 45 minutes. Those 3,184 lives lost are more than enough to fill 127 public school classrooms with 25 students each, one and a half times the entire student body of Garfield High School. From 2008 to 2009, stray bullets added seven more to this statistic and left Seattle streets strewn with seven more sidewalk memorials.

One. On January 4, 2008, two unknown gunmen crashed a back-to-school party at Studio One-Sixty in Lower Queen Anne hosted by two Franklin High students. As the two men began firing, 17-year-old Cleveland High School student Allen Joplin was struck by bullets several times and died at the scene.

Two. Around 9 PM on January 10, 2008, South Seattle residents Cris Turner and Robert Mathis heard “two loud bangs” outside their home. The next morning 14-year-old Cleveland High freshman, De’Che Morrison was discovered half a block away. His body was found behind a car where he had lain all night, bleeding out from a gunshot wound. If he had survived, he would have graduated this year with the class of 2011.

Three. Fifteen-year-old Pierre LaPoint was walking along Rainier Avenue South to a bus stop that would have taken him home on the night of August 5, 2008, when he was fatally shot in the stomach. Despite his godmother’s word that Pierre was not gang-affiliated, the Seattle Police Department made a statement saying his death was “likely gang-related.”

Four. At what was supposed to be a normal house party in South Seattle January 26, 2008, Police found 18-year-old Perry Henderson slumped in the back seat of a beige Cadillac Coupe deVille in the arms of his girlfriend who was attempting to apply pressure to his many gunshot wounds. Perry died 14 days later in Harborview Medical Center.

Five. Sixteen-year-old Diaquan Jones and three friends were at the Westfield Southcenter Mall in Tukwila when they engaged in a fistfight with another group of boys that ended in a 21-year-old drawing a gun and fatally shooting Diaquan in the stomach. Today, there is no memorial in Southcenter Mall to mark his death, only shiny white floors that hold shoppers’ reflections.

The person who I’ve just described is the spokesperson for our generation. He’s everywhere, not just in the narrow halls of high schools across America. He is Nicki Minaj, who’s rhymes seem to revolve around little else than status and shameless self-glorification.  He is labeled the “abomination of the Obama-nation” for his atrociously arrogant behavior at the VMA’s, then drops an album and reclaims his thrown a-la-Kanye West. He is the boyfriend who likes to brag about “the thing you did to him in the backseat of his car” to his friends. He is the sister who posts entire albums of her sexy poses on Facebook for everyone to check out (to your horror). He is the best friend who magically gets with any girl he wants. And, most likely, he is you too.

Before you jump on me for labeling you as an egotistical asshole, listen to the facts. Over 50 million tweets are broadcasted over the internet every day. Facebook has peeked over 500 million active members, and the average user spends 55 minutes on the site each day. Over 70-percent of teens are members of at least one social network.

The internet and its endless bounty of social networking sites have enabled society to connect, trade, and most importantly, share like never before. We can vent about our days, post links to the fresh pair of Jordan’s we want to buy, and blog extensively about our traumatic breakups. We can make every thought we think, and every move we make, public information. People read it and sometimes even like it! Suddenly we think that all of our thoughts and opinions matter; no matter how mundane your life may be, you can now re-package it so it’s more [virtually] appealing. People will believe you’re awesome if your posts, streams, tweets, profiles, and pictures all allude to the fact that you’re awesome. Some people have even achieved online fame for their self-marketing skills. All it takes is some networking, an engaging or shocking trademark, and a few mouse-clicks. What a convenient ego boost.

This new lifestyle may be narcissistic and grossly self-promotional, and the fact that most of the material we contribute to the Internet is mostly about ourselves makes this label hard to disprove. Fame and fortune have always been an integral part of the American Dream, and for those who feel like they’re living this dream, broadcasting your  own prosperity is just part of the package. What else do you think inspired a song verse like “I wanna be a billionaire/so freakin’ bad?”

In the cutthroat culture we live in, confidence and self promotion is crucial to achieving success. Modesty is certainly out of style; an old fashioned virtue that no longer heads the list of our morals. Our generation understands that a healthy ego will get you far. Nobody ever became anybody by keeping their head low and downplaying their accomplishments.

Love him or hate him, Mr. Ego is here to stay. Read his blog, follow him on Twitter, and cop his swag, but don’t hesitate to call him out when he takes it too far. Keep him confident, not cocky. Just know that he’ll be right back at it, and with a vengeance. Man, is confidence sexy!

“My chick bad, my chick hood…” Yeah, you know how it goes. Listening to Luda’s description of his bad, bad girl, you start to feel kinda bad yourself. Or if you happen to be of the y-chromosome set, perhaps you fantasize while you’re stopped at a red light, about how you wish every girl could be as bad as the girl that everyone is rapping about. You don’t waste time pondering the ironic flip of the adjective, because the implications are much too obvious. All you know is that bad has never sounded so good.

From reality TV shows like The Bad Girls Club to The Real Housewives of Atlanta, to the numerous references in hit singles and MTV jargon alike, it is apparent that the bad girl is on the rise. She is the subject of every rapper’s lyrics — it is no secret that Mr. Wayne likes his women bad. And who wouldn’t? She spits whatever’s on her mind and handles her liquor. She can knock anyone who crosses her flat on the floor (remember J-WOW’s clean backhand on season one of the Jersey Shore?)  She is loud, proud, and unapologetic for who she is. No wonder every preteen girl across America wants to be her. Suck on that, Miley.

Perhaps the Bad Girl is a portrait of our present society’s perception of the modern woman. Just within the last few centuries, we’ve won our right to voice our opinions by voting, manage our own accounts, and own our own property. We’ve come a long way, and we couldn’t have done it with out all the Bad Girls in history who did their time and pushed the limits. America is slowly becoming more encouraging of strong, capable women who not only can raise a family, but can raise themselves up too.  The age of the meek little southern Belle with impeccable manors and a speak-only-when-spoken-to demeanor is coming to a close. And sexy Miss Independent is shoving her out of the way.

But as we are redefining the image of the modern girl, we have to be careful that no errors are made when defining the word “bad.” A Bad Girl is always a lady because she has the audacity to demand to be treated like one. A bad girl plays boys like a game of Russian roulette because she refuses to submit to the demands of male desire to please anyone. In other words, no true Bad girl stoops low to play the part of the slut. A Bad Girl takes what she wants with out saying please or thank you, but she never bops another female off in order to get ahead. A Bad Girl can recognize another Bad Girl as her ally. And most importantly, a Bad Girl has a fierce self respect for herself.

Being bad is not an excuse for bad behavior. Many a classless trick has tried to pass off her sloppiness as Bad Girl etiquette, and all too often rappers have mislabeled this insecure imposter as bad by glorifying their self-deprecating behavior verse. It’s sometimes challenging to distinguish the Bad from the just plain bad. The fact that our culture by way of the media is constantly transmitting mixed messages of what, who, and how a girl should be does not help the matter. In consequence, we are demanded to play two roles simultaneously with out flaw: the hard headed vixen, and the doe eyed virgin.

So instead of conforming to both, and thus resigning our self esteem, let’s keep it real. And the only way to that is to love those haters and keep your head up, knowing that in the end, it’s the Bad Girl who wins. Play that music loud, and throw something crazy on.  Have a bad, bad year Lady Bulldogs.

Sophie has been taking the prescription drug Adderal since her sophomore year of high school. Already stressed about her academic success which was intended to secure her future at an Ivy-League school, Sophie turned to prescription pills in order to make it happen. 

“I got so stressed out right before finals” says Sophie. “I already have a hard time focusing, so the Adderal just helped me get my work done.

Yeah, its illegal or whatever, but I don’t see how it’s a bad thing if it’s helping me keep my 4.0. It’s getting harder and harder to get into college and I really need that extra edge.”

The obsession with maintaining a high GPA to earn entry into a good college is the driving force for students who take academic performance enhancing drugs or “student steroids.”

The number of college students who take the drug without a prescription has been on a steady increase for the past couple of years, and according to the National Institute of Mental Health, 2 million children in the U.S. are prescribed pills for ADHD, making drugs like Adderal and Ritalin highly accessable to other children.

The most commonly used drug, Adderal, has become a favorite among students for it’s consistant results and trance-like effect. Sales of the drug have spiked over the past couple of years. It is also listed as a Schedule II drug in the U.S. under the Controlled Substance Act for its addictive potential and high risk of abuse.

“My sister has ADHD and her meds are always lying around the house” says Sophie. “They’re easy to take and good to have on hand because you can trade them for weed sometimes. They’re everywhere these days.”

Prescribed to patients who are diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Adderal enhances concentration, awareness and general cognitive performance. It also decreases user fatigue, which is why a user can study for six hours straight without breaking focus. A cocktail of many powerful chemicals, including various amphetamines, Adderal works by increasing the amount of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain.

The side effects range from mild to alarming; short term use can yield apetite loss and a change in vision, while long term use can cause strokes or seizures due to the effect it has on increasing blood pressure.

“What these kids don’t realize is how much damage this drug is capable of doing the brain if the drug isn’t prescribed,” says a medical practitioner who wished to remain anonymous. “These drugs are meant to create a chemical balance in the brain. And when someone who takes the drug whose brain is already in balance, the medication is no longer doing any good. It’s like giving a bull who’s at the hight of its vigor steroids. You’re only just creating a really dangerous imbalance instead of making it stronger.”

But the results of Adderal are too consistant and academically beneficial for many students to pass up.

“I finished my term paper in less than four hours” says Jesse* a senior at Garfield. “Why would I not take Adderal? It makes me do all the s**t that I don’t want to do, and when I take the pill it makes me want to do it.”

However, the morals of taking academic performance enhancing drugs have been cast under scrutiny by many students. Many compare taking prescription pills to perform better academically to taking steroids to increase sports performances.

“Ive never taken Adderal to get my stuff done” says Simone Hoffman, a junior at Garfield. “It’s not like I have anything against people who do take it cause it’s their choice, but I personaly choose not to. It’s like taking steroids to get better at a sport. You shold be able to do your homework without having to take a pill to focus.”

But frequent Adderal users like Sophie couldn’t disagree more.
“The only reason why I take Adderal is because I need to in order to make it in high school. Teachers drive us to this point with all the busy work they give out. There’s no way that I can finnish all this bull-s**t without taking a pill, cause there’s so much of it and not enough time to do it in. If teachers and college admissions people hold everyone to the same standards, they have to accept that some people need an extra leg up to meet them.”

For whatever reason students decide to use prescription pills, the sentiment remains the same: they are here to stay.

So with that quizzical mindset, I sat through class and listened to the rules of the Jane Schaffer format: intro, commentary, commentary, concrete detail, repeat. Was my creativity getting in the way of education so much that I needed to be wrangled into the confines of structure locked up by petty grammar rules? And with that, I became convinced that the public school system was on a mission to stifle my creative mind and beat me into conformity, a vengeful mindset that has stuck with me.

My frustrations with my education ultimately led me to enroll in the Running Start program, in which one can take classes at community college that will satisfy high school credit. I started the program with the notion that these classes would provide me with what I wasn’t getting at Garfield; a creative license. But what I found was basically more of the same stuff. The classes were taught with the same methods, and my english professor still prescribed the Jane Schafer format to my writing. It felt life no matter where I went, I was still confined by the same rules and regulations.

So instead of bemoaning my lack of creative freedom, I came to the realization that in order to fly, you first must learn the rules or else you’ll crash.

While the public school system cannot cater to every student’s specific learning methods, it has to be able to accommodate the vast majority. The purpose of publicly funded education is to prepare young citizens with the basic tools of knowledge, and provide the foundation for a higher education. While this may not be optimal for those whose course in life is not directed towards a university, the foundational skills such as mathematics and language arts that a high school education provides are invaluable. High school curriculums are designed to be universal. The things you are taught in class are intended to be applicable to any field, even though we have all experienced times when they weren’t.

Even though I have never been a huge fan of the functions of the public school system, and probably never will be, I can still see its value. I can list off a number of flaws I see in the system without hesitation, my complaints revolving primarily around the lack of respect and funding the art programs receive from the district. I believe that the arts have a hugely important place in our lives and that everyone learns from some form of creative expression, so I am irritated by the fact that the art programs are the first to be cut.
But the programs that receive ample funding and support, such as the mathematics and science departments, do indeed deserve the attention they get. Those subjects are universal, and one can always find a way of creative expression, or at least analytical application, within those classes.

Public school cannot stifle your creative voice. It may discourage it with its repetition, but the key is to let rules only refine it. The purpose of learning the rules first, is so that you can improvise later.

The Jane Schaffer format is taught so that the structure of a comprehensive and informative essay can be learned first, allowing spontaneity to follow after it is mastered. While creative chaos is wonderful in theory, your words mean nothing if no one can unwrap them.

No one was more frustrated than Gabriel Ladd, a former truancy officer at Cleveland High School.

“During the time I worked at Cleveland, I saw that students were losing classmates due to youth violence” says Ladd. “I would see these students crying and grieving and it was just time for the young men in our community to try and do something about it.”

Ladd took the initiative by creating Youth 180.The relatively young program was launched last April and named after the goal that Ladd wished to achieve; to help Seattle’s youth make a 180 degree turn towards a better future. Ladd believes that good mentorship is what can make that change possible.

“I’m from right here and navigated the same blocks as these youth that were losing their lives. It is our responsibility, especially when you know these other young boys and can be very influential in their lives,” says Ladd. “When I was young, it was a lot more mentors around and the odds of finding a positive role model in our community weren’t as slim. But as time ticked there were less mentors. Now we have to realize that we are in position to be the influential mentors.”

With the help of 20,000 from Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, the program recruited a group of at-risk young men from around the Rainier Valley. Ladd enlisted the help of his friends, many of whom were former gang members themselves, to educate the teens about the importance good decision making, the consequences of their actions, and self respect in the classrooms of Aki Kurose Middle School. The teens also did community service projects such as painting over graffiti and performing city maintenance, and Ladd converted his childhood home into a safe house where the kids in his program could take refuge from the streets.

Ladd continues keep the kids in his program busy so they don’t slide off track by engaging them in their own communities.

“Youth 180 strives to help Seattle’s Youth understand their importance to our community, and the importance of mentorship in our community,” says Ladd.

Youth 180 is involved with many service programs around Seattle.

And as for the rest of the youth who are not involved with his program?

“Come together. Lift each other up. And speak up about the things you want to see change. Because ultimately, you are the future for our society.”

“I kind of just tried not to worry about the possibility that I could get pregnant even though I wasn’t on birth control at the time” says Jessica. “But after a few days I started to freak out.”

Fortunately, the pregnancy test that she took after two weeks of worrying turned out negative and she saw no visible signs of any STIs.

“I guess I’m just lucky with these kind of things,” says Jessica.

But many girls in Jessica’s situation can’t just rely on luck to prevent unwanted pregnancy. According to Pregnant Teen Help, every year roughly 750,000 teens become pregnant. The U.S. has a significant rate of teenage pregnancy, a sobering fact which costs the government $7 billion annually.

Millions of dollars are poured into prevention programs that educate teens on safe sex and provide birth control and emergency contraceptives. For various reasons, however, many girls do not to use these. Some can’t be reached by the efforts of prevention programs or have not yet received sex education. And some simply choose not to utilize the alternatives for personal, ethical, or religious reasons.

“I’ve had sex education since middle school and I’m totally aware of all the options out there like Plan B and abortion,” says Jessica. “I grew up Catholic and don’t believe in abortion, so that was never an option. And to me Plan B is the same as abortion, since it’s stopping your body from creating life.”

In fact, many drug companies agree with Jessica’s reasoning. Back the in the early 2000s, Wal-Mart decided to halt the sales of emergency contraceptives such as Plan B in their pharmacies. The company gave permission to its employees to refer customers to other stores which sold the drug so as not to give the impression that potential buyers were with out an option. But in many towns where the only pharmaceutical dispensary was Wal-Mart, the company’s decision ended up having just that effect on customers.  The only reason the company gave for their choice to halt sales stemmed from the conservative values the company is founded upon.

Many “pro-life” groups across the nation site Plan B along with the abortion pill in their lists of doctor prescribed items that terminate life. They question the long term effects of the pill, and even the ethics of the people who provide it. But many health care professionals insist that the emergency contraceptive pill is safe, and should be available to young women with out a prescription.

“Plan B is not the abortion pill” says Happy Salinas-Santos. “At no point does it ever ‘kill the baby,’ nor does it compromise the fertility of a young woman when it is used right.”

Salinas Santos, who works in the Teen Health Center at Garfield High School, advocates for the use of Plan B amongst high school students, a highly controversial topic.

“I think that the people who don’t want young women using Plan B lack an understanding on the drug actually does” says Salinas-Santos. What the pill actually releases are hormones that create a hostile environment in the uterus so the fertilized egg can’t attach to its wall.

Most of the girls that Salinas-Santos serves in the Teen Health Center don’t hesitate to use Plan B due to religious or moral reasoning. Instead, most just lack an understanding of how to use the emergency contraceptive pill.

“Even though we are fortunate enough to not have an abstinence only education here at Garfield, a lot of girls have some misconceptions about the pill” says Salinas Santos. “They don’t see the pill as only a last resort to prevent pregnancy and want to use it like birth control. Plan B is alright only in emergencies, but not in frequent doses.”

“[Sex] is not just something you can change your mind about and just take a pill afterwards and hope you don’t get pregnant,” says Jessica.

Even Salinas-Santos can agree with Jessica on her last point.

“It’s always your choice to have sex” she says.

*name changed

Fitted caps, fresh Jordans, True Religion jeans. Looking good does not come without a price tag, and it is often a fat one. Any girl will be the first to tell you that glamming up is expensive, especially when a good brand of mascara is seventeen bucks. The constant purchases of beauty products and clothing and the time that girls spend utilizing them is what gives society the assumption that women dedicates more to their appearance than the opposite gender does. This stereotype has been played up by the media, mostly displayed in a humorous example that can be seen in a sitcom. But in most cases, the amount of money and time both genders spend on their appearances break even. And in many examples, guys often dedicate more to their looks than most girls do.

Take for example, the male cast mates of MTV’s hit reality show, Jersey Shore. The show is a documentation of eight young Italian American adults and their drunken escapades in the clubs on the Jersey Shore. The three male cast mates spend three quarters of their day on their bodies, working on their fake tan, pumping iron, and applying obscene amounts of gel to their hair. Their whole schedule is focused around their appearance and they seem even more self conscious than the girls do (remember when Mike “The Situation” pouted a whole night of clubbing away because he didn’t like his outfit?).Looking good is just as important to them as their female housemates, if not even more so. And while the depiction of their grooming habits may have been blown out of proportion by the media, there are plenty of guys who care about their appearance as much as the Jersey Shore boys.

Everyone knows a guy kind of like the ones on Jersey Shore. He might not own a personal tanning bed or use up an entire tube of gel in a day, but he definitely pays close attention to the way he’s looking. Maybe he waits in line for eight hours in front of Footlocker to get the limited edition Space Jam Jordan’s, or maybe he covers up his zits with his sister’s foundation. And everyone knows a girl who rocks sweatpants everyday and couldn’t care less about the way she looks. Not all girls care obsess over their physical beauty just like not every boy wears the same pair of socks for a week or doesn’t do something about his uni-brow. In fact, my showering habits resembled the man’s more than it did the woman’s. Minus the butt-hairs of course.

As the evening wore on, the assault continued; the pack of chaperones flanked by the venues security prowled along the perimeter of the dance floor, flashlights in hand. They displayed no inhibition in dishing out degrading comments which were intended to discourage what many refer to as “freak dancing.” Some of the words which I overheard directed at couples could be described as nothing short of abusive, the same kind of words which are meant to cut through a teenage girl’s self esteem. The chaperones who took part in this behavior put on quite an unacceptable show, one that left the young adults who they were hired to protect feeling vulnerable.

As much as we might resent admitting it, adults play an important role in our growth and path to independence. While learning from ones own personal experience is imperative to growing up, so is the guidance and support of the adults in our lives. We receive our knowledge from those who have learned before us, and follow their guidance on the paths to success that they once traveled. In a young person’s environment, the guidance of these people is vital. With their advantage of years of accumulated experience and sense of moral grounding, adults should take the role of mentor and protector to those of fewer years. Especially in learning environments these roles are key, played out by our teachers, coaches, family, and mentors. Many of these people work selflessly to ensure that the next generation is well equipped with tools that will help them create goals for life, and feed their self esteem so that they can achieve them.

The impact that an adult can have on a youth’s life is enormous. To this day, I am still grateful for my elementary school language teacher who took me under her wing and encouraged me to pursue writing. The positive experiences we have with our adult mentors can really change the course of our lives. But when a person who is blessed with the crucial role as a youth mentor abuses their power, the damage that is caused is critical. Even a few negative words can have an impact, building up the odds against the already impressionable youth. I can still recall the feelings of worthlessness I experienced after my fourth grade math teacher informed me that due to my low test scores, I would never amount to anything. If those words of discouragement hadn’t have impacted me in some way, they would not have followed me for seven years.

Words have just as much cause and effect impact as actions do. Who knows how long that girl at the dance will cringe at the memory of the chaperones insults. The insulting name she was called is not what will continue to disturb her. The fact that someone who was there to support her was the one to hurt her, will.