When I saw myself for the first time, I was wearing a green light-up fedora for “crazy hat day” at my school. I’d seen other girls tie their hair up in a way to make themselves look like a guy, so I did the same, and when I looked in the mirror that morning, I felt this rush of pure ...

A month after my brother died, a puppy bounded into my life. Yes, you read that correctly — a few months ago, I lost one of the most important people in my life, as well as a piece of my heart. To anyone reading, this sounds like the most abrupt and underdeveloped decision one could make ...

On my family’s small half-acre of land, my garden has always been the best place for me to feel relaxed. When I was in second grade, COVID-19 hit the Adirondacks, and, in true Adirondack style, we were sent home with pine tree saplings. When I first thought of growing a tree, little me ...

We are living and adapting to an increasingly digitized world. Schools have since become more online, chromebooks are now considered commonplace rather than a curiosity, and, according to Common Sense Media, the percentage of children who own phones at age twelve is 71%, and for 14 year-olds, ...

Did you know that 50 million teenagers worldwide smoke or vape? I sure didn’t! I discovered this when I researched an essay for 8th grade. We could write about whatever we wanted, and I was inspired to write about nicotine addiction. Tobacco, a well-known ingredient in cigarettes, has ...

This fall, Saranac Lake High School 10th graders in Eric Bennett’s English classes were challenged to write personal narratives in just 100 words. In about the space of a paragraph, students were tasked with telling a story with a beginning, middle and end; expressing something true about ...