Online News Portal for Tri-City Prep High School

By: Ellie Cartier

The end of the year is coming. People around the school have made new friends and grown closer to older ones. Although it will be more difficult to stay in touch over the summer than in the school year, many will still get together and hang out.

But before the year ends, I have some tips for you to help strengthen your relationships with your friends.

Disclaimer: These are my opinions on how to have a healthy friendship. Everyone is different and so are the ways they show affection for their friends.

1. Respect their space 

You are not their mom, or their dad, or their crazy uncle Jim. You are their friend. If they want to do something you don’t entirely agree with, unless it puts them or others in danger, keep your mouth shut about it. Friends support each other and are there for them when things go wrong.

If they need to take a break from their phone or don’t want to come over that weekend, that’s okay. You don’t have to be with each other all the time. If they need a mental moment or just a break from you, don’t take offense to it. Some people need to recharge for a bit.

Maybe they want to hang out with someone else? That’s also totally fine! You shouldn’t revolve your life around one person, and neither should they,

2. Listening and speaking

Sometimes the best thing you can do for your friend is to just sit there and listen. Don’t give them advice. Don’t tell them “I told you so!” or “If you had listened to me,”. That’s not why they came to you. They want you to hug them and listen. If they want your ‘words of wisdom’, they’ll ask for it.

3. Respecting privacy 

Sort of like number one, but this time more about not asking about every single thing they are doing in their life. If they have something to share with you, they will. This doesn’t mean I’m saying that you can’t ask how their day was or what they are doing this weekend, but more along the lines of if they are texting a girl/boy, you don’t need to know everything they are saying.

If they are going through something that they don’t want to talk to you about, leave it. Maybe they’ll come to you when they’re ready, maybe they won’t. You just have to move on.

4. Paying attention 

This one is personally one of the most important ones to me. Pay attention to your friends. Not just watching their social media. Take them to Starbucks or to Walmart and watch what they look at. Do they like black tea? Is their favorite food sushi?

People truly do appreciate the small things. You bringing them their favorite drink or buying them a new mug because you remembered they broke their first one. It means something to them. You may think it’s just a simple task that took no more than ten minutes but to them, that’s ten minutes of your time you spent thinking about them. That’s important to other people.

Those were a few things I’ve heard my friends say they appreciate in friendships so keep them in mind, and hang on because summer is almost here.

Everyone is hyped for the release of the long-anticipated sequel to The Incredibles. If you haven’t heard, the fourteen-year-long wait is over and on June 15 this year, and people cannot wait.

But before we get too excited, here’s a major plot point most are confused about: The film starts right where it left off.

Fourteen years and not a second has passed in the animated world. A new villain arose last second in the first movie, leaving us on a cliffhanger. It seems like Brad Bird wanted to answer our questions of that ending instead of throwing us into the future. Why would that be? Who doesn’t want to see a moody, teenage Jack-Jack, or an adult Tony and Violet in love? What about a college kid Dash? Would he be over his girl phobia? Knowing these things would be pretty exciting to most people, yet, director Brad Bird doesn’t seem to think so.

“I thought about aging everyone the way everyone does and then I thought, ‘No, that sucks.'” Bird said when asked about his reasoning. He goes on about how many comic books and movie before his had done that very thing and how he wanted The Incredibles to be different from them.

So, no adult Violet or Dash, but instead we are promised to get more Jack-Jack action. As some know, in a short produced after the first movie called Jack-Jack Attack, and at the very end of the first movie, we see that Jack-Jack has more powers than all of the other family members. From what we see, he has the power of fire, steel, and some monster form. Bird calls him a ‘Jack of all trades’; a pun on his name.

Another thing Bird tells us about what to expect is more Elasti-Girl action. Since the last film focused mainly on Mr. Incredible, this one is about Bob tackling parenthood while Helen is tackling bad guys.

Having said that, Bird also comments “…I realized I’m not very interested in the power. That’s not the part that interests me. What interests me is the idea of having a family. Having there be a reason to hide the powers. And once I had that insight into what I wanted to do, I picked the powers based on who they were in the family…” If one was to look back on the first movie, they could see the passion Bird put into making that a huge aspect of the plot. “…Men are always expected to be strong, so I had Bob have super strength. Women, mothers are always pulled in a million different directions, so I had her be elastic. Teenagers are insecure and defensive, so I had Violet have force fields and invisibility. Ten-year-olds are energy balls that can’t be stopped. And babies are unknown, maybe they have no powers, maybe they have all powers, we don’t know…”

So whether you had hoped for a flash to the future, or you’re perfectly content with how Bird decided to do things, no one can deny that they are not stoked for this amazing sequel to be released.

https://screenrant.com/incredibles-2-time-jump-story-details/

http://comicbook.com/movies/2018/04/18/why-incredibles-2-is-right-after-first-movie/

By Allison Miller

With Camp Nano having started on April first, it is clear that both old and new writers alike are back for another month of intensive writing. Though most of the writers that joined have elected to take on the challenge, they will most likely face problems getting to their word counts in a month’s time. Even if all of the authors on the Camp Nano website have chosen to be there of their own free will, and not forced on by parents or writing professors, they will almost all have experienced stress before the month’s end. But why is this? If everyone on the website is excited to be participating, where is all the stress coming from? When people choose to begin Camp Nanowrimo on April first, they may not consider how many words a day they need to write, may set their word count goal too high, not realize how much time it will take out of the limited days of the month, or not plan out their story before trying to write it out.

When Camp Nano writers take on their word goals and the calendar hits April first, they may not think about how many words they need to write every day. They may start with a few days of extremely high word counts but not continue to keep it up. They may think that after one day of going one hundred words over the projected goal they can take the next day off entirely, which will easily put them very behind on the road to achieving their word goal by the end of the month. A problem many writers run into while writing is the fear that they won’t get to their projected goal for the day.

Another cause of stress can be setting a word goal too high at the beginning of the year, and then realizing that it isn’t feasible to reach by the end of the month. If this is the cause of stress to the writer, however, the simple solution would be to change the word goal. Even if the person is too stubborn to admit they can’t reach their goal, the Camp Nano website will let a writer change their word goal after the beginning of the month all the way to the end, which is the same on the Nanowrimo Youth website.

Many writers also don’t realize that writing will take so much time out of their day and out of their month altogether. As the months go on, writers tend to get tired of using up their weekends to focus just on writing, without being able to hang out with their friends, or they may stay up later than usual finishing their homework along with completing their word goal for the day. This can easily get tiring for authors throughout this month and can cause them to become stressed over which things they need to eliminate from their day as they continue their novels.

One of the most heavy causes of stress on the Camp Nano participants lies not within word counts or time management skills, but rather in themselves. Many writers choose to not take the needed time to plan out and outline their stories before sitting down and deciding to take on the monumental task that is meeting a word goal and committing to writing for a month long. Since outlining is such a fundamental part of writing a story and not losing sight of the plot, it can be easy to get distracted without doing it. Without an outline, it can be immensely difficult to hint at future events in the story, let alone keep the plot moving in a progression that makes sense to the audience.

Overall, however, Nanowrimo is a fantastic experience for those who can handle it. Though it may be straining to the mind (and the schedule), the sense of achievement that comes from meeting a word goal for the day, or finishing one’s novel altogether, overcomes all the stress that got the author there. Though stress can be overwhelming sometimes, it is better to look past it and focus on the goal than to dwell on it and kill productivity. Camp Nanowrimo finishes at the end of April. Until then, good luck to all those participating!