Expectations, Promises, Friendship

By Ana Nascimento>

Four days ago, we said goodbye to 2009 and welcomed 2010. For lots of people 2009 was a year of losses and  sadness, but 2009 also made lots of people happy. I bet people never stopped to think about all the good things that happened in 2009. They just couldn’t wait for 2010.

Every year people make promises to people and to themselves, and lots of people promise that they will change. They will be good to everyone. People promise that they are only going to have good expectations for a fresh new year. Students promise that they are going to study more, and get good grades, and do their best to become someone in life. My question is, how many of us really keep those promises?

Why not start a new year saying that we will try to change, without promising? One thing my mother always told me is, don’t make promises you can’t keep. How about starting this new year by starting new friendships and being faithful to one another, and realizing that in the end friendships and family is all we’re going to have. Material things help. If people want to make good money and accomplish stuff in their life, that’s good. It’s fine to want something better for yourself, but this year we should realize that we need friendships and good people around us to get things accomplished. Students will always need one another, because we learn with each other every day. Coworkers need each other to get a business going.

Even though we’ve changed and we’re all finding our own place in the world, we all know that when the tears fall or the smile spreads across our faces, we’ll come to each other because no matter where this crazy world takes us, nothing will ever change so much to the point where we’re not all still friends.

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Socks for Christmas

By Alex Mark>

Friday, Dec. 25 was a good day for many, but let’s not forget about the less fortunate. When we dash down the stairs or into the other room to look at what Santa brought us, we don’t usually think about the people who are less lucky than we are. As we sit there opening presents there are children who may not even have a family or might not even have a Christmas tree because they barely have enough to put food on the table. As we are thinking about ourselves, sometimes we need to take a step back and look at the whole picture.

As our class reassembled the week after Christmas, we came together and talked about how to be grateful for what we got and how to make the best out of it. Most of us got socks and we joked about that, but, hey, socks are a necessity and necessities are all we need in this time of our economy.

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Living Our Lives Out Loud

By Madi Hughes>

Christmas this year came so fast. It didn’t even feel like Christmas and this year the spirit did not seem as joyful as usual. On Christmas morning, I opened gifts and I had quite a few. Some kids probably got more or less, but some kids don’t even get anything because their parents can’t afford things for them. The economy has gotten so bad that they need to focus on paying for their food and the roof that they live under. I am so thankful that I have a roof to live under, food in my pantry and enough money to give and receive gifts. A lot of bad things happened this year: the economy, the war with Iraq, the devaluation of stocks and more, but people are making the best of it and living their lives out loud.

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Not Such a Bad Year

By Tyler Araujo>

The new year brought an end to many ups and downs. The year 2009 was special for many different reasons. We witnessed the first black president inaugurated into the White House, war with Iraq, and an economic recession. The year was full of many ups and downs, good and bad. But now, as we are looking back on it, we notice all of the things that might not have been so important while they were happening. All in all looking back on the year I think we made a positive step into the future and there will be many more years as productive as 2009.

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Putting Smiles on People’s Faces

By Shelby Ferry>

This past year I would say was an okay one, for me anyway, but for the world however I would say it wasn’t all that great. It was the year that the world’s economy slowly got poorer and collapsed. So for the new year hopefully we can set our sights on having a better economical year and helping people in need. I hope that President Obama can keep the promises that he made when he was inaugurated, such as affordable health care for the average person and putting money into places that can use it wisely. I have a lot of hope for this new year. This year I would like to start volunteering more and helping out my community. I would also like to help out causes on our Island. Everything I plan to do this year is hopefully going to not only benefit me, but other people as well. I hope to put smiles on people’s faces. So to that, I welcome 2010 with open arms.

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Helping Others Here at Home

By Courtney Mussell>

We recently started packing up textbooks to send to the students from Alabama and now with the start of the new year I think I would like to continue helping out other people within our country. There are always advertisements and fundraisers that benefit Africa and other poor regions, but doing this project to send the textbooks to Alabama made me realize that we should help out America too. Not every state and city are as fortunate as we are here on Martha’s Vineyard. I’m not saying that our conditions are as bad as Africa’s. I’m just trying to say that we should try to help out our own citizens before we help out other countries.

It can start with something as simple as sending textbooks to a school that can’t afford them. You just need to find a school, or a community in need, fundraise until you have made enough money to ship something to this school or community. Textbooks have always been available to our Island schools, so much so that we take them for granted. Now it’s a new year and everybody can start making a difference.  

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Resolutions

By Kyle Francis>

This new year I’m hoping for many good things, but mainly that the hockey team can get their first win of the season. We’ve tried so hard but still couldn’t get it, so I’m hoping our losing streak of five will soon end. My new year’s resolution is to have school come before my less important things like TV and video games. If I take school more seriously, hopefully I can change my grades from C-minuses to B-plusses. These are my hopes for 2010!

Disturbing Story

By Kevin Walsh>

While everyone was traveling to see friends and loved ones, Umar Farouk Abdulmuttallah  was traveling for another reason. As we all know by now, he failed to blow up an American-bound flight on Christmas Day. Concealing the bomb in his underwear, he supposedly boarded the plane from Amsterdam to the U.S. and attempted to detonate it as the plane was landing. Passenger accounts state that Abdulmuttallah’s pants caught fire and the fire was put out by other passengers. When they realized what was going on, the passengers then tried to subdue the suspect until authorities arrested him on the ground.