A New Decade and a New Meaning to Life

Mr. Pepino: For students I have had freshman year and senior year, I definitely see an increase in their skills that they have developed from certain classes and teachers. The students might have become more mature since freshman year but freshman and seniors have something in common: they are looking forward to something. Freshman are excited to start their high school journey while seniors are looking forward to making a big change from highschool to college. Both classes have something to look forward to and a goal in mind. Alyssa: Do you have any advice for students who are struggling with change? Mr. Pepino: My advice for anyone who is struggling with change is to embrace it. Allow yourself to give it a fair chance to work. Take time to experience it first before you result in anger and rebellion. Change can be a very good thing but you will never know if you don’t allow yourself to experience it first.

A New Decade and A New Meaning to Life – Erin Sullenberger

It’s currently 11:48 PM on December 25, 2019, and for the first time in, I think, forever, Christmas has not been the most exciting event of the latter portion of this year. The new decade is knocking right on the front door, and I am still on the other side of the house. And all of this change is inevitably causing me to think about how quickly life is passing. Soon I’ll be entering into the third decade of my life! World War I could have occurred four times over during my lifetime, and when I realize that George W. Bush was president when I was born, I immediately think about how this seven-year-old girl at my church probably even has no idea who Obama is.

I can remember staying up until midnight on December 31, 2009, to celebrate the turn of a new decade. I was spending the evening with some old family friends, and that night, I fell asleep almost immediately after the Times Square ball dropped. When I woke up the next morning, one strange thought danced through my head: Is this a dream? And from that moment onward, I have always had this crazy thought in the back of my mind that everything that has occurred since 2009 has actually been a very long dream that my younger self has concocted. I think that I can be reassured by my readers, however, that we are, in fact, entering 2020! And that leads me to my next topic: the year 2020. For me, my parents, and their parents, we think of the ‘20s as the Roaring 20’s. Will my children think of the 20’s as this approaching decade? Will they no longer picture the 20’s as fraught with unconventional flappers, prohibition, ...the Great Depression… (and oh Hoover)? Will they envision the 20’s as an era filled with the upward rise of Greta Thunberg and her devotees? With perhaps a second executive reign of a businessman with iconic yellow hair? With TikTok as the universal platform for communication? A hundred years before I was born, the turn of the 19th century had just occurred. Therefore, I view the entire 1900s period as a somewhat recent span of one hundred years. Slavery is ancient, but the Civil Rights Movement was around when my grandmother (who was just visiting for Christmas dinner) was growing up! Her great-grandmother or so may have owned slaves! Oh God, how time changes. My children will view the 1900s as medieval, and I will be there, thinking, “Oh, just a couple of years before I was born, there existed another century! And you kids think that 2020 was a hundred years ago!” My parents are about eighty percent convinced that the world’s perception of eating meat is going to rapidly change within the next few years. They have just become vegan because a couple of Netflix documentaries have challenged the universal belief that meat is the only source of protein, whereas animals are simply the platform through which plant protein is stored. Apparently eating meat has more negative effects than positive ones. And to be honest, their veganism has sparked a bit of skepticism inside of me. I ate turkey tonight for Christmas dinner, but before tonight, I have been mostly vegetarian. By the way, for context, my father used to