The Coat of Arms | A&L
NEWS
November 6, 2014
A student’s worst nightmare: staying home from school Eliza Crowder | Staff Reporter Zoey Liebermann | Staff Reporter
With flu season just around the corner, Menlo students and faculty face the difficulty of being especially susceptible to the dreaded symptoms of any given sickness. The impending winter season brings along many unwanted limitations, including the strain of missing school. Due to Menlo students’ rigorous academic schedules and various extracurricular activities, getting sick is any student’s worst nightmare. The act of missing class, even for just a day, is accompanied by immense anxiety of falling behind in classes that were already difficult to keep up with. When confronted with this fear, many students choose the grin-and-bare it method, electing to ignore any symptoms and to push through the school day, rather than choosing to stay home and nurse their sickness as they should. “I’ve definitely had to push through some of my sicknesses,” junior Izzy Koningstein said. Many students tend to live by a similar standard, especially during stressful times of the year that require the most enduring of sicknesses. “There are always a couple of months where everyone is huddled around the tissue boxes,” Koningstein said. The difficulty of missing school dramatically worsens as the winter season rolls in, because more people are susceptible to sicknesses. Although this mentality of undergoing pain may be viewed as a helpful strategy
to avoid falling behind, it also proves to be a challenge. “When you’re at school sick, all you want to do is go home,” Koningstein continued. Menlo’s nurse Joan Barada corroborates this, detailing the difficulties of attending school when feeling sick and sluggish. “A lot of kids will be sick, but instead they choose to come in for a test. I believe that they are not going to perform as well if they’re not feeling well,” Barada said. This issue increases as the performance level for students decreases due to them feeling under the weather. Clearly, coming to school ill is not most students’ preference, but many feel as if they have no alternate option. “I missed one day of school earlier in the year, and I decided to just come back the next day even though I really wasn’t feeling better. I just didn’t have a choice with all of the work I had to do,” freshman Gillian Bressie said. At Menlo, the fear of falling behind in class is so prevalent that it forces students to push themselves to the limit and come to school, even when that means feeling awful during the school day. This concept creates a vicious cycle, in which other students and faculty become sick. “If you’re sick, you need to take care of yourself, because your health is a primary concern to everyone around you,” Barada said. However, students and teachers alike agree that taking care of yourself and missing class proves to be quite the challenge, especially in Menlo’s fast-paced environ-
ment. “If you’re not always moving forward, you’re falling more behind. The ‘if you miss the train then you’re a car behind’ mentality is really stressful and overwhelming,” english teacher Whitney Stubbs said. Although changing Menlo’s rigorous academic lifestyle is most likely out of the question, there are a few things both students and teachers can implement to change the school’s high attendance record of sick students. Helping to decrease the amount of makeup work and allowing students to take care of themselves for as long as necessary will aid this problem. Another possible strategy is to focus
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and improve on the communication between students and teachers. “If there’s more communication between [you] and the people at school, then it’d be a lot easier to catch up,” Koningstein said. Ideally, taking care of yourself should fall higher on the list of priorities than keeping up with school work. However, this isn’t always the case, and there is a fair chance that most students will continue pushing through their illnesses to be present at school. Hopefully, this year will be the start to a new culture at Menlo.
Students search for flag outside Nurse Barada’s office indicating that she is there to meet with her when they are not feeling well. ELIZA CROWDER/COA
Artists of the Issue: Melissa Tran and Daniel Chan
Tran plays trumpet at an orchestra performance. PHOTO COURTESY MELISSA TRAN
Amanda Crisci | Staff Reporter Junior Melissa Tran is the female Artist of the Issue because of her talents in orchestra. Tran has been playing trumpet since the end of seventh grade, and has participated in Menlo orchestra since she was a freshman. She started playing trumpet because she wanted to be in the Menlo middle school Jazz Band and learning the trumpet was a great way to join. She currently plays first chair in the orchestra and hopes to continue improving her playing. Tran has played at music festivals in the Belmont area such as the Save the Music festival, which raises money for music programs in under-resourced schools. She cites one of her musical inspirations as Louis Armstrong because he has a classic style of playing the trumpet. The Menlo orchestra plays a variety of different types of songs from intricate symphonies to well-known songs from musicals. “We’re playing [Les Misérables] right now which is really fun,” Tran said. Aside from musicals, Tran also enjoys playing strong pieces. “I like to play epic songs that have a lot of brass,” Tran said. Vicky Greenbaum, Menlo’s orchestra teacher, is very confidant in Tran’s abilities as a trumpet player. “She has a strong rhythmic sense and is a good leader of the [trumpet] section,” Greenbaum said. She also noted how Tran is very committed to improving and working with her section. “[Tran] always shows that she cares about her section,” Greenbaum said. One of the big problems Tran faces is trying to find time to practice trumpet while balancing a hard junior year work load, varsity tennis practices and tournaments, and impending college preparation. “Junior year is super busy, so the only time I have to practice is during orchestra period,” Tran said. Currently Tran is taking three AP classes, which is a huge course load on top of other commitments. While all the time commitments Tran faces sometimes reduce the time she spends practicing trumpet, she finds that playing Orchestra is incredibly helpful and useful. Tran finds orchestra to be a relaxing atmosphere inside the competitive Menlo environment. “It’s definitely a time to relax and get away from the hard classes,” Tran said. Greenbaum also mentioned how most orchestra students find playing music as more of an enjoyable time in a tough academic day. “Most of the musicians have told me that [Orchestra] is a creative time and a time to de-stress because they don’t have to worry about grades and they can enjoy beautiful music,” Greenbaum said. Tran plans on continuing orchestra next year and throughout her life as a hobby.
Chan artistically places old Menlo photos in front of the present day area in which it was originally taken. PHOTO COURTSEY DANIEL CHAN
Amanda Crisci | Staff Reporter Senior Daniel Chan is this issue’s male Artist of the Issue for his recent work with photos for Menlo’s centennial. Chan discovered his passion for photography after taking a related Knight School course his sophomore year. “I stayed for hours after school and came to school early just to develop photos,” Chan said. Immediately after, he bought his first camera and began developing his photography skills. Recently, Chan was commissioned to take senior portraits for 12 different Menlo students. “I really like taking portraits and trying to show people’s character […]. It’s not easy to necessarily show someone’s character through a picture, so I think that’s a fun challenge,” Chan said. When taking these portraits, Chan finds places where the subject is the most comfortable by telling them jokes and letting them find poses that feel most genuine to them. Another project of his, which Chan presented to the school last year, was a Menlo take on the popular photo blog “Humans of New York” which he called “Humans of Menlo.” Chan hopes to bring Humans of Menlo back second semester and then pass it on to other students after he graduates. Chan also took advanced photography last year to further his skills. While the advanced class wasn’t a big time commitment for him, it still pushed him to work at another level. Pete Zivkov, the Menlo photography teacher, thinks Chan has a great talent for photography and hopes he will continue this passion throughout his life. “Daniel is a fantastic photographer. He has both the technical skills required, the creative and artistic skills required, and the imagination required,” Zivkov said. In his most recent project, Chan has been taking old photos from Menlo archives and trying to recreate them on the modern day Menlo campus. The project, titled ‘Menlo then and now’ is a series of one new photo and one from Menlo achieves combined to appear as one image. “I thought it was an interesting idea after I saw that Menlo had a collection of old photos of places that still exist,” Chan said. Seeing how the project could be a good addition to Menlo’s centennial, Chan decided to show some of his products to the administration. The administration was excited for future use of these photos. While the project has gained many positive reviews, creating them was difficult for Chan. “I like this project because it is a challenge. Some of the photos are from interesting vantage points or are of very specific subjects so now trying to recreate them is difficult and pretty cool too,” Chan said. Some of these photos were displayed in the Creative Arts building this past spring and as Menlo’s centennial approaches, the community can expect more.