Editorial Interview Questions

1. How long did it take you to find a job?

2. How many places did you apply for and what were they?

3. How/What is the current job you have now?

Editorial Story: Teen Employment

Several teenagers in the United States are unemployed with a job rate at an all time low during this decade and are in need of jobs during the upcoming summer.

The employment rate for teenagers has drastically gone down to 27%, the lowest rate it has ever been in the decade due to the unsteady economy. While the employment overall has increased during the year, the employment rate for teens is still going down due to the younger adults possibly living out on their own and trying to make a living having more of a need for these basic part-time jobs than teens who are still at school or going to college and still having access to the help of their parents.

"It took me a few weeks before I finally got my first job when I was 16." Said senior Eric Liggett "I applied for Carmike Cinemas and Dairy Queen, and I ended up getting hired at Carmike and haven't left since."

While there are several teens desperately searching for a job to have during the summer, there are probably other teens out there that choose not to work or get back to having a part-time job yet for their own reasons and keeping that unemployment rate up. Some teens out there could be too busy during the summer or during their school years to have time for a job, some could feel like they're not ready to get back to work again if they recently lost a job, or some could just be too lazy during the summer and would rather have more time playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 during their free time. Whatever the case, teens should search for jobs to keep the economy growing little by little and to save up their money for the important things in life for them like college or getting their own vehicle. Teens will be having a ton of time during the summer to be working full time and if they choose to do so, they'll have more money prepared for their future and plenty of time to find any jobs that they could hopefully find and not get too lazy during their long summer vacation.

Peer Edit

I peer edited Josh Moe's & Kyle Jonas' feature stories

Feature Story: Summer Japan Trip

It was early July during our summer vacation; our group of 11 students, our teacher and a supervisor went through a 12-hour plane trip and had to spend over half an hour at the airport showing our passports, getting our luggage, going to the bathroom using very strange and fun technological toilets and hand driers, and getting our first group pictures taken before we finally got outside. When we finally went outside, the air was warm and the skies were mostly clear and beautiful, and after getting on a bus and having to endure a 2-hour ride, we were about to begin our first day of our 2-week long trip in Japan. We started off by staying at the Olympic Village in a pretty small and not so crazy part of Tokyo, but it was still a nice, calm and slightly bustling place with small, traditional japanese restaurants in these small streetways that served things from ACTUAL ramen to curry. We spent about 4 days in Tokyo, from exploring the most vibrant and peacful temples and shrines in the most natural places in Tokyo to shopping in the big, busling shopping districts like Akihabara with many shops that were several stories high and so many of those stores were filled with so many technological cell phones and music players, video games from very old the newest releases, and anime DVD's, figurines and accessories. "All the food places in Japan were the real cultural things that I truly enjoyed" said Nate, one of the students in the group. Apparently, the temples and shrines didn't exactly seem all that interesting to him during the trip, but I personally loved each and every one of them. After our stay at Tokyo, we had to take a couple trips by bullet train that took us about 2 hours to reach our next main destination. Though the trip felt pretty long, even though we were going very fast, the views were just amazing despite the pretty dark, cloudy weather, full of giant hills, old fashion Japanese houses and rice fields, and some of us in the group were playing Mario Party on our DS's (I ended up winning, even though I don't own the game). By the time the rain started pouring down, we had made it to Toyama, and our first destination there was at a high school nearby. When we made it to the enterance of the school, there were so many students cheering and welcoming us as we walked in, and by the enterance, a few students put on a fun little dance show for us. We walked up to the Flowering Room, and we were welcomed by a colorful chalkboard that said "Welcome Eastview High School!" and had each of our names on the board and who our host family was going to be. When we introduced ourselves to our host families and after a small speech, we went back home with our families and during the full week, we were a part of a school stay. My host family gave me a nice warm welcome when I entered their home, and while the family was being nce to me and were trying to have fun with me, the one problem about them is that they hardly knew any English, and my Japanese skills were a bit too basic to understand nearly anything they said. Despite that, we got along very well and suprisingly, they were the host family I wanted to be with since they were the family of an Japanese exchange student my family hosted 2 years ago, and speaking of the exchange student, he managed to get out of college for a couple days in the middle of the week to stay with his family and see me after we haven't seen each other in what felt like ages. "My host family was easy to get along with since my family mostly knew English from my host sister who went to Canada for a school stay" said Chad, another student in the group "It was easy to communicate with them" Yeah yeah, lucky him. For the school stay school stay, we had to wear a white polo, black dress pants (black skirts for girls) black socks and black dress shoes to make it as close as we could normally get to wearing a school uniform. We each stayed at different homerooms during the stay, and the classroom I was in was class 1-1, a first year class that was located up a level and looked like it was hidden since it was in a corner area, and it seemed out of order since if you start on the other side, it starts at 1-2, and then my class was apparently next to room 1-6; how does that work? The students in my classroom were pretty nice to me maybe since I was kind and friendly as well and I didn't look like a steryotypical big, scary American a couple of my group members looked like to them, even though they're very nice and fun guys. Fortunatley for me, my classmates were pretty good at speaking English, my homeroom teacher taught English and I had a couple classmates that were a part of their own school stay program. Me and the other group members didn't stay for too many of the classes we were in; instead, we did a lot of fun, japanese cultural activities from caligraphy, flower arranging and watching (and trying) Japanese style archery from the archery club at school. During the times we were in class, all we had to do was just sit and watched them teach. While I did try listening to see if I could undertand the teachers, I had no luck at all figuring out what they were saying (or even what kind of math they were teaching). However, one class I actually got to participate in with my classmates was gym where we were outside on perfectly clear weather. We did a little warming up and then we got to practice a little softball in groups of 4. The group I was with were the students that were a part of their own homestay program (I believe I was the only American in the group), and as the only American in the group, I actually did good at batting, pitching that made it easy to hit, even though they weren't too good at hitting it, and instructing them on how to bat and do catching. The first person was pretty good and was king of envious of how well I was doing; the second person was decent and was trying to have fun with the whole thing; and the last person was fun, but it looked like he never played any form of baseball in his life, he was even scared of me batting and lightly pitching. I considered that that was probably the best gym class I ever had, and I wish we could of played a whole game of softball as a class. The school even had a cafeteria where you had to buy a ticket for a certain food item in order to get it, and this was actually made, not like the American school CRAP we have. There was even a miniature convinient store right by the cafeteria that's in the school where you can buy snacks or soda that can go with your lunch, so I had Curry and rice and a tall can of Coke for my lunch every day at the school: BEST...SCHOOL LUNCH...EVER!!! (Suck it, American school crap!) Outside of the school, I made sure I spent plenty of quality time with my host family with family dinners and seeing a touring village on my day off from school. On our last day at the school, our classes threw each of us a little goodbye party in each of our classes, took tons of pictures of us, and they even gave us a small board they all signed in Japanese saying how nice it was to have us before we left the school. The next day, we left on a bullet train taking us to our last destination, Kyoto. The main thing we did there was explore a TON of temles and shrines and other cultural places like the rock garden which was so calm and soothing that everyone there, even my group members, took a nap as the cicadas chirpped and the breeze slightly cooled us in the nice summer weather. Also like Tokyo, we did a ton of shopping at a few more multi-leveled department stores and we had food that was a little less traditional in an underground shopping district, but we did eat some more traditional Japanese food while we there there, don't worry. "One thing I always had to get every day was a giant bottle of Aquarius" said another student in the group, Ian "That is the best drink in the world!" We even went into a Karaoke place over 10-stories high that had multiple rooms on each floor that had one giant karaoke machine with millions of songs (and of course there were a ton of American songs in English) and the room was small enough for just our pretty big group. We didn't care about how bad we could sing, we just enjoyed singing all those fun songs for hours, and we all could of been there for many more hours. During the nights, we would party at each other's rooms and oftentimes had weird conversations, but those conversations kind of got out of hand pretty quickly with the obscurity and how loud the others were. On our last day, we went to the airport and then we had to go through a 13-hour plane ride home. I miss Japan, I really want to go back to it soon, and I hope that Japan can safely recover with everyone helping them out in any way.

Rough Draft: Summer Japan Trip Feature Story

It was early July during our summer vacation; our group of 11 students, our teacher and a supervisor went through a 12-hour plane trip and had to spend over half an hour at the airport showing our passports, getting our luggage, going to the bathroom using very strange and technological toilets and hand driers, and getting our first group pictures taken. When we finally got outside, the air was warm and the skies were mostly clear and beautiful, and after getting on a bus, we were about to begin our first day in our 2-week long Japan trip. We started off staying at the Olympic Village in Tokyo, not in a very big and busy part of it, but it was still a nice and slightly bustling place with small and traditional japanese restaurants in these small streetways that served things from ramen fried meat. We spent about 4 days in Tokyo, from exploring the most vibrant temples and shrines in the most natural places in Tokyo to the big, busling shopping districts with like Akihabara with many shops that were several stories high and so amny of those stores were filled with so many technological cell phones and music players, video games of very old and new releases, and anime DVD's, figurines and accessories. After our stay at Tokyo, we had to take a couple trips by bullet train that took us about 2 hours to reach our destination. Though the trip felt pretty long even though we were going very fast, the views were just amazing despite the cloudy weather, full of giant hills and rice fields. By the time the rain started pouring down, we had made it to Toyama, and our first destination there was a high school. When we made it to the enterance, there were so many students cheering and welcoming us as we walked in, and by the enterance, a few students put on a fun little dance show for us. We walked up to the flowering room, and we were welcomed by a colorful chalkboard that said "Welcome Eastview High School!" and had each of our names on the board and who our host family was going to be. When we introduced ourselves to our host families and after a small speech, we went back home with our families and during the full week, we were a part of a school stay. My host family gave me a nice warm welcome when I entered their home, and while the family was being nce to me and were trying to have fun with me, the one problem about them is that they hardly knew any English, and my Japanese skills were a bit too basic to understand nearly anything they said. Despite that, we got along very well and suprisingly, they were the host family I wanted to be with since they were the family of an Japanese exchange student my family hosted 2 years ago, and speaking of the exchange student, he managed to get out of college for a couple days in the middle of the week to stay with his family and see me after we haven't seen each other in what felt like ages. For the school stay school stay, we had to wear a white polo, black dress pants (black skirts for girls) and black dress shoes to make it as close as we could normally get to wearing a school uniform. We each stayed at different homerooms during the stay, and the classroom I was in was class 1-1, a first year class that was located up a level and looked like it was hidden since it was in a corner area. The students in my classroom were pretty nice to me maybe since I was kind as well and I didn't look like a steryotypical big, scary American a couple of my group members looked like even though they were very nice and fun the whole time. Fortunatley for me, my classmates were pretty good at English and I had a couple classmates that were a part of their own school stay program. Me and the other group members didn't stay for too many of the classes we were in; instead, we did a lot of fun, japanese cultural activities from caligraphy, flower arranging and watching Japanese style archery from the archery club at school. During the times we were in class, all we had to do was just sit and watched them teach. While I did try listening to see if I could undertand the teachers, I had no luck at all figuring out what they were saying. However, one class I actually got to participate in was gym where we were outside on perfectly clear weather. We did a little warming up and then we got to practice a little softball in groups of 4. The group I was with were the students that were a part of their own homestay program (I think I was the only American in the group), and as the only American in the group, I actually did good at batting, pitching that made it easy to hit, even though they weren't too good at hitting it, and instructing them on how to bat and do catching. I considered that that was probably the best gym class I ever had. The school even had a cafeteria where I had to buy a ticket for a certain food in order to get it, and this was actually made, not like the American school crap we have. Outside of the school, I made sure I spent plenty of quality time with my host family with family dinners and seeing a touring village on my day off from school. On our last day at school, our classes threw a little goodbye party in each of our classes and took tons of pictures of us before we left the school. The next day, we left on a bullet train taking us to our last destination, Kyoto. The main thing we did there was explore a TON of temles and shrines and other cultural places like the rock garden which was so calm and soothing that everyone there, even my group members, took a nap as the cicadas chirpped and the breeze slightly cooled us in the nice summer weather. Also like Tokyo, we did a ton of shopping at a few more multi-leveled department stores and we had food that was a little less traditional in an underground shopping district, but we did eat some more traditional Japanese food while we there there, don't worry. We even went into a 10-story Karaoke place that had multiple rooms on each floor that had one giant karaoke machine with millions of songs (and of course there were a ton of American songs in English) and the room was small enough for just our pretty big group. We didn't care about how bad we could sing, we just enjoyed singing all those fun songs for hours. During the nights, we would party at each other's rooms and oftentimes had weird conversations, but those conversations kind of got out of hand pretty quickly with the obscurity and how loud they were. On our last day, we went to the airport and then we had to go through a 13-hour plane ride home. I miss Japan, I really want to go back to it soon, and I hope that Japan can safely recover with everyone helping them out in any way.

Feature Story Topic and Interview Questions

Topic:Japan Trip During the Summer

Questions:

1. What was the host family you were with and the school like during the Toyama school stay?

2. What certain things in the cities did you really enjoy seeing/doing?

3. How did the students at the school and your classroom treat you during the school stay?

4. What kinds of food did you eat over there?

5. What cultural places did you really enjoy exploring at?

6. How was the Japan trip overall?

Minnesota Twins' Progress

It's been a little over a month since the 2011 MLB baseball season began, and the Minnesota Twins have already struggled with plenty of problems in that short amount of time. So far, they have had a few of their important players placed on the DL (Disabled List), a couple games delayed by the heavy rainfall at Target Field, and having a really disappointing record so far of 9 wins and 17 loses. They have recently moved into last place in the AL Central Division, just below the Chicago White Sox who are at 10 wins and 18 loses.

The Twins are currently struggling so far with a couple of players on the DL like Catcher Joe Mauer, Leftfielder Delmon Young, Pitcher Kevin Slowey and Second Baseman Tsuyoushi Nishioka; and Designated Hitter Jim Thome and Outfielder Jason Repko are having to deal with minor injuries and are currently playing Day To Day for the time being.

According to the Twins' Vice President of Marketing, Patrick Klinger, Mauer may return and be ready to play in a few weeks approximately, and Nishioka may be another month until he finally gets to play, but these are just estimates and are not 100% confirmed. He also mentions that when all the key players return and start playing again, the team's performance may slowly but surely get back up to speed after a few games.

Plenty of fans are very disappointed with the team's performance and some have even given up hope on going into the World Series. According to a few Twins fans, they said that the Twins are doing extremly terrible and they think that it's very stupid that we have all those good players already on the DL and playing Day To Day, and a couple of them doubt that they'd help the team get back up to pace when they return and play the first few of their games. Even though it has only been a little over a month since the 2011 season started, one of them already gave up hope on us making it into the World Series or even becoming the AL Central Division Champions.

With many key players that had to sit out or are currently sitting out now, there have been no true players that seem to be helping keep the team standing. Outfielder Jason Repko and Pitcher Francisco Liriano have been the most noticeable players so far that are showing pretty disappointing performances. On the game against the Tampa Bay Rays on May 27th, Liriano allowed 4 runs and 5 hits during the first inning alone before he could even get a single out, and Repko just recently began sitting out due to minor injuries, but not before some of his poor performances in the last few games. One of the only true players that's helping the Twins score and stay alive is Outfielder Jason Kubel with 34 hits and 11 runs out of his 96 at bats so far this season.

It may be a very long while before the Twins finally get themselves back together, but once they have all their players back and ready to play ball, they'll hopefully get themselves pretty close to the Detroit Lions or the Cleveland Indians(who are currently in first and second in the AL Central Division), all they need right now is patience from everyone and getting things straightened up with the players they currently have now, but for now, expect plenty of loses and major disappointments to occur, so that's why we need to continue cheering for them at every game and giving them hope and also wish for Mauer, Nishioka, and the other who are sitting out to get well soon.