Voices final project link: https://ttd.wjwoker.repl.co

The most influential idea I took away from my research was the idea that trans people face decisions that often have only two answers, both of which can seem both wrong and right. A trans person’s decision to come out to everyone they meet or keep their past a secret has both detrimental and positive effects on a person’s mental state. The way society exists today also means that these decisions cannot be avoided. This is something that every trans person must face, regardless of social status.

One more interesting concept that I took away from my research was the importance of supportive people in a trans person’s life. These decisions may be tough, and life may be challenging, but any adversity is made manageable if there is even a single person to back them up completely. I was surprised to find so many stories where despite a world of discrimination and harassment, one, two, or maybe three people who supported someone were enough to keep them going.

I hope that after reading my project, people will realize that trans people live under constant, near-unmanageable pressure. However, what I also hope people see is that the way to make that pressure manageable is to be the person that supports them. If someone who read my project ever meets a trans person in the future, or knows one now, I hope that they will see that they can be the difference in their life that makes it worth living.

What I realized during my time at North was how important it is for me to make a difference in someone else’s life. I’ve spent so much time dedicating myself to robotics that I’ve learned a lot about myself, and what really makes me happy. What I’ve found is that nothing makes me more proud than thinking about the people I’ve inspired during my time on the software team and as the lead. So many current high schoolers who learned about robotics under my mentorship will major in computer science and develop incredible software that will change the world. Every person I’ve taught programming to at Kennedy, every person I’ve stopped to help in a programming class for even just a minute, every person I’ve helped with math and science in peer tutoring, they will all do something in the world, and I will have influenced their journey. That idea is really meaningful for me.

My advice for future NNHS seniors is to not get wrapped up in school. Focus on doing what you love and don’t make schoolwork always your priority. I certainly don’t mean that you shouldn’t turn in anything at all, which a lot of seniors this year seem to have done, but your time is limited- if you put half an hour less each day into your homework and projects, and instead dedicate that to your activities, your sports, or your friends, you’ll create lasting memories that are far more meaningful than a 10% better grade on some random high school assignment.

Also, make an airband! Even if you’re terrible, it’s quite fun.

In my time leading the software subteam of the robotics team, I have accomplished many things, including teaching robot Java to new members, writing auto-aiming software for a dodgeball-launching turret, and designing a subteam t-shirt, which I sold 24 of. However, none of these is as fascinating to analyze as the instantiation of the Wyatt points Economy.

After joking about it with the other people on the team, I decided to actually make a points system as part of our subteam. I give out Wyatt points to each person for doing different things like writing code or helping to lift the 120-pound robot, and I keep track of everyone’s points on a Google Sheet. Points can be exchanged for a wide variety of rewards, each with their own cost, such as a small sticker (75 points), life advice (100 points), and a $3 discount on the subteam t-shirt (999 points).

However, this was more than just a fun game within our team. After implementing the system, I realized that it was going to be quite an interesting psychological experiment. After all, even though everyone was there for fun, they ended up getting paid in Wyatt points just like you’d be paid in dollars in a standard job, earning maybe 40 or 50 points each day. So, after around four months of this experiment with my own currency, I think it is worth publishing my findings on the human psychology behind an economy.

The first positive thing I noticed after inventing Wyatt points is that everyone suddenly wanted to do everything that they had previously avoided. Tasks that had previously been met with a groan now had too many people who wanted to do them, as working for points made things fun and exciting. Pre-Wyatt points, no one wanted to carry the heavy robot back to its original position after running an autonomous routine, but the new economy helped to alleviate this issue.

This, however, leads me to the first problem an economy causes, which is that things get cutthroat very quickly. While previously people had tried to stay away from tasks they didn’t like, now small things could cause verbal fights over who got to do it and earn points. Once a reward system is put in place, it seems to hit the primitive survival instincts in our brains, and the Wyatt point seemed to have that effect. This certainly didn’t tear apart our team, as is evident by the fact that we have such a strong friendship between everyone in the team today, but, it goes to show that making a currency-based reward system can’t just make things move toward working in peaceful harmony.

As such, I needed to do a little to regulate the system. I had to make rules that stated that I could take away points if you were causing any problems. I didn’t really end up having problems with it, thanks to the fact that my team is made up of a lot of great people, but nonetheless, it seems that you can’t make an economy without needing someone in power to keep things in order, which can sometimes lead to inefficiencies or may create distance between the people in the economy and the people with the power.

Though, the effects I wrote above didn’t last forever. After a while, the motivation that Wyatt points created sort of leveled out, and some of the more unenjoyable tasks weren’t always worth it just for the Wyatt points. However, they had created some habits, and there was always somebody who was willing to do things like lifting the robot and cleaning up.

If you are planning on implementing your own economy in the future, I noticed a few things about how the number and cost of rewards impacts the effectiveness of your currency. I found that as I added more and more rewards to purchase, people were met with choice overload and ended up never spending their points at all. If you have fewer rewards, people are more likely to spend their currency and be motivated to earn it. Also, don’t make any of your rewards cost too much. If there is a reward that costs more than someone has, they will generally try to save for it. Essentially, if I were to create a reward that cost a trillion points, no one would ever spend anything in hopes that they could eventually buy it, but, their motivation to earn currency would wear off before they get there. You’ll want to keep a low number of rewards and a reasonable cost to each for the most effective economy.

So, let me answer the question, should you make your own economy? It depends on your goals. Motivating people with currency is great if you want to encourage people to do unenjoyable tasks and create habits, but it can become extremely competitive and requires a system of power. Let’s look at a few examples and see if an economy is well-suited for the situation.

• Your football team? A new currency may be a great idea to encourage practice, and a little bit of competition isn’t a huge problem for a sports team.
• Your family? Probably not ideal. You don’t really need anything to tear siblings apart even more.
• A band? Not a bad idea. Once again, it can be great for encouraging practice, as long as the competition between sections doesn’t cause a problem. And a band is organized such that it would work out to put the conductor at the head of the system of power.
• A book club? I don’t think an economy makes any sense for this.
• The United States?

Now, I’m not here to say that the entire country is misorganized just because my extremely flawed model of the effects of an economy says it’s not perfect. But, I wonder what our country’s goals really are, and if an economy is really built to work toward those goals. That’s up to you to decide. It really makes me wonder if there is another system that has never been tried before that might be better for what we want to do. Not capitalism, not socialism, something completely unique, that is far more optimal. We could probably never implement it, as it would necessitate tearing apart our entire country and rebuilding from scratch, but it makes you think. Maybe my friends should test some ideas out next year on the new software subteam.

In my last blog post, I posed the question, “Is everyone cheating during the pandemic?” While it may not be every single student, the statistics I found indicated that the amount of cheating in schools has shot up considerably since the beginning of quarantine. After writing that post, I began to get curious as to how teachers were reacting to this, so I decided to do a bit of research of my own.

Last Wednesday, I had a fascinating discussion with Mitch Martin, a journalism and English instructor in the Communication Arts department at our school. Martin has had to make significant changes to his course curriculum after concerns of the potential for cheating.

For many years, Martin has been giving the news quiz to his students at the end of each week. The news quiz is a multiple choice quiz about news from specific sources that he has told the students to read in advance. As someone who was once Martin’s student, I can speak from experience that the news quiz was a defining part of his class. Other students and I would always start class discussing the stories and what we thought would be on the quiz.

Two years ago when I was taking the course, Martin would be monitoring Hapara as we took the quiz, and we would have to recall the information from the news and answer the questions using what we could remember. However, after shifting to remote learning, Martin made the call that he couldn’t keep offering the news quiz in the same way he had been, citing concerns about a possible lack of academic integrity.

“I have never actually seen a student proof positive that they have cheated on a news quiz, but it seemed obvious to me that it would be super easy to do that because they could have their phone in front of them and look things up that were in the articles, or they could just Google it and find the answer,” Martin said. “Also, I started to see patterns. For questions that were easier to search, there would be higher scores on them. Scores from class to class would go up. Students who I would talk to during the week about the news who wouldn’t be aware of the news would suddenly get 100% on it.”

Martin went on to call the whole situation a “moral hazard.” The circumstances almost encourage you to be unethical, and as I touched on in my last post, it can become very easy to justify your own immoral behavior when everyone else seems to be doing the same thing. Here’s how Martin puts it:

 

As a result, Martin decided to make the news quiz open book, which, he admits, he is not too thrilled to do. He also added a synthesis section to the quiz, thinking that it would be more difficult to cheat on, though he said he’s not too sure if that’s actually turning out to be true.

Martin said that these are the sorts of changes teachers are making across the board. By his own estimates, possibly even 50 to 60% of what teachers are doing this year is entirely new. Another thing Martin noted is that students don’t realize there are a lot of assessments teachers aren’t even doing at all.

“An interesting question for a teacher is, ‘Do I give an assessment that I know is really flawed, or do I just not give it?’ The first time, the answer is clear- ‘I’m not going to give it.’ The second time, you’re pretty sure, ‘well, I’m not going to give that assessment,’ then you start to think, ‘I don’t know what these kids know at all, and I better try something,’” Martin said.

This is the thought process that goes behind these modifications to assessments. Martin said that upside to this is that he has made some discoveries about new ways to assess students better, like the synthesis part mentioned earlier. He will definitely be keeping this segment of the news quiz once students have returned to school entirely, though the news quiz will no longer be open book, and thinks many teachers will be making similar decisions when it comes to their new changes to their assessments. Martin speculated that there will be a tendency for teachers to give a lot less assessments in the future, and he hopes to see methods of evaluating students that are more meaningful and relevant.

However, many might be inclined to argue that it is more logical in the modern era to have students take assessments with full access to the internet, since that is how things will be as they enter into careers. Martin, on the other hand, believes that students still need to be able to have some working memory and be able to recall things from it- essentially, you can’t be starting from scratch every time, at some point you need to know something. He argues that we are so dependent on technology that we won’t remember anything at all.

Despite concerns about learning and social habits, Martin is still hopeful for his students’ future, and tries to tell them that.

“They never believe me, they think I’m just being nice, but they really have shown a lot of resilience through this… there might be some resilience that you guys get out of this that other kids haven’t had. I think that’s the positive thing,” Martin said.

I’m interested to see if Martin’s theories about the future of our students and education turn out to be true, and I’m certainly hopeful that after this pandemic, the potential positives of increased resilience and improved assessments outweigh the negatives of this year of moral hazard. With the last few months of school, we can all do our best to avoid any slippery slopes and can come out of high school as better people with the great qualities that this pandemic could result in.

While the school is increasing in-person instruction after spring break, they are continuing to offer an online-only option to students. I certainly don’t disagree with this decision- there are many good reasons to stay home, with many students who are concerned about safety in schools or are worried about older parents or family members that they live with. What I do object to, however, are the real reasons people are choosing to opt out from in-person schooling.

I don’t know about you, but when I get put in breakout rooms with students in other AP classes, I generally hear two reasons for staying home for school- “I want to sleep in,” or, worse, something along the lines of “I want to keep cheating on tests.” The most common reasoning, however? Both of those, at the same time. I’ll admit, I don’t have any data to back this up, but I’ve heard it too many times to ignore, and I think it’d be a safe bet to say that you have too.

As a result, I was prompted to ask myself if cheating really is epidemic during this pandemic. Fortunately for me, one of my favorite podcasts, No Stupid Questions (from the Freakonomics Radio Network), recently released an episode titled “Is everyone cheating these days?” where Stephen Dubner and Angela Duckworth gave me the statistics I was curious about. While it is definitely worth your time to listen to the full episode, I figured it would be worthwhile to give you all a summary of some of the most interesting studies and statistics on cheating in schools.

One of the most shocking data points about cheating during the pandemic was reported on by Derek Newton in a Washington Post article published last August. In his article, he discussed a test proctoring service called ProctorU, which is designed to monitor students taking exams and prevent cheating. ProctorU shared data that in the 340,00 exams administered using their service January through March of 2020, cheating was caught on fewer than 1% of exams. How did this change during the COVID-19 lockdown? Of the 1.3 million exams supervised from April through June, cheating was found on 8% of exams. That’s over an 800% increase in cheating over the span of just a few months.

And you have to remember, that was when students knew full well that their every action was being watched. I imagine things certainly look different when people think they can get away with it. While I couldn’t find any data from the last year, Rutgers Business School Professor Donald McCabe conducted a survey for his 2012 book Cheating in College: Why Students Do It and What Educators Can Do about It that found that 39% of undergraduate students admitted to cheating on tests and 62% admitted to cheating on written assignments. First of all, this is survey data, when students are inclined to lie and say they have not cheated in order to feel better about themselves, and on top of that, imagine what those statistics look like now with an 800% increase in cheating! Dishonesty really does run rampant amongst the education system.

This certainly brings into question the reason cheating is so widespread. There are some obvious reasons. For one, it’s pretty easy to get away with it, especially when no one can see your house and everything that you are doing. It’s also very easy to rationalize, and tell yourself that everyone’s doing it so you’re still a good person. There is one more reason, however, that I think is quite interesting to explore.

The dictator game is a commonly cited study in which a student is given some amount of money, say $5, and is given the option of passing some amount of it on to an unknown stranger. It is often used to show that nearly all people are, on some level, altruistic. John List published a paper in 2007 titled “On the Interpretation of Giving in Dictator Games,” in which he conducted this experiment, and found that, on average, people in the control group gave $1.33 of their $5 to the mystery person. However, he experimented with several other groups, one of which was given the option to not only give, but take $5 from the other person. On average, members of this group took $2.48 from the stranger! So what does this tell us? People cheat when they have something to gain. While in the control group, the only incentive is to look like a good person, there is a new, much better incentive in List’s experimental group- more money. Just by giving them that option they lose all of the altruism they once had. And the reality is, the people in the control group were cheating as well- many of them likely only gave money because the incentive was there to look like a good person.

Why do I bring this up? What really bothers me is the conflict of interest I see in so many Naperville North seniors. The same people who are cheating presumably for the purpose of better grades are the same ones who claim to have senioritis and have no motivation to try hard in school, though, once again, I only have anecdotal evidence to back this up. I really don’t think there is that much of an incentive to cheat like those in the dictator game, so I really don’t get why you other seniors are so set on doing it.

What I am really encouraging you to do is to embrace senioritis, and come back to school after spring break. Give up on cheating to get perfect scores on your assignments if it means you come in and spend the few remaining days talking to your friends in person. Give your teachers someone to look forward to chatting with in class. The lasting memories of your friends will be much more valuable than the 10% you gained on a test because you Googled the answers. As Angela Duckworth puts it, let’s stop looking at things from a purely utilitarian standpoint to find the competitive advantage of staying home, and instead use some deontological reasoning, where we’ll find that the real best choice lies in seeing the people you can find at school.

Epitaphs

For a Fool

On earth the wise man makes the rules,

And is the fool’s adviser

But here the wise are as the fools,

(And no man is the wiser).

For One Who Gaily Sowed His Oats

My days were but a thing for me to live,

For others to deplore;

I took of life all it could give:

Rind, inner fruit, and core.

For a Wanton

To men no more than so much cover

For them to doff or try,

I found in death a constant lover;

Here in his arms I lie.

For a Preacher

Vanity of vanities,

All is vanity; yea,

Even the rod He flayed you with

Crumbled and turned to clay.

 

In his poem “Epitaphs,” Countee Cullen writes gravestone inscriptions for four different unnamed people, showing how after death they all end up in the same place.

The first epitaph, written “For a Fool,” is used to show the life of a simple-minded man whose actions were governed by those who claimed to be more intelligent. The first two lines, “On earth the wise man makes the rules, and is the fool’s adviser,” describe the power dynamic between the two people during the fool’s life. Then, as the next two lines explain, “But here the wise are as the fools, (And no man is the wiser),” as both are laid to rest, no one can tell who was smarter. In this stanza, the ABAB rhyme scheme sets the lighthearted tone for the poem, despite the more serious subject matter. The iambic meter adds to this, creating a whimsical feel in contrast to the discussion of death.

The next is written “For One Who Gaily Sowed His Oats,” a phrase which describes a man who is seeking out as many sexual relationships with women as he can. This stanza continues the rhyme and meter seen in the first, suggesting a continuity between the two deceased. Cullen writes, “My days were but a thing for me to live, For others to deplore,” in reference to the idea that this man thought everything in the world was his to take, and was looked down upon by others for it. This is followed by “I took of life all it could give: Rind, inner fruit, and core.” This fruit metaphor describes the way this person ate up life to the point of gluttony.

The epitaph “For a Wanton” describes the counterpart to the prior man’s epitaph, a woman seeking the same sexual pleasure without commitment. Her gravestone reads, “To men no more than so much cover, For them to doff or try.” To her, men were temporary and expendable, and only to be used and sent away. However, after her life came to end, things changed, as it reads “I found in death a constant lover; Here in his arms I lie.” The afterlife is her first and last permanent relationship. Both this stanza and the prior are written in the first person, in contrast to the third-person perspective of the fool, suggesting the difference in the person who learned their lesson- in the fool’s case, the wise man, and in the case of the second and third, themselves.

The last epitaph, “For a Preacher,” takes a more unique voice in the second person, written as if it were the preacher speaking to his congregation. The phrase “Vanity of vanities, All is vanity, yea” comes from the Book of Ecclesiastes, as if the preacher were giving a sermon on this verse. In the last two lines, “Even the rod He flayed you with Crumbled and turned to clay,” the capital He refers to God, and the preacher is suggesting that even the ways in which God has punished you become insignificant with time and eventual death. Additionally, this epitaph takes on a different rhyme scheme, in the form of a ballad stanza. This shift shows a more affectionate attitude toward the preacher than the cemetery’s other inhabitants.

Cullen’s poem puts emphasis on the fact that death is the only guarantee in life. The main similarity between the four people is that in the end everything they valued became meaningless. Cullen’s epitaph demonstrates that all humans are the same once they are six feet under.

 

I know what you’re thinking.

“Wyatt, you’re insane. Why would any high schooler ever want to get up at 5:45am on a weekend when they could sleep past ten?”

Just hold on a second. I know all of you out there probably think that waking up to six inches of snow and being told you have to shovel it is the worst punishment the world has to offer, but I’ve personally grown to cherish this mandatory activity, and I know you can too. Here are some of the benefits you can start thinking about to keep a positive outlook next time you’re forced outside in the cold.

Shoveling warms up your muscles and amps you up to take on the day.

Personally, I always feel a little groggy immediately after I wake up, and it takes me a while before I start to feel good about myself and be productive. On days when snow lines the driveway and I force myself outside, the refreshing cold sends a shock to my system that tells my brain it’s time to get down to business.

Shoveling is also the perfect level of intensity for some light morning exercise. I always find that after shoveling, my muscles feel stretched, but not fatigued like you’d feel after a workout. It’s a perfect balance that makes you feel active and ready to keep the momentum going.

It has a satisfying end point.

I’m a sucker for some instant gratification every once in a while. Shoveling is one such activity with a visible reward waiting for you at the end. I find great satisfaction in admiring the cleared off driveway, and take great pride in knowing that my work will now allow me to drive my car into the street and give people walking on the sidewalk a clean path to follow.

You can always do more of it.

“Wyatt. Now I’m really convinced. You are insane.”

Wait, wait, wait. Hear me out. Sure, choosing to do extra shoveling seems unthinkable, but I find it to be one of the most rewarding things you can do.

My next-door neighbors have a baby and a toddler. I know they have quite a bit on their hands, so as long as I have the time, I take a few extra minutes to shovel off their walkway and help take a bit of load off their backs. 

Doing this makes me feel really happy with myself because I know they appreciate it. Science backs me up on this as well. An article from UC Berkeley compiled a couple of psychological studies done on the topic, concluding that not only do our acts of kindness make us happy, it creates a positive feedback loop- the happier we feel as a result of their kindness, the more inclined we are to act kindly again, which in turn increases our happiness even more.

Shoveling builds a sense of community.

I often never leave the house during the winter, which means I almost never interact with the people in my neighborhood in the same ways I might during the summer. However, I find that shoveling can often form an immediate bond between two people working through the same problem of the snowstorm.

Just yesterday, I was shoveling off the walkway and ran into one of my neighbors doing the same thing as we met at our property line. He asked me how high school was going and what my plans were for college. I told him I was planning on studying computer science, and, as it turns out, his son is doing the same thing. We then exchanged a bit of small talk that just helps me feel a connection with the people I’ve been living next door to for the past fifteen years.

Maybe small talk isn’t your thing (it usually isn’t mine either), but you can’t deny that shoveling led me to get to know the people around me better, and I think that’s something you should learn to value too.

I really hope I’ve convinced you that shoveling can really be a great thing. Though, frankly, even if you’re still on the fence, you should think about these benefits the next time you have to do it anyway. I know your parents aren’t just going to give up their free labor just because you’re a little too tired. You’re going to have to shovel whether you like it or not. So? You might as well like it, in that case. Change your outlook and start taking this seemingly mundane chore as a positive opportunity. That’s the way I do it.

Lately, I’ve been teaching a lot of people programming. I’ve been doing everything from teaching the new members on the robotics team the Java code necessary to make motors move to teaching eighth graders at Kennedy the basics of Python and video game programming. It’s a super rewarding experience that I’m really grateful for, but what I’m most thankful for is the super motivated, enthusiastic students I get to work with. So today, I’m going to explain to you why you should be like them and be the next to learn a bit of programming, if you haven’t already.

Let me start by just getting this out of the way: anyone can code. So many people will tell you that they just aren’t smart enough for programming, but that’s just not true. I’ll put it this way. You may say you’re not good at math. Sure, calculus may be difficult, but I know you can do addition. You were taught that in first grade. Programming is the same way, just like any other subject. It starts off super simple. In fact, the first thing you’ll learn will literally be addition! One of the first lines of code you write might look like this:

number += 6

All that does is add 6 to whatever number was already. Maybe you’re intimidated because it’s in a different font and isn’t written like what you’d expect adding 6 to look like, but trust me, you’ll be able to handle the basics of programming. It’ll be totally worth it for the rewards.

So let’s move on to those rewards I just mentioned. The first of which: you get to make a lot of really cool stuff! Let’s face it, a lot of things that are worthwhile to learn don’t really have any good instant gratification. It’s not super cool to show someone a word problem you solved in math, no matter how challenging of a question it may have been. Programming, however, gives you lots to show off. On day 3 of teaching Pygame to the kids at Kennedy, we already made our very own Super Mario Bros. engine and can make Mario run and jump. Now that is something fun to demonstrate to someone, especially when it’s super easy to make it personalized and put in an image of yourself in place of the jumpman.

The next thing is that you’ll be able to understand the technology around us. The great thing about programming is that really all technology is built on the basics. If you stick with a programming class for seven days, you’ll pretty much have already learned all of the building blocks that make up the new technologies developing around us. Sure, a lot of them get pretty complicated, but you’ll start to realize that they’re just made up of a lot of the basic building blocks stacked on top of each other. Us programmers love to complain about how people just think our job is tech support, but there’s definitely some truth to that. Once you learn a few programming fundamentals, you have much better intuition when it comes to technology, and things like your phone or laptop start to work exactly the way you expect them to.

Lastly, you’ll learn what to fear, and, more importantly, what not to fear. Unfortunately, media like movies and TV have created this expectation that artificial intelligence will eventually rise to a point where humanity can’t stop impending doom. The truth is, there will never be a time where you can’t just press ctrl+c or some equivalent to kill the program. There’s nothing to fear there. However, learning programming does make you realize the dangers of our data-driven society and algorithms that amplify our biases instead of diminishing them. Code-literate people know what dangers to look out for in new technologies, so it’s definitely worth joining us.

I really hope I’ve convinced you to check out a programming class in your spare time. It’s really quite fun, and the benefits of understanding a little programming in a world where we spend 90% of our time on a screen cannot be understated. Thanks for reading, and good luck coding!

Over the long Thanksgiving break, one thing I did was sit down with my family to play a nice long game of Risk. I am fortunate enough to come from a long line or Risk-lovers- everyone from my grandpa to my 7-year old cousin loves this game. However, for most people, convincing three or four other people to sit down with you for upwards of three or four hours to play a board game is not an easy task, to say the least. So, here, I will convince you of this strategy game’s excellence, and give you a reason to get your family to play.

For those of you unfamiliar with the gameplay of Risk, I’ll give you a quick overview. The game board is a world map, and the game starts off with each player taking turns claiming a territory until the whole world has been claimed. From then on, each player takes turns going clockwise, with each turn having three steps. In the first step, a player is given new troops to place on their territories. Second, a player can attack as many opposing territories as they would like, as long as the territory is adjacent to one of their own. When attacking, a player chooses whether to attack with one, two, or three troops, while the defending territory defends with either one or two of theirs. Each player rolls one die for each troop in battle. Each player’s highest dice rolls are matched up, and the troops with the lower numbers are defeated. The defense wins in the case of a tie. For example, if I was attacking my brother with three troops and he was defending with two, if I rolled a 6, 3, and 2, and he rolled a 4 and a 3, my 6 and his 4 would be matched, so one of his troops would be defeated, while both of our 3s would be matched, and I would lose one troop. This continues until either all of the defending troops have been defeated or the offense decides to stop. Then, in the third step, a player can move troops from one territory to another to fortify weaker territories. The game ends once one player has conquered the entire world.

In my opinion, Risk is easily the best mainstream board game. Its simplicity offers something for everyone. Many just enjoy the game for its strategy, though I personally love to exercise my creative muscles and make up stories about each battle, which is something that is much harder to do in other board games. Others love to trash talk after each victory.

Another aspect that Risk does well is a nice balance between strategy and luck. Many board games, like Monopoly or The Game of Life, your turn’s success is almost entirely dependent on your luck for the number of spaces you move. However, with Risk, 20 dice or more are often rolled on just on single player’s turn, so things tend to average out in such a way that success is more so dependent on your strategy rather than one single dice roll, while the possibilities of constant extremely high or low rolls can still keep things interesting. Risk is also very well designed in that it rewards more offensive playstyles. While it is often strategically enticing to wait for others to attack you and slowly grow stronger (like the famed “Australia” strategy), players who attack will often be given more bonus troops, which helps to balance things out.

All in all, Risk is the perfect activity to sink some family time into over a school break. Whether you can get your close family to play with you over winter break or if you have to wait until the next break after the pandemic is all over with to play with some extended family, it will not be a mistake to sit everyone down for a game.

This summer in quarantine, I found myself wishing I could have many of the staples of summer, like hanging out with friends and visiting family, and I would imagine most students felt the same. However, I was recently reminiscing about one lost summer opportunity, one that is much less necessary than friends or family, but still very memorable: our annual visit to Six Flags: Great America. Normally, my dad would take me to the park at some point during the year, but with the parks closed and my family trying to stay safe, this was not an option.

Though, when you think about it, it seems a little strange that I would want to go. With a worldwide pandemic taking over our lives, how could I possibly look back on these times and wish I could put myself through even more fear? So, I decided to look into this a little bit and find out what makes people like me come back to theme parks for roller coasters time and time again.

Of course, many of us are familiar with the role of endorphins in our enjoyment of certain activities, but I find it very interesting to explore the reasons why we receive stimulation from things in this first place, evolutionarily speaking. As it turns out, the reasons we seek the modern-day thrill of the roller coaster actually originate from the first humans, who were constantly struggling to survive. 

As sociologist Dr. Margee Kerr, author of Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear, explains in an interview, “The challenges we face today are not quite as risky, and they’re not as immediate. The challenges we have today are long-term, but for the majority of human history, it’s all been very present oriented, like, ‘how can I make it through this day?’”

Most of us are no longer concerned with where we will find our next meal, or protecting ourselves from threats like wild animals or weather. We have moved on to greater things, like seeking our present-day definitions of success and happiness. This, however, is a relatively recent advancement, considering that humans have been around for millions of years. Over the course of our species’ history, our brains have been trained to respond to successes related to surviving, not thriving.

For the most part, these sorts of issues no longer exist, and our long-term goal setting just doesn’t activate the same reward systems in the same way (the same reason it is often so hard to act on our self-improvement plans). Roller coasters, in essence, create a problem, and then trick our brains into thinking we solved it and made it out alive thanks to our own abilities. It’s a little ironic that we are such an advanced society that we must use the latest technology and inventions in order to satisfy our primal instincts, but this is the reason it is so fulfilling once you get off a daunting coaster.

This is exactly the reason why I look back at my times at the theme park and wish I could get that kind of experience today. As I sit in my room on Zoom classes, there are no immediate threats whatsoever, and it’s hard to find successes that really trigger a feeling of accomplishment in the brain. Even though there is plenty of danger in the world, none of it produces the same level of fear as a 100% secure roller coaster, and I can’t help but look forward to the future when it is finally safe for me to take a ride.

 

Works Cited:

Burt, Malcolm. “(31 Mins) Signature Attraction – A Documentary about Why Rollercoasters Exist.” YouTube, YouTube, 12 Jan. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBrkeXusCOc.

“I have never played a video game in my life, and there is no reason for me to get into them now- books and movies tell much more compelling stories, and games can’t give nearly the same insight into the nature of humanity as other forms of media.”

No! That’s wrong!

The Danganronpa game series is one that I would say anyone can and should play. Unlike many other video games, the only skill requirement is that you can read, and I know you can do that. Telling a suspenseful story full of distrust and despair and keeping players on the edge of their seat, this game is not one to be missed.

In Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, we play as Makoto Naegi, a high school student who has been chosen to attend Hope’s Peak Academy, a prestigious government-funded school where only those who are the absolute best at what they do are selected to attend. Throughout the game, we interact with these so called “Ultimates,” ranging from the Ultimate Martial Artist to the Ultimate Programmer. However, upon arriving at the school, we black out, along with the rest of the class, and wake up in a strange, abandoned school with metal plates over the windows and no way to leave. A strange remote-controlled teddy bear greets us claiming to be the headmaster of the school, and presents us with the school rules, of which there is really only one: in order to graduate and leave the school, a student must get away with murdering one of their classmates. As we progress through the game, we are tasked with solving two mysteries at the same time, finding the culprit of each case, all while trying to uncover the mysteries of the school’s history.

The story is told in the form of a visual novel, a genre that is about what it sounds like: a picture book for more mature audiences. What this means for you as an AP Lit student is that the skills we learn in class for analyzing literature can actually be applied to the game to give you a deeper understanding of it. Though Danganronpa is certainly not nearly as challenging as anything we read in class, it still has all of the elements of any good work of literature, set in a strange atmosphere with a host of interesting characters. You might assume that the characters that survive the longest are the most developed, but that is not necessarily the case. If you ask me, that just speaks to how well written the game really is- each death felt impactful and actually manages to better characterize the person who was murdered as we peer into the circumstances and motivations of both the victim and killer. Additionally, the game’s willingness to let the more important-seeming characters die adds to the tension and keeps you constantly guessing who will be next.

While many might believe that there is no way a game can have the same personal impact that a book or movie may have, Danganronpa tackles a very compelling theme of hope vs. despair which I found could apply to my everyday life, especially as I am constantly struggling to stay positive in these trying times. 

Though, in my opinion, the best decision the developers made when making this game was, quite simply, making it a video game. Like many other games, Danganronpa utilizes a second-person point of view, a narration style that is done best in games where players choose every action. This decision alone solves what I believe to be one of the greatest problems holding back mysteries told through other media: at the end of the day, you just keep reading or watching the solution even if you haven’t figured it out. On the other hand, Danganronpa moves at your pace, as you are required to solve the mysteries yourself, which drastically increases the stakes. This is what really makes it worth playing a video game over reading a novel or watching a TV show or movie.

The gameplay of Danganronpa mostly consists of reading the story as it is presented, though it is complemented with investigation sequences in which you search for clues while trying to piece things together on your own. It all builds up to the class trial at the end of each chapter. You use your metaphorical “truth bullets” to shoot down contradictions in others’ statements and out the killer, because if you don’t, you will be punished with execution. Here’s what that looks like in action:

 

I would say I had a blast playing Danganronpa, but I can’t say that this is always the case. As I saw my favorite characters betray and kill each other, I was occasionally left feeling horrified and broken, which, in reality, is just another reason why it is such a well-designed game. Though released in 2010, it has aged very well, and retains both its impact and entertainment value in the modern day, telling a scary story of distrust and humanity’s dark side. It is something that I would say any AP Lit student who is looking for a break from our usual challenging literature should play, as you can take your own unique skills to get more out of the story. And the great thing about it is that you can play it! Video games typically have a problem that there is always a barrier to entry- you must own either a console or at least a mediocre PC, which your school Chromebook is most certainly not. Fortunately, a port of the game has been released for iPhone and Android in the past year, so anyone interested can purchase it from either of these platforms for $15.99. It is also available for PC on Steam for $19.99 or as a bundle with Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair for $29.99 on PS4. Really, you have no excuse to not play it- trust me, it is well worth your time and money.