By Enby

What do you like best about HCIS?

The community. I've been to a handful of different schools in the past, and by far HCIS is the best. The support systems in place for students are incredibly accommodating, and I am so grateful I go to a school where I can say with full confidence that the staff cares about my well-being. HCIS is pretty small compared to other schools in the area, but I see it as an academic advantage. Mainly because students are able to get more one-on-one time with teachers. But more importantly, I think it allows for flexibility and individuality. Everyone has room to be themselves, and no one gets lost in the sea of faces. 

What are you going to do after you graduate?

I plan on going into tattooing. Artistically, I pride myself on the fact that I'm an extreme perfectionist and have great attention to detail. Which are traits I assume most people look for in tattoo artists. I have already done 4 tattoos on myself and 3 on other people. All of which turned out great (for an amateur).

What advice do you have for younger students?

Respect your teachers. I remember thinking when I was younger that back talking and bending the rules was cool. But let's be honest, maturing is realizing that having teachers like you as a student is cooler than getting talked to after class. Blurting, breaking things, stealing, and arrogance won't get you anywhere.

What's the biggest challenge you've faced at HCIS?

It's hard not to feel pressured to go to college when you go to a "College Prep" school. But the reality of the situation is that college is expensive! Even if you got a scholarship and financial aid, time is money. Being a full-time student means you can't hold a full-time job. Which makes "living" extremely difficult. Some people have the resources to live that life, but a lot of us don't. So seeing all the seniors around me prepare for college makes me feel a little left out.

What's something that you wish you could've done sooner?

Switching from PPH to HCIS. I went to Proctor from kindergarten to 7th grade, and in 8th and 9th grade I did school through K12MN. I didn't start at HCIS until the 2nd semester of 10th grade in 2021, and I wish I had done it sooner. The environment at Proctor is (as you can imagine) "conservative" to say the least, and doing school online is incredibly isolating. I remember during my initial tour of HCIS right before I was enrolled, seeing the skateboard rack, kids with green hair, big goth combat boots, beautiful murals, and posters for National Coming Out Day and thinking "I bet I would love it here".

If you could have any animal as a pet, regardless of resources, what would it be?

A panther. Like, imagine if I walked around with a huge black cat by my side. That would be sick.

If you had to spend 6 months in a town that's not in a country you've been to, what would it be and why?

Amsterdam. I've heard they have a very prestigious coffee culture, and I'd like to indulge in it. I've always thought the rustic apartment complexes, canals, bridges, and cobblestone walkways were very beautiful. As well as the handful of historic museums and art galleries they have that I would love to see.

By Enby

HCIS's theater group will be performing William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, originally written in 1596, starting on December 1st. The entire theater department has been working hard toward perfecting these performances since September 30th, when the cast list was officially set in stone. We're all very excited for the opportunity to share the beauty of Shakespeare with not only HCIS and its families, but also the kids. We’re all extremely excited to perform for everyone who comes, and I interviewed a few of my fellow cast members to give you an insight into the passion and love put into this show.

Claire is a senior who is playing Titania, the powerful fairy queen of the woods, a strong-willed, independent character who fights over a changeling boy with her husband, Oberon. When asked what her favorite aspect of theater at HCIS is, she mentions the tight-knit, welcoming, and familial community– cutting herself off to comment on the delicious dinners provided to cast members during long nights of rehearsal. She was shocked by the supportiveness and positivity between members of the cast in both productions she’s been in here. She says that A Midsummer Night’s Dream is going a lot better than she expected, as from someone with dyslexia, Shakespeare is very intimidating. If she could choose any role from any play or musical, she chose King George from Hamilton, as “I wouldn’t have to act, I could just sing, go home, and call it a job well done!”

Romeo is a sophomore playing Puck, a quick-witted, mischievous, and irreverent sprite, right hand to the fairy king, and main instigator of the play. His favorite part of the play is working on staging, the process of planning out where characters move during their lines; going on record to say “I heart staging.” When asked about how he’s liking the show so far, he says “A Midsummer Night’s Dream is great, I love playing puck, it's an incredible role. Honestly I'm peaking right now.” He's been intrigued by Shakespeare for as long as he can remember, reminiscing that “I used to round up my family at Thanksgiving and being like ‘No, you're watching me perform these Shakespeare scenes that I memorized.'"

Hours of dedication, work, and craftsmanship has been put into this show, and it has turned out better beyond our wildest dreams. Tickets are $5 for students and $10 for adults, either at the door or online at http://harborcity.ludus.com. There will be showings on December 1st at 7pm, December 2nd at 2pm and 7pm, and December 3rd at 2pm. We hope to see you there!

From Giovanni Minio

The the Duluth Community at large, 

My name is Giovanni Minio, I’m 17 years old and I go to Harbor City International school. I am an exchange student from Italy: it’s been two months since I moved here. 

I am writing this letter because I think that, although the City of Duluth has a lot of tourism (6.7 million tourists per year) and tourist attractions and infrastructures, it could improve under one precise aspect: the recognition of the talented genius of Bob Dylan. 

When they first told me that I was going to Duluth, I immediately searched it on Google and the first thing that appeared in the research was “Duluth, MN: birthplace of Bob Dylan.” 

I was super excited about that, I thought that I would have found so many attractions and references about him all over the city, but unfortunately it wasn’t like this. 

I think that it would be nice to publicize and take more advantage of this; he is one of the greatest artist of all time, one of the best-selling musician ever, he has earned a lot of prestigious awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, ten Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award, he has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame; The Pulitzer Prize Board in 2008 awarded him a special citation for "his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power"; In 2016, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition". 

I’ve done some research and the house in which Bob Dylan lived until he was 6 is still here in Duluth, but it’s just a normal building now, while I think that it should be given value, maybe turning it into a museum. Even the Duluth  Armory, actually in disuse, is important if we try to connect the City of Duluth to the name of Dylan: when he was young, on January 31, 1959 he attended the performance of the singer Buddy Holly, which he cited as an inspiration at the 1998 Grammy Awards when he received Album of the Year for Time Out of Mind. 

He said :”I just want to say that when I was 16 or 17 years old, I went to see Buddy Holly play at Duluth National Guard Armory and I was three feet away from him… and he looked at me. And I just have some kind of feeling that he was – I don’t know how or why – but I know he was with us all the time we were making this record in some kind of way.” 

Dylan cited or referred to the City of Duluth in some of his songs like “Something there is about you” and “Desolation Raw” and one of his best albums it’s even called “Highway 61” as the highway that connects Duluth to the borders of Canada. 

I’m sorry for the long letter but I am so excited to live here in the hometown of such a great artist, and so should be all the people here but many of them maybe don’t even know the importance of the fact. 

In conclusion, I’m just asking to considering the idea of moving in this direction with concerts about him, murales, museums, restoration of the most important places like his home or the Duluth Armory, because, again, connecting the City of Duluth to the name of Bob Dylan would be not only amazing from an emotional point of view, but also a good way to attract tourists and to take that slice of the tourist market of people who love him and are interested in knowing what the birthplace of a huge artist looks like. 

Thank you for your time, Giovanni

Amaia Mayberry

Picture this: you’re me, and it’s sophomore year. 15, and anything but rested after the weeks of playing in the snow or gaming until you passed out, you wake up in a cold sweat that has nothing to do with the temperature and everything to do with the fact that you only went to sleep at 3am. And, you know, the fact that it’s the day you’re supposed to return to school– Monday, January 3rd, because the injustices just never end. Here’s what your morning looks like:

630AM: You wake up to an alarm you haven’t heard in weeks. You didn’t miss it. You raise your hands to the sky– why me?-- before rolling back over and going back to sleep, lights on and all. 

645AM: After a brief tussle with your blankets, which are ruthlessly pulled away from you by a cruel, uncaring creator (your unamused mother), you rise from the dead. Hooray?

7AM: You don your favorite outfit, scrunch the brand new bangs you still haven’t figured out how to style, and pray for a sudden onset snow day that will never come. Thankfully, it comes the next year. Not that it’s helpful by that point. 

730AM: You’re pacing. The snow isn’t falling fast enough, and your brothers are still asleep, because unlike you, they’re lucky enough to not have to go back to school the Monday after New Year’s Eve. It’s only after you shove the weight of the entire world (three notebooks, three folders, two books, and a laptop) back in your backpack that you realize the truth: school as you know it isn’t quite starting up yet. 

733AM: Rejoice!

Without a symposium my freshman year, I had no idea what to expect of this whole new concept. Sure, I’d been briefed years before, back when I made the choice to go to Harbor City. But it was 2022 now and, like the feeling of being well-rested and stress-free after a long break, I’d long since forgotten it. So when I came in to school that morning, crumpled permission slips in my back pockets and backpack re-emptied in preparation for whatever I’d somehow signed up for, I was still shocked to find myself herded into a classroom I’d only been in the first time weeks prior with a teacher I didn’t know at all, and a roomful of students I was in various states of also not really knowing. 

That’s the real beauty of symposium: connection. Although I didn’t yet know Ms. Forsman, or a majority of the students who filled her Cooking for a Cause symposium that January, through days of being side-by-side while cooking, playing card games, and shuffling through the slush-covered streets to make it to the bus stop, I came to appreciate them all. More than that, I learned to appreciate symposium not just for being a much-needed transition time between break and school, but also for bringing us as students together. For the rest of the year, I looked forward to spring symposiums, and when those two weeks came, they were even better than I’d hoped. 

Have fun, be safe, and I hope you have a wonderful winter symposium. 

By Atlas and Wylan

Aries (March 21-April 19)

Aries, you will be banished to the kids table after accidentally bringing up politics in front of your grandfather. In retaliation, eat all the marshmallows off of the candied yams.

Taurus (April 20-May 20)      

Taurus, your weird uncle will corner you at Thanksgiving dinner. Practice your best Pterodatcl screech to scare him off. Hord the mashed potatoes, those are your special treat. 

Gemini (May 21-June 20)

Gemini, when your family all holds hands in thanks for dinner, no one will hold your hand. It’s okay, when your making the green bean casserole, spit in it.

Cancer (June 21-July 22)

Cancer, when it’s dinner time, make sure to sneak scraps under the table for the dog. Just to make sure she likes you best. The dog would like some of that ham please.

Leo (July 23-August 22)

Leo, no one gives thanks for you. Come on, do better. For dinner, they’ll put you in charge of the jello salad. Who even likes jello salad?

Virgo (August 23-September 22)

Virgo, your rich and spoiled aunt and uncle are hosting dinner this year. Get back at them by giving your sticky little cousins sharpies. Bring the stuffing for dinner, and ask Gemini to help you with it.

Libra (September 23-October 22)

Libra, you will be instantly killed and take 20 psychic damage when your aunt puts on Mariah Carey while you're cooking. The Turkey will burn, as well as your ears.

Scorpio (October 23-November 21)

Scorpio, while you’re watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving day parade, your little cousin will compare you to a parade balloon. Bring some ice, just for that burn.

Sagittarius (November 22-December 21)

Sagittarius, just stay home. Your Aunt is trying a new vegan diet, and Thanksgiving tofu just isn’t the same. Order Chinese instead.

Capricorn (December 22-January 19)

Capricorn, while everyone is watching the Thanksgiving Football games, stuff your face with the Pecan pie. Just shovel it into your mouth. Blame it on the cat, and don’t buy a replacement.

Aquarius (January 20 - February 18)

Aquarius, avoid the pumpkin pie at all costs. Your older cousin with questionable hygiene brought it, and I would not suggest eating that health code violations cooking. 

Pisces (February 19 - March 20) 

Pisces, make the mac and cheese with your grandma this thanksgiving. She won’t be around forever. Or maybe she will. Is immortality hereditary?