Step 1 - Hear No Evil
The goal of any conflict is to win. To win, one must get their point across the most. What better way to do so than to make sure the only person anyone can hear is you? Quickly disarm your opponent by obnoxiously talking over them. The louder you speak, the better. You want your adversary to feel as though whatever they do is entirely invalid and that your voice is the superior one.

Step 2 - Add Insult to Injury
If you want what you say to truly stick, make sure it hurts. Take any chance you get to demean, invalidate, or otherwise belittle your foe. By insulting them, you make them realize how inept and terrible they are at everything. They are sure to listen to everything you have to say in the future. If this fails to work immediately, it simply means you are not scornful enough. Double down and hit them where it really hurts.

Step 3 - Practice Makes Perfect
If you have properly finished steps 1 and 2, you should have vanquished your enemy’s reasoning. However, you aren’t quite done. To make sure the point is driven home, keep bringing it up. Make sure to remind them how right you were and how wrong they were. Do so as often as you can. You want this defeat to haunt them to the grave. Years later, they should go to bed at night, and memories of you should plague them in their dreams.

You should now be fully equipped with the knowledge to win any argument you find yourself engaged in. Now, go forth and make everybody loathe you!

Mr. Macmillan is not only our art teacher at Hubbard High School but is also in charge of The Art Club, FEA, and the high school girls' soccer team. He has been teaching and inspiring students for twenty-one years at Hubbard. His favorite things about teaching are his subject, being able to be in front of groups of kids, and taking something he knows and helping other people get better at it. He states that his least favorite thing about being a teacher is “anything that takes me away from being able to just teach.” When asked if he could go back in time and change his major, he explained that he could not see himself doing anything else. He loves being around art, being able to get involved with projects for the community, coaching, and still being able to spend time with his family. He would not change anything.

I then asked Mr. Macmillan if there was anything students had taught him. He said, “Kids are a lot stronger than people give them credit for. Sometimes if a kid comes in a few seconds or a few minutes late, or if a kid is tired during the day, you kind of have to erase the idea of that being a disrespectful thing. Some kids have had to skip school; they have to work because their family can't afford stuff.” Another example he used is that kids could be late due to stopping in the hallways to help another student who, for example, dropped their supplies.

One of the reasons he chose to be a teacher was because he and his family moved a lot due to his father being in the service. He felt like he didn’t belong anywhere. At one point, he had an art teacher who was very blunt with her students—if she didn’t like their work, she would often stand behind them and insult them. Luckily, he had his favorite teacher, Mr. Reese, who taught his class how to present information in front of others. Before his class, Mr. Macmillan did not like to speak in front of others, but that teacher made him feel like he mattered. He wanted to give others the experience that Mr. Reese gave to him.

Lastly, his advice to future teachers is, “Remember why you went into it, and don’t ever lose focus of that.”

Wildfires have become a regular and devastating event in Los Angeles, destroying homes, displacing families, and harming wildlife. These fires are caused by a mix of natural factors and human actions, making them a serious challenge for the region.

Why Los Angeles Is Prone to Fires

The climate in Southern California creates perfect conditions for wildfires. Long periods of drought dry out plants and trees, turning them into fuel for fires. “I have family in L.A., and I am constantly worrying about their safety due to the unpredictable geography,” states Hubbard Senior Ayah Mufleh. The strong, dry Santa Ana winds can spread flames quickly, making fires harder to control. Climate change has made the problem worse by extending dry seasons and intensifying heat waves, which increases the risk of fires.

The Role of Human Activity

Many wildfires are caused by people, either accidentally or intentionally. Simple mistakes like leaving a campfire burning, throwing away a cigarette, or using equipment that sparks can lead to massive fires. For example, some past fires in Los Angeles have started because tree branches hit power lines, sparking flames that quickly spread.

Arson is another problem. Some people intentionally start fires for personal reasons, which can lead to serious damage and loss of life. Illegal fireworks, especially during summer celebrations, are also a common cause of fires despite strict rules banning them.

Fighting Fires and Preventing Them

Efforts are being made to reduce the risk of wildfires and improve responses when they happen. Fire departments are using advanced tools like drones and satellites to track fires in real time. Governments are spending money to upgrade old power lines and develop better ways to stop fires before they spread. “I am interested in working with nature and wildlife, so finding ways to resolve this issue is important to me,” states Hubbard Senior Alyssa Gregory.

Public education is also important. Programs teach people how to prepare their homes for fires and what to do if they need to evacuate. These efforts help save lives and reduce damage, but more work is needed.

January is considered to be one of the most difficult months of the year. I don't disagree with this statement; with the after-holiday depression, the monotony of returning to a regular routine, and no holidays or excitement to look forward to. However, I think the necessity of January is often overlooked. If you look past the alarm clock groans and the tears over the deadlines, I believe January is not the worst month of the year. It's March.

March deceives you. It's two months after you go to work, and it's given a small boost by everyone pretending to know what St. Patrick's Day is, but March is disgusting. In January, everyone is productive, down to earth, and working hard. Everyone is the opposite in March. People use the color green as an excuse to assault people and stop working for a day. Everybody is doing nothing. And after March, it's April, and now everybody can see May turning the corner, and everybody is already in summer weather.

However, it’s not just the holidays that cause people to not work as hard; the weather also has a pretty large influence on the attitudes of people at the workplace. If the weather outside is frightful, and there's a fire that's so delightful, then people will probably feel like they’re walking in a winter wonderland and work harder. When there's an abundance of snow on the ground, and it’s beautiful outside, it’s not hard to be happy and work harder. However, when the weather starts to get warmer and the snow starts to melt, by March, it's muddy and gray. Nobody likes mud or the color gray. Nobody wants to work anymore. Everybody is sad, and their cars are covered in mud.

I hope this article changed your mind about January. I hope you appreciate the beauty of the winter weather before it's gone, and I hope in three months you don’t wear green and go against the St. Patrick's Day norms.

I haven’t been around long, I’m painfully aware. However, I have existed long enough to recognize changes in society and the people around me as I’ve grown up. I remember bits and pieces of my middle school life, from plastic shields between lunch tables and classes every other weekday, to isolation in my house for months, and my discovery of the wonderful internet. I don’t think about that time in my life often, as I wasn’t in the best mental state, which I’m sure is relatable. But, as I grow older, I find myself looking past that time, to the days before Covid-19, when I had little understanding of the world around me, and unknowingly took it for granted.

Growing up, I had cousins who were 6-8 years older than me. This means that I was in late elementary school when they began their high school careers. I was very close with them at that time, and loved it. I loved hanging out with highschoolers, I loved randomly seeing one of them in the halls on school days, I loved hearing their funny stories that I never really understood. I especially fondly remember the springs and summers of their high school years because they were always in the spring musicals, which I had dreamed about being able to participate in since before I could remember. The productions amazed my small mind, and I found myself thinking about them long into summer. I would go swim in their pool, have dinner on the weekends, and put on silly puppet shows for our families for every holiday.

Fast forward a couple years, and I find myself in that same position I’d dreamed about my entire short life. My cousins have all moved away and gone on to be successful in early adulthood, so I don’t have the opportunity to talk to them as much as I had in years prior. Over the holidays, one of them had stopped over at my house to say goodbye before their flight. He had come up to my room, and we had a conversation about the usual things, like school, theater, sports, work, etc. We end up speaking longer than anticipated (as usual), before I know it, he begins describing a world that seems so ridiculous and impossible to me. A world where every type of person participates in drama club, and seats are packed every show. A world where student sections of sports events are full of cheering highschoolers, and everyone participates in spirit weeks. A world that seems to be filled with more acceptance and love than what I know now. This was his high school experience.

I cannot 100% give you the cause of this dilemma, but my best guess is lockdown. I truly believe that Covid has made (almost) every child dependent on social media, the internet, and technology. I feel as if the access we have to so many communities online is shrinking our communities in the real world. I used to be very outgoing before lockdown, but now I find myself struggling to speak to adults and peers in some situations. I think that the overexposure of social media gives teenagers a constant need to post everything, and to always prove that whatever they're doing is cooler than what you’re doing. No one supports each other anymore.

I also cannot say that every person who was in high school before covid had a great experience. I’m sure there was a fair share of students who still felt like outcasts, or alone, or isolated, but I feel as if, generally, everyone loved being alive a little more then. 

Maybe I see this time through a sort of nostalgic lens. Maybe my perspective as a child was skewed because I didn’t really understand the world as I do now, and it’s not so different from how it was then. Regardless, it really makes me sad to know how things have changed, and with my two years of high school left, I really hope that we, as a whole student body, can move towards a kinder, more unified future.

Artificial intelligence is something that many students, teachers, and people in general use on a weekly basis. The use of AI has exponentially increased recently, proving to have many negative effects on the world. Some of these effects are environmental and also career oriented. 

The Double-dealing and Deceitful Impact of AI on Art

Ever since generative AI was introduced to the public many have been taking advantage of it. On almost every social media platform you go on you are bound to stumble across some sort of AI generated post–many of these posts being images. At first glance many people might not recognize these images as AI generated. These duplicitous images fool the public, creating confusion and deceit. Generative AI also gathers artworks from the web and combines them into one conglomerate piece, which is stealing. Real artists' works are being stolen without their knowledge and morphed into something else.

 Art is something that artificial intelligence simply cannot duplicate. There is no emotion or meaning behind these amalgamations of real peoples work. Art is to be interpreted by people and to show a story. AI is incapable of replicating the intricate details to images, and it lacks the story that usually comes along with art. It is currently pretty easy to decipher AI generated images from actual art, but as technology advances many artists fear that this will no longer be the case. AI art is solving a problem that never even existed before. Artists are watching as their careers are being taken by lifeless machines, while also using their work.

The Creativity Crisis

AI is also being used to write. Many students are using an app called Chat GPT to write their assignments for them, these students are not learning by doing this and becoming increasingly reliant on AI to do their work. Creativity is dying and it is having detrimental impacts on students. The usage of artificial intelligence to write is limiting students from forming their own ideas. Personal expression is being faded out of writing as a whole. As the use of AI for writing increases, everyone's “writing” will start to look the same, because AI lacks personal opinions and lived experiences. Self expression through writing will indefinitely die out with the increasing use of artificial intelligence.

Critical thinking is something that may also fade over time with the use of AI. If someone is having a computer do all of their work for them, they are bound to think less about the work itself. If people don’t use your critical thinking skills they will lose them, just like any other skill they cease to practice. Writing helps students learn how to think, argue, persuade, and articulate their thoughts. If AI becomes the new standard, students will not learn these skills. AI writing will always lack depth. Writing may turn into a process similar to that of completing a paint by number. The result may look good, but it is identical to everyone else and lacks an origin story. I asked a few Hubbard students about their opinions on using AI to write assignments. Hubbard High school sophomore, Norah Baker replied with this statement, "It takes away from people’s creativity, and prevents them from improving upon their writing skills.” 

Artificial intelligence is having a destructive impact on our students, ruining creativity. The diversity in art and literature is gradually fading before our eyes because of AI. Overall, it is something that should be restricted from students.