“Alright, people. Let’s start at the beginning one last time.”

I’m Averi, a graduate student pursuing a master’s in journalism and mass communication from the University of Georgia. I also attended UGA during my time as an undergraduate and obtained a bachelor’s degree in journalism with minors in English and Spanish. I grew up about two hours south of Athens in a somewhat small town called Griffin.

As a graduate student, I focus largely on the visual aspects of journalism and mass media and the ways that audiences interact with and perceive this media. I’m also a graduate assistant for Columns, the university’s online newspaper. With Columns, I love writing profiles and meeting some really cool people around campus. It’s given me the chance to explore different parts of UGA that I normally wouldn’t think about. For example, I had the great pleasure of meeting one of the people that helped create a termite mound that’s currently sitting in the gorilla enclosure at Zoo Atlanta.

I’ve also worked with other publications such as The Red & Black, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and InfUSion Magazine as a writer, photographer and editor for various desks. I really love movies (gold star if you can guess my favorite movie based on this blog post), so one of my favorite things that I’ve done while at UGA is cover Backlight, an annual student-organized film festival.

Two Truths and a Lie:
– I once watched all twelve seasons of The Big Bang Theory in a month.
– Until the 8th grade, I was dead set on working for the CIA because I was obsessed with spy and detective novels.
– I was my region’s spelling bee champion for 5 years in a row during grade school.

I was always told that my diagnosis for ADHD should not affect my performance. I disagree.

I had always had trouble focusing on my schoolwork, listening to others and frequently fidgeting. I did not go to a psychiatrist until junior year, where he told me I was in the 90th percentile for ADHD. He did give me medications, but I was denied specific plans to aid me in my performance at school. 

Ever since COVID-19, mental health diagnoses have been increasingly persistent. According to The National Institutes of Health, “Rates of anxiety, depression, and substance use disorder have increased since the beginning of the pandemic.” 

Whether it is anxiety, depression, ADHD or other severe forms of disorders, many students have found it hard to perform at school, work and sports. Little accommodations and leeway are provided for students, even with a real diagnosis from a psychiatrist. 

Students absorb the pressure of school constantly, including all of the assignments, tests, papers and finals that are thrown their way. But students experiencing mental disorders, even at a lower level, explode with the persistent demand for excellence. According to the Suicide Prevention Resource Center, “Many college students report that mental health difficulties interfere with their studies.” 

With countless students feeling the same way, it is hard to ignore the necessity for change. Also, with limited amounts of plans to distribute for aid, many students who do experience mental troubles aren’t given the support and resources they need.

It’s also difficult to express mental disorders to teachers, because some do not take them seriously, as it wasn’t prominent in their lives as students. Many professors and teachers believe students are utilizing the opportunity to gain advantages over other students, when they aren’t the ones who actually need help. 

To accommodate for the situation at hand, teachers and students should be well educated on what mental illnesses and health actually entail. Many could be uneducated about the real impacts these illnesses have on others, and could further expand the amount of support these students with the illnesses require. Although teachers cannot give weeks worth of leeway to students, they can work with students to make sure they understand the information and feel more comfortable and confident. This would also strengthen teacher and student relationships, advocating for a good relationship with a teacher that the student can trust. 

Mental health is not a joke. While many may not believe in it, or make fun of someone who experiences it, it is extremely fundamental to understand the importance of mental health. Those who seem well may not always be, and increasing support for people in need might just save a life.

17 kids hurt, 17 people missing, 17 lives lost, 1 gun.

It was such a long time ago now that so many people have forgotten, but I never will, I can’t. I remember my mom telling me that there was a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglass (MSD) but it didn’t completely register in my head until I was sitting in a Pasquales with my friends, watching the tv screen as a list of names started popping up: Gina Montalto, Jaime Guttenberg, Nicholas Dworet… the list goes on and on. I didn’t know any of the people who died, but I knew people who did and looking at the agony on their faces, I knew that the world had to change.

Guns have become an increasing issue within the US and although the fight against them has gained much support, almost no one with power has done anything to make a change. So the question arises, why haven’t they? 

“Guns aren’t the problem,” said Pete Sessions, “sick people are.”

 I hear this and I think, “Blame a person, it’s fair they did it, but why on earth allow others who are just as sick in the head the same access?” The US is the world’s leading country in mass shootings being responsible for 73% of mass shootings across the world. Now within the country, guns have become the leading cause of death with the article Children and teens are more likely to die by guns than anything else stating that, “Firearms accounted for nearly 19% of childhood deaths (ages 1-18) in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wonder database. Nearly 3,600 children died in gun-related incidents that year (2020).” 

The MSD shooting, which would go on to be one of the top 10 deadliest mass shootings within the US, resulted in the death of 17 people and injuries in 17 others. After this tragedy, people began to start protests which grew into the March for Our Lives which was established in 2018.

I believe that it’s important to recognize the impact that gun violence has had on millions of kids living within the US. Guns don’t help us in any way so what is the point in keeping them around? People may argue that we have the right to bear arms, we shouldn’t have our guns taken away from us, okay well then don’t. Switzerland has one of the lowest gun-related crime rates within the world and they do own their own guns, the difference is they have laws which put the people’s safety first. “Not only are you supposed to be criminal record-free in order to get a gun, but you must also be deemed unlikely to cause harm to other Swiss,”states the article Why Gun Ownership in Switzerland is Not the Same in the US.

People are scared of what lives around their corners, but the government hasn’t shown any interest in our fears. Why do we have to suffer the consequences of a government unable to put its people first? Guns need to be outlawed or at least limited I mean, what use is the idea of an American dream if we’re too dead to live it out.

Social media impacts people in more ways than known. Apps like Snapchat, Tik Tok, Instagram and Facebook are main sources of social media that are used that have many positive and negative effects on the human brain. 

“Dopamine is the feel good chemical, so when we have exercise or eat chocolate or have really positive social interactions, our brain releases that dopamine which leaves us craving more,” said Dr. Melissa Tingle, a professor of mass communication at Piedmont University and an expert on social media. “When we do not have that dopamine and the reward center is being activated, we oftentimes experience things like anxiety and depression.”

Tingle was able to relate these positive interactions to social media to show how addictive it can be. Social media produces content that people like and find entertaining which makes them more addicted to it. 

“Whenever I check my friends’ locations and I see them posting pictures of themselves on Instagram or Snapchat without me, I always feel left out, and it could further lead to signals of depression,” said Mandie Michaels, a high school student from Milton, Georgia.

In similar ways, it also affects people’s body images in both positive and negative ways. Most of the time people think about the negative ways, like getting jealous or insecure of what people post on apps like Instagram. There is also a positive side though, in some ways it can be motivation to start a journey.

“Individuals who want to start their narrative or their journey trying to become this idealized image that they see on social media can have some helpful and some harmful effects,” Tingle said.

Everytime people unlock their phones, most go straight to social media. People see people with these “ideal” beauty standards. If a girl doesn’t fit into a certain size she’s too fat, but if she does there is something else wrong with her body. It’s a constant never-ending cycle. Social media can cause girls to develop negative thoughts about themselves.

According to a survey conducted at the 2023 Summer Media Academy at the University of Georgia, 75% of the high school students in attendance said that they use social media three or more hours a day. Respondents felt that social media has more negative aspects that it does positive. 

“It serves as a way to kind of shut down, but not in a good way — mindless doom scrolling and such,” one survey respondent wrote. “Social media can also end up making me feel pretty distressed because it’s so much unfiltered content and news that I see in like one or two scrolls.” 

“I try not to spend too much of my time on social media and try to limit my use because in the end I realize that it makes me feel bad about myself and avoiding social media can take that feeling away,” said Elsa Block from Larkspur, California.

In the last decade, true crime has reached a peak in popularity and people are loving it. Books like “The Girl in the Leaves” and “If you Tell” top best-seller lists. Shows like “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” and “Love and Death” populate streaming services. And podcasts like “Morbid” and “My Favorite Murder” top most-listened to charts. But is this recent obsession becoming dangerous for society?

But is society’s fascination with true crime healthy? The belief that a sliver into a serial killer’s psyche can mean life or death is where the appeal lies. Not only that, but humans are also just curious as to what makes people do what they do. There is nothing wrong with being interested in true crime, however if it is beginning to become all you think about, and a factor in your decision making, that is when it becomes a more serious issue. 

Excessive consumption of what may seem like a casual interest or hobby can lead to mental health instability. Listening to people getting kidnapped or killed in what seemed like a safe situation can cause excessive anxiety about the “What ifs?”. Dr. Steve Jacobs, associate professor of sociology at Piedmont University says that too much true crime can lead to overthinking.  

“When people are watching a lot of that kind of content, they might have an inflated sense of what can happen,” he says. 

The overconsumption of true crime can lead to the idea that real crime is worse than it actually is. Crime has been so publicized in the last few years despite the fact that violent crime has actually decreased dramatically in the United States over the past 20 years. The media sometimes gives people a false sense of reality by reporting on a lot of the crime that does happen. “These stories, when they do happen, are awful, but they’re really unlikely to happen to any given person,” Jacobs says. 

The solution for the general public is to limit how much true crime they’re watching in their everyday life and to separate it from reality. But what about the people who knew the victims of the true crime personally? 

As more and more true crime productions are being made, we have to think about the people who experienced these crimes first hand. Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story has been the most controversial true crime productions made in the past few years. Family members of some of the victims voiced their disapproval with the show as it forced them to relieve such a traumatic experience.

“I think there’s an interesting ethical question there,” says Jacobs, “What does it mean when you’re producing something but there are people who have a relationship to it. What do you do there?”

Trying to balance school, sports, work and anything else in a day is not an easy task. I find myself fighting with this every day of the school year. 

On top of this, the lack of sleep I get every night does not help this problem at all. According to the CDC, “teenagers aged 13-18 years should sleep 8-10 hours per 24 hours.” As a 16-year-old, I can confirm that I do not get 8-10 hours of sleep each night.

Let’s start off with sports. This past school year for example, I swam for my high school. Every morning before school we would have practice from 5:15 to 6:15, requiring me to get up at 4:45 a.m. If you do the math, to get the minimum amount of sleep that I should get, I would have to go to bed at 8:15 p.m. But how is this possible with school work and softball practice the night before?

On a regular day, with no swim practice, I wake up around 6:30 a.m. to start getting ready for school, which officially starts at 8:20 a.m. This bell schedule does not allow a tennager to be able to have a healthy sleep schedule. 

Every night, I think to myself, “how am I supposed to get to sleep before midnight with all of this school work I have along with softball practice?”

There are numerous times I cry during the school year because I am stressed out about school work and on top of that, upset because I am so physically and mentally drained. I do not get enough sleep to be able to do everything I do each day. 

Even If I got to sleep by midnight, that’s six hours of sleep, which according to the CDC,  is just not enough.

A study from Health Line states, “Research has found that 73 percent of high school students regularly do not get a healthy amount of sleep.” 

If they keep the bell schedule as is, the teachers need to rethink the workload. I strongly believe that most teachers think we have no life outside their class and forget we have five other classes to worry about as well. It’s as if they think we have all the time in the world to work on things for their one class. That’s in addition to the sports many students play and the jobs many students work. 

When I lived in Florida, high school and middle school started around 8 a.m. and elementary school started around 9 a.m.. How is this fair? The children who have no homework, no jobs, and usually no sports get to sleep, which they don’t even do in the first place. 

Thomas Dekker famously said, “Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.”

Sleep is so important to our developing minds and bodies, and school starting early does not allow for adequate sleep. To be able to have good mental health and be involved in much more than just school, us teens deserve sleep.

As kids we’re told to tell an adult if we see something bad happening. You see someone stealing? You see someone hurt? Tell. The older we get, the more we are expected to follow the honor code of ‘telling’, but the older we get, we also learn about the ramifications. The person you saw stealing out of a walmart? A woman with a baby at home, that’s been crying for hours non stop because they’re out of baby formula. The person you saw hurt? A man who’s homeless and can’t afford to be in a hospital due to not having healthcare. The older we get, the more often we see the consequences of being ‘honorable’ and while the idea of being a law abiding citizen is good, the society we live in isn’t and therefore the consequences aren’t either. 

So then we start to practice another code of ignorance. Minding your business, see but don’t tell, ignorance is bliss, etc. This in turn has left us without community. So while traveling through the fear of being the cause for someones fall to the fear of becoming apart of the laws that are slowly tearing apart our society, we come to a path that makes us lose our sense of community. Without community, we are slowly being drivin to division. Nobody depending on everyone and as long as you do nothing to or for me, i’ll do nothing to or for you. And according to the problem at hand, this should be a good solution. Right?

No. 

The true meaning of community is about protection. Whether your community lies in ethnicity, where you live, the subculture you participate in, or your family, you rely and trust for them to protect you. Throughout political and societal unrest for over 100 years, a communities purpose has upheld the value of protection. 

In the 1970s, many subcultures had to uphold the idea of community due to societal restrictions. One of the more iconic examples of this, is the punk subculture. A lot of this cultures ideaology was about breaking rules and the previously mentioned societal restrictions. From the fashion, the music, and the artwork, the purpose of being “punk” was specifically to offend public figures of authority (mostly the government) and the general public. The most memorable thing about punks was that due to so many of the UK’s youth participating in such offensive, and at times illegal acts, it was very difficult to stop or put all offenders into jail. This solidified it as a community, as most punks followed the idea of “see but dont tell” and “what happens here, stays here”. 

Black communities used to share the same belief as well. From the slave days till around the 80s, black unity was extremely essential and even though it still is now, it’s very rare to find. Black women tend to have hard times finding unity within black men who tend to be more concerned with belittling black women and at times aligning their beliefs with racist idealogies. The most recent and popular example of this is the case of Megan Thee Stallion and Tory Lanez. Megan Pete was shot on July 12, 2020 by Tory Lanez during an altercation after Kylie Jenners’ party. During the 3 year period that it has taken for the trial to begin and end, many people turned on Megan in support for Tory, although there was overwhelming proof that he did in fact fire a gun on her. To truly put it into view as to how grotesque it was, let me paint it for you. A black woman, whos entire life is publicized, didn’t want people to know that she was dating another famous singer whos entire life is also publicized and in turn was shot. So, in turn she was taken through a three year process of doubt, guilt, and disbelief by the same community that was meant to protect her.

All because they wanted to defend a man who couldn’t take no for an answer. 

Our lack of community isn’t just dividing us as people, but it’s messing with our sense of morality. While we may turn to other people outside our subcultures and ehtniticites, there are experiences that can only be shared and kept sacred by one another. While it may seem like it, this isn’t a call for a hive mind but rather a call for safety. There is so much unrest, whether politically or socially, in our current time and while a ‘community’ may not stop it, it would help to have people, who share your experiences and life stories, to turn to. 

“Baton twirling is a sport involving the manipulation of a metal rod with the hands and body to co-coordinated routine.” as so says the google definition but in my eyes it’s WAY more than that. Baton twirling is a skill that combines dancing and gymnastics into one with a little twist. The actual baton itself gives the routine more flavor but it’s about who’s holding the baton to show what all it can do.

Learning how to twirl isn’t easy and takes lots of training just like any other sport. It takes time, work, practice, and determination to actually want to learn the sport. Baton twirling is mentally challenging just as it is physically challenging, you’re adjusting to moving your body a certain way adapting to stretching and working out to be able to even participate in the sport. It’s already hard even forcing yourself to throw or baton or try a new trick under it, especially when you know what can happen when you miss. The risk can even get more challenging once you decide to throw in another baton or two.

I experienced some of these dangers firsthand. When I first started baton twirling, I tried to perform a very hard trick in our routine — even though I probably wasn’t ready to do it —  and I twisted my knee. I also have several scratches, bruises and blisters from my years of baton twirling. It’s not an easy sport.

Just like any other sport national baton twirlers do get paid. Once you’ve mastered the skill and get into the big league there are two organization’s that allow all around majorettes to get paid for their talents. Two of the largest U.S associations today are the United States Twirling Association (USTA) and the National Baton Twirling Association (NBTA). They both hold national competitions every year and officiate competitions at local state and regional levels. The salaries of Baton Twirlers in the U.S range from $16,640 to $74,880, with a median salary of $35,360.

Beyond the friendships you’ll forge with other twirlers and members of the band, you may get to travel to other parts of the country, performing for thousands of spectators in support of your school or organization. Some schools also provide financial support and scholarships for collegiate twirlers.

Twirling is a small world round sport that many people don’t know about. Still, a solid group of people, mostly in small U.S towns kept baton twirling alive. Now twirling is experiencing somewhat of a renaissance, appealing to aspiring athletes with its melding of gymnastics and dance. Baton twirlers now compete in national and world competitions instead of marching in parades.