Category Archives: Editorials/Student Voice

Editor’s Note: The Plaid Line publishes editorials that contain opinions that are those of the student authors. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the the Plaid Line, HPSH, or its staff.

Editorials/Student Voice, School Life

Personal Project stress

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By: Merob Geleto

The Personal Project is a semester-long project completed by 10th graders for IB schools like Highland Park. Students have to choose a topic, create a product, and submit a paper about the process.

The Personal Project is stressful for students due to it usually overlapping with other academic pressures, being more of a self-directed project, and being long-term. The project spans over several months meaning students have to manage their time wisely so they can submit the project on time. Some students have a lot on their plate with school work or extracurricular activities so students usually push off doing their project which leads to extreme procrastination.

Managing your time and doing the project is a challenge but picking a topic is usually what is most stressful and hardest for students. From what I’ve seen from my peers, many students don’t know their topic until December or even January. There are a lot of topics to pick from, too many in fact, which makes it harder for students to choose. A common issue when picking a topic is picking one and it being too broad and actually being three projects. This usually leads to a burnout.

Usually students find a way to deal with the stress and submit their Personal Project finished. Many students, including me, broke down the project into smaller pieces. Some made a schedule to make sure they were on track.

I interviewed a sophomore who had just done their Personal Project and asked how stressful the Personal Project was and how he dealt with it. The interviewee replied with “It was extremely stressful because I procrastinated a lot”. He then said that when the stress was too overwhelming, he went to his PP advisor. His advisor gave him a layout and some advice which helped him a lot. The interviewee ended up finishing his project on time.

No matter what method, most students doing the Personal Project managed themselves well enough to prevent burnout and to pass.

Editorials/Student Voice

Why do some people prefer solitude?

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By: Ro’Mel Bryant-Oliveraz

Photo by Buwaneka Boralessa on Pexels.com

In the modern world with constant stimulation, forced routines, and social gatherings, being alone for some people lets them feel free. Maybe by having a routine they can control having the freedom to not perform, or creative freedom to do things their own way. Most people prefer being alone often but some people revolve their day around being alone. Some people may go to sleep early because they are lonely, while others stay up late because they love being alone.

People that prefer solitude often prefer to do casual things alone than to do what people think is fun in social settings. They might prefer to go exercise at home than to go to a party, not because they don’t like people but simply because going to a party is less fun than being alone.

One big reason people prefer being alone is because they have the freedom to focus deeply without distractions, whether on themselves, work, or the future, thinking often can be better alone. Many innovative jobs have come from people with preferences like this. Think scientists, coders, artists. You can dig deep into the technicals when you’re alone and have the chance and freedom to really focus. From people at school buried in homework to someone with a career that demands focus, solitude is often a tool you can’t afford to skip out on.

Also, while in solitude, you can vent much more. Most people like to vent about things, and people do this in different ways. Many ways of venting can only really be done when alone. Things like writing in a diary, talking out loud, exercising, or having a hobby, are usually about having a time when you feel free and can be yourself, often when alone.

It’s about focus and balance, not dislike of people. I personally think about my day as getting through it alone, and social settings can just cloud my routine. I usually set up alone times, like studying time, exercising time, and time with my hobbies in order to feel complete and stay on routine. This only is one example of why people may prefer solitude.

In the end, solitude is about balance, physical freedom, creative freedom, and routine. People may need their alone time to exercise, make something new, build skills, and manage time, ensuring their entire routine is structured and on schedule. If you notice someone probably prefers solitude it could be because of one of these reasons or similar, it’s not a bad thing.

Editorials/Student Voice, School Life

Highland’s new cafeteria

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By: Weston Halgunseth

A new era for dining

For years Highland’s cafeteria was known for its shift between the middle school’s dark, gloomy side and the overly bright high school side, however after the remodeling of the cafeteria last year, the space has been completely transformed. The revamp hasn’t changed the menu much but it did change the vibe of the lunch room for the better.

A modern aesthetic

The first thing students notice when walking in is that the room simply looks better. Gone are the crazy shifts in lighting between sides. The big wall blocking each side making parts get crowded is also gone. In is new modern furniture that reminds you of what colleges have. The new lunch lines and the overall vibe of it is better. This aesthetic shift makes the lunch room become a highlight of many student days.

Comfort & space

The renovation also has improved the comfort of the lunch room. By introducing more space, the new modern seats, and the link that connects the two floors. The school has created an environment where students can take a break and have it feel like a break. The new layout provides more space to move around, effectively eliminating the crowded feeling during lunch.

This extra room allows for people to become more social and overall become more of a relaxed area.

New options

Perhaps the most noticeable change was the new food lines that were made, one of them having salads and yogurt and the other having stuff you can buy like sandwiches, drinks, etc. For me, I see a lot of people going to these lines instead of the normal 2 options they usually have.

A schoolroom is the heart of student life, and this revamp of the lunchroom has given that heart a much needed boost. By creating a space that is spacious and comfortable, Highland has provided us with a good revamped lunchroom.

Editorials/Student Voice, Football

Review of the 2026 Super Bowl

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By: Karl Salkowski

(Image Credit Unsplash)

This year, I was one of nearly 125 million people who tuned in to watch the Super Bowl. Super Bowl LX featured the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks, two standout teams throughout the regular season. Ultimately, the Seattle Seahawks won the game 29-13, earning their second Super Bowl title. The game was played at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California. As predicted, the Seattle Seahawks dominated for most of the game, eventually leading 12 to 0 by the beginning of the 4th quarter.

Super Bowl ads can cost anywhere from 8-10 million dollars for just a thirty second commercial. This is one of the biggest opportunities for large corporations to gain virality and visibility. Over the last few years, and especially this year, artificial intelligence has become one of the most common topics in these ads, with some commercials having been created completely with AI tools. These commercials tend to be some of the laziest and least creative, making the whole “watching experience” feel more corporate.

In my opinion, the halftime show was one of the highlights. Bad Bunny delivered an incredibly creative and powerful performance. In addition to singing some of his biggest hits, he sent a message of equality, identity, and belonging. This also marked the first halftime show to be performed almost exclusively in Spanish. It included many interesting set pieces, including over 400 people dressed in sugarcane costumes. He ended his performance by listing off all the countries that make up the Americas, ending off with the statement “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”

Overall, I think this was one of the weaker Super Bowls, as the game felt slow and boring up until the fourth quarter. The Seahawks played incredible defense, with major players such as Kenneth Walker III, and kicker Jason Myers helping to lead to a decisive victory. The definitive highlight of the game for me was definitely the halftime performance. Although I am not really a fan of Bad Bunny, I have been following his music for a couple of years, and it is really cool to see him get the recognition he deserves. Ultimately, I think I would rate this Super Bowl a 7 out of 10.

Editorials/Student Voice, Getting To Know/History, Sports

History of rigging sports

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By: Karl Salkowski

(Image Credit Unsplash)

On January 15th, 2026, 10 to 15 Division 1 basketball players were charged with conspiring to rig games. Many of the best college players would throw games while an outside group bet hundreds of thousands of dollars against them. Using this strategy, these players were able to make millions of dollars over the course of the season.

The United States government has attempted to make fixing games harder through legislation, including the 2019 Macolin Convention against manipulation and the 2020 Rodchenkov Act against doping in sports. Sports betting is a lucrative market, as gambling revenue was more than 11 billion dollars last year, up over 13%.

Fixing professional sports is nothing new; major scandals have been happening for centuries. One of the first notable examples was the 1919 Black Sox scandal. 8 Major League Baseball players conspired together to lose the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds in order to receive a payout from a gambling syndicate. This destroyed professional baseball’s integrity and changed the way the sport was run professionally. All 8 players involved were banned from the sport for life, and this event led to many of the stricter rules in baseball.More recently in professional tennis, close to 200 players were proved to have participated in match fixing. In 2023, many lower level professional players would purposely manipulate scores and retire from the game early for betting purposes. Many of these players received fines or lifetime bans from the sport following the investigation.

As sports betting is becoming more and more accessible, there becomes more of an incentive for players to rig games. For the most part, players with lower salaries are more susceptible, as the money is more impactful. This has caused fixing college games to become all too common in the last few years. Even with the strict punishments and the laws in place to prevent it, fixing sports games will only happen more and more often. Not only does rigging games harm the integrity of these sports, but also the betting market.

Editorials/Student Voice

ICE Effects in Minnesota

By: Siri David

ICE has been showing up in the Twin Cities more than ever, and there are a lot of things to know and keep in mind during these hard times.

Trump has sent at least 2000 ICE agents to Minnesota to detain undocumented immigrants, but that is not what they have been doing. These agents have been racially profiling people all over Minnesota. They target specific neighborhoods, restaurants, and schools just based off of the diversity in each area.

There have been two fatal shootings in the month of January. The first shooting was of a 37-year-old white woman named Renee Good. Renee was shot on January 7th as she was trying to drive away from officers and help protect her neighbors. An officer shot her through her window while she was driving and she accelerated on the gas and crashed and died almost immediately after being shot. The most recent shooting was of Alex Pretti. He was a 37-year-old white man who was shot by an ICE agent while he was protecting his neighbors from ICE.

These horrific killings have led to Minnesotans taking a stand. The largest strike in the last 70 years happened in Minnesota last Friday. Over 10,000 Minnesotans marched in downtown Minneapolis in -20 degree weather. Schools, restaurants, and many small businesses were closed.

There are so many steps you can take to help during these hard times- whether it’s protesting, collecting food and money, or just helping protect your neighborhood. A lot of organizations and non profits in the Twin Cities are finding ways to help families who are struggling because they can’t leave their houses, so donating money, food, or household needs can be really helpful. At Highland, some of the club leaders came together and made a plan to help raise money and get necessities out to students and their families that go to Highland. There are so many ways to help during these times and anything is better than staying quiet.

During these difficult times it can be hard to find the good, but take the time to look around you and see the strong community that has come together to fight back. Minnesota is a strong example of what resisting and fighting back looks like. It is so inspiring to see and don’tbe afraid to strive to make a difference. Everyone’s voice matters and can make a change.

Editorials/Student Voice, School Life

Pros and cons of standardized testing

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By: Siri David

Photo by Andy Barbour on Pexels.com

Standardized testing is a type of testing that happens throughout all school programs. It is a test that is set up where every student answers questions from the same pool. The goal is to see where students are at in their learning process and it helps create a benchmark to compare students and their average scores. This also helps show how successful teachers are with their lesson plans and learning process.

Standardized testing can have a lot of benefits. It helps lower the chances with bias because it has a more consistent scoring process. In the tests, if the questions are multiple choice or true or false this can lead to more accurate results for the education system.

Another pro to the testing process is that the results can help show teachers what certain areas the students need more time on. Along with that, it can help show if certain teachers need more professional development. Overall, standardized testing is one of the main things that helps maintain the education system.

Standardized testing does have downsides. The lead up to testing oftentimes causes a lot more stress for students than the average test. A very important con is that all students learn and process things in a different way, so everyone taking the same test can affect students who might struggle more to understand the material because of the layout.

Another downside is that most tests are around the core subjects, so more art and physical based classes don’t get as much attention which can then make it harder for those subjects to grow and change.

Normally large standardized tests happen once a year, like the MCA’s for example. Since these happen once a year if a student has a bad test taking day it can throw off their score for the whole year.

Overall, there are a lot of pros and cons for standardized testing. In the larger perspective there’s a lot of pros but closer up there are also a lot of flaws within the process. The pros tend to affect the education system well, the cons affect each student.

Editorials/Student Voice, Getting To Know/History

The Trabi

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By: Charlotte Aver

Trabant at 12. Internationales Maritimes Fahrzeugtreffen, 18 August 2018, by Matti Blume via Wikimedia Commons

The Trabi is a car from the Soviet Union. They were produced from 1957 to 1991 and they were made quickly and were not solid at all.

The Soviet Union made it so that it was the only car that a person could own. The Trabi’s were free to the public if you got on the waitlist. However, it could take up to fifteen years to actually get your car after being put on the waitlist, even though it was free it still had a cost. The Trabi’s were made quickly and by hand and therefore were not sound. They were thin and fragile: the windows were hard to roll up or down, the bottoms of the cars were thin enough to break, the seats had no cushion to them and they broke down all the time. Though it was free it was bad quality and would take years to get to you.

An oversight that was made while the Trabi’s were being made was that there were no spare parts, so when they broke down there was nothing to fix them with, making the fifteen years you waited for the car useless.

The people that drove Trabi’s were everyday people where as the leaders all drove Mercedes. This goes to show that communism, which was the Soviet Union’s goal, is impossible to achieve with humans because humans are incredibly susceptible to corruption and selfish desire.

During the 1980’s there was a huge push to tear down the Berlin Wall, which happened in October of 1989. During this time there were many slogans and sayings that were used about freeing East Berlin, one of them was “free the Trabi” because it was a car that only existed on the east side of the Berlin Wall. After the Berlin Wall fell there was a section left up and artists from around the world were invited to come and paint murals on the wall; this section of wall is now known as the East Side Gallery. One artist painted the Trabi breaking through the wall and by painting this immortalized the saying “free the Trabi”.

The Trabi is a true symbol of the people of the Soviet Union and East Germany, how they lived and what little they were given by their government.

Editorials/Student Voice, PRIZM, Scottie News

A break for Winter Break

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This is just a reminder that though we try to provide new content every weekday during the school year, Winter Break is the one time where the student creators of the Plaid Line, PRIZM, and Scottie News also take a break (with the exception of the Monday “Sports schedule”).

We look forward to bringing you new exciting content on our return in 2026!

Editorials/Student Voice, Music/Concerts

How is Spotify Wrapped assembled?

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By: Karl Salkowski

(Generated with Microsoft Copilot)

On the morning of December 3rd, hundreds of millions of people opened their Spotify Wrapped, resulting in millions of shares and posts. But what is a Spotify Wrapped? And why are so many people embarrassed about it?

Every year since 2015 Spotify has released a personally curated selection of each user’s listening habits. The specific day it releases is always a mystery, but Spotify Wrapped day always lands sometime between the last week of November and the first week of December.

Since the beginning, Spotify has shown you your top artists and songs, but each year they add more and more new features and interesting statistics. The highlight of Wrapped 2024 was an AI personalized podcast discussing your listening habits, while in 2025 Spotify gave out estimated listening ages and had you guess who was your top artist of the year. Needless to say, each year Spotify adds new and inventive features to their yearly marketing campaign in order to make it more trendy and viral.

But the question still remains: Why are so many people embarrassed of what they listen to? It turns out that this is actually much more complicated than it seems. Spotify stops collecting data for Spotify Wrapped sometime between mid-October and early November. This means that everything you listened to in the last month to 6 weeks prior is not taken into account. Many people feel that their Wrapped feels weighted towards the beginning of the year, and this explains why. It’s natural that people’s music tastes evolve over time, which explains how these otherwise mundane statistics can actually be very interesting and surprising.

Over the years, as Spotify Wrapped becomes more and more viral, imitations become more and more common. End-of-the-year recaps have become common in an abundance of apps including Apple Music, Amazon, YouTube, and Duolingo.

Spotify Wrapped is a genius marketing campaign only becoming more popular and mainstream each year. End-of-year recaps across websites and apps will only become more and more common, but these recaps aren’t just silly and fun; they also raise important questions about personal data and how it’s stored and shared online.