Opinion

I love the em dash — a lot. I’ve used it nearly all of my college essays, multiple times. I love to use them in stories I write for The Falcon — in fact, I encourage all respected English writers to use it as well. But I wrote my essays in Microsoft Word, checking the […]

I open my laptop to see that someone has sent me a message on Messenger. The Messenger desktop app doesn’t distinguish between urgent communications and mundane group chat updates in its notification symbol at the bottom of my screen, so I am forced to look at it.  The message is a picture of a pork […]

Our school is diverse by national standards: We have a large Asian American population of 58.7%, covering a vast number of cultures and identities. Our diversity tends to indicate that we have an accepting community of varying backgrounds. So, when superintendent Bill Sanderson recently revealed to families that a Black doll was hanged by a […]

Early in the morning of Oct. 27, an anonymous caller alerted Santa Cruz High School officials that an active shooter was on campus. School officials immediately called 911, initiating a massive law enforcement response of hundreds of officers.  At the same time, the school went into lockdown. Law enforcement rushed onto school grounds, searching the […]

Group quizzes, group tests, group essays, group projects, group labs and group performances — the list of collaborative assignments goes on and on. Almost every student has shared the experience of having to participate in group work where work becomes unevenly distributed, with some students essentially lifting heavy weights while others barely offer to pick […]

In recent years, standardized testing has played an increasingly smaller role in college admissions decisions.  Many schools first went widely test-optional in 2021 to accommodate for the inconvenience of testing during the pandemic, and many colleges have kept tests optional for the coming years. For the 2022-23 admissions cycle, only two out of the nation’s […]

As the college admissions process becomes increasingly competitive, students have turned to extravagant activities to distinguish themselves as stellar students, going above and beyond what an average high school student would do.   Among the ways perceived of gaining an advantage is to do research of various kinds in labs and other academic environments. And while […]

Rishi Sunak wasn’t really supposed to become the U.K.’s next prime minister.  After Boris Johnson messily resigned from the position on July 7 over a growing list of ethics scandals, former Foreign Secretary Liz Truss was next in line from the Conservative Party to take charge of the land across the pond.  Funnily, Truss defeated […]

Student debt. A two-word phrase that inevitably pops up whenever college is mentioned, especially as former students often spend decades paying it off. This issue has seen even more limelight lately with Biden’s recently introduced student loan forgiveness plan, an ambitious piece of legislation that aims to fix this problem.  The plan offers loan forgiveness […]

Disclaimer: This is attributed to our personal preferences, reader discretion is advised. Think of the iconic images from Friday nights in the fall — a time when students across the country gather by the hundreds or thousands on stadium bleachers to support and cheer on their football team. School spirit is supposed to be vibrant, […]