 Amanda Dybal
Staff Writer As a high schooler, your schedule may be rigorous. With final exams, winter break, sports, and other extracurricular activities, time is hard to manage. For many students, it’s crunch time. Senior Anna Credle is overbooked with club and high school gymnastics, Key Club, National Honor Society, and to top it all off, college applications. Already studying for her calculus exam, she has no extra free time these days. “I have to use a lot of time management in order to fit school and athletics into my schedule,” she says. According to Nationwide Children’s Hospital, high school students should get between nine to nine and a half hours of sleep. The average amount of sleep teenagers get are between seven to seven and a half hours of sleep. Sophomore Michael Davis explains that all he wants to do over winter break is catch up on his sleep. Academics make it hard for teenagers to get enough sleep. A study founded by the National Sleep Foundation states that during a test they had performed, only 15% of teens get the amount of sleep they need. With school starting at 7:25 in the morning, most students have to wake up around six in the morning, and getting the necessary nine hours of sleep would mean going to bed at nine at night. This is hard to do with tons of homework and extracurricular activities. McKenzie Feldman Staff Writer  As our good friend Buddy the Elf once said, “The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear.” Whethere you prefer more classic carols or modern songs, the sounds of the season tend to always brighten one's mood. One of the biggest ways to get into the Christmas spirit is by singing along to your favorite Christmas songs. However, there are so many to choose from. Apex Legacy was curious as to which are the most popular among Apex High School. Here are the results of Apex High School’s most loved Christmas music.
 Bryce Cullen
Staff Writer Last month Stephen Hawking made a bold statement, “We’ve got about 1,000 years to find a new place to live.” Although this was shocking, his points add up. Hawking explained in his speech given at the Oxford University Union that our best chance of survival is to leave the only home we have ever known. With our further development in artificial intelligence, our ongoing climate change, and increase in nuclear weapons, we are looking to put an end to our only home. However, this does not mean we are giving up just yet. In the mix of all of this, NASA is hard at work searching for “goldilocks” Exoplanets that could be suitable for our survival. Hawking also stated in his speech that “by that time we should have spread out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race.” With that there is a little bit of good light to shine on the situation. Towards the end of Hawking’s speech at Oxford, he said, “Remember to look up at the starts and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, wonder about what makes the universe exist…Be curious. However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matter that you don’t give up.” With that said, who knows, maybe Stephen is wrong, and we stay on our home planet. Otherwise we will become the first known species to take its civilization to an interplanetary level.  Amelia Borger
Staff Writer Hacksaw Ridge. Where do I start with this movie? I went in thinking I would see a World War Two movie similar to the likes of Saving Private Ryan, but I was in for something more brutal and true. Hacksaw Ridge tells the story of Private Desmond T. Doss, an American army medic who refused to bear arms in combat. Doss saved seventy-five men during the Battle of Okinawa after the call came to retreat off top of the hundred foot ridge, and he stayed behind enemy lines avoiding Japanese soldiers and shelling from American and Japanese ships. He was the first Conscientious Objector to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Andrew Garfield does a remarkable job of portraying the skinny marine, bringing the true grit needed for a role like this one. He is alongside Teresa Palmer, playing Doss’s beautiful wife, Dorothy, who brings an angelic and softer sense of hope to the film. Their love story brings a sense of innocence to the film and another sense of what the reality was with couples being separated during the war. Vince Vaughn delivers a promising performance with the role of Sergeant Howell, a role that is definitely out of his comfort zone, but he provides brute humor and pathos to bring laughs and a pause for thought with a fantastically written script.  Ashton Baysden
A&E Editor If you are human, you have undoubtedly thought at some point in your life, “Why can’t we just take our groceries from the shelves and leave? Why do we have to go through checkout lines even if we’re just buying a loaf of bread?” Checkout lines are an established enemy of the general public; they are long and stressful, and, frankly, they have the ability to make anyone tempted to put all of their groceries back and come back later. Life would be so much easier if we could just skip those pesky lines; however, thanks to Amazon’s latest project, we might be able to do just that next year. Amazon just announced the development of its new store, Amazon Go. If consumers download the Amazon Go app and scan it when they enter the store, they can take any product they would like off the shelves and walk out with it. The company’s advanced technology will detect and record when products are taken off of or put back onto the shelves; each item is then added to the consumer’s digital shopping cart. When the consumer leaves the store, their Amazon.com account is charged. No lines, no rude cashiers, no credit card mishaps. Jessica Dorcelien News Editor Dec. 7, 1941 is a “date which will live in infamy” as Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and six additional military bases on the Hawaiian island of Oahu launched the United States into the second world war. The surprise strike resulted in the destroying of more than 150 planes, the damage of fifteen ships, and the loss of over 2,300 lives. As a swift reaction to the unforeseen attack, Hawaii was put under martial law, causing schools to close, mail to be censored, and food and fuel to be rationed. Most importantly, during this period of rising “Anti-Japanese” paranoia, 127,000 persons of Japanese ancestry were forced into detentions centers and internment camps as what we, as Americans, now reflect on as being one of the most overt violations of civil liberties in American history.   Amanda Dybal
Staff Writer Randy Moncelle, history teacher at Apex High, recently retired from announcing football and basketball games. “Moncelle influenced many kids with his inspirational stories during his classes,” sophomore Madeline Rudd says. “He was a great teacher.” Moncelle has been announcing since 2004, and after twelve years, he has decided that “Apex High needs a ‘new voice.’”  Andrea Tyson
Staff Writer Fifty-four years ago Marilyn Monroe stood in Madison Square Garden in New York City preparing to sing in front of fifteen-thousand people. In the sea of the crowd, there were photographers, business men and women, and paparazzi, but among them was the President of the United States at the time, John F. Kennedy. The event was held ten days before Kennedy’s forty-fifth birthday, but fifty-four years later everyone is still mesmerized by one thing from that night-- Marilyn’s infamous dress. After World War II a new trend in films was coming about-- nudity and censorship. Some bombshells of the time, including Deborah Kurr, Rida Hayworth, and Marilyn Monroe, paved the way for hierarchical diffusion of this new popular culture trend to spread. This cultural boom was an event that everyone knew was going to come, but many, many people were not ready for it to happen. Despite all of this, designers continued to create what was then considered scandalous clothing for these bombshells to wear and the public to see. One of these designers was Jean Louis, a designer born in 1907 in France, who moved to Hollywood to work in the film industry. Let me tell you-- he was successful. Louis’s clothes were considered risque and outrageous at the time he made them, but they are now considered charming. He worked for more than forty years in Hollywood with some of the biggest celebrities of the time including Deborah Kurr, Rida Hayworth, Katherine Hepburn and, you guessed it, Marilyn Monroe. Jessica Dorcelien News Editor On Nov. 30, eighty-two Apex High School students represented the Apex DECA Chapter at the Raleigh Convention Center for the annual DECA District Competition. Competitors took part in career cluster exams and demonstrated their business savvy through role-play scenarios. Of the eighty-two, eighteen competitors placed as top ten finalists with either exceptional exam or role-play scores. The Apex DECA Chapter, and Apex High School overall, were well acknowledged during the awards session as senior Wrigley Ferguson and sophomore Melissa Patrocinio each took home a 1st place category finalist trophy, Erin O’Hara collected a 4th place trophy, and Emily Sartin received a 5th place trophy. All Apex DECA competitors are qualified to advance to the DECA State Competition that will take place March 9 through 11 in Greensboro, NC at the Koury Convention Center. Click the read more tab below to see the rest of Apex's awards.  Amelia Borger
Staff Writer Need some fun and easy holiday recipes? Look no further than here! Here are a handful of recipes that are great for the whole family to make. Like the ideas? Let us know what you thought of them! Funfetti Shortbread Bites (cookingclassy.com) These little bites are perfect for gifting to friends or family, or having a few to eat for yourself. INGREDIENTS
INSTRUCTIONS
*For a holiday flair, add just white, red, and green sprinkles |
