Brooks Business

From Ingrid Medgyesy, Editor in Chief

As the school year starts up, so do several clubs, and the newspaper is no exception. This year the Brooks Business has expanded to all three grades. We have lots of students, but more are always welcome. If you would like to join please email us, or come to one of our meetings at 8:00 a.m. on Tuesdays in B307. We would be happy to have you!

Sincerely,

Your Brooks Business Staff

This newspaper consists of many topics relating to sports, world events, and events at school. Created with the vision of a small group of kids from grades six to eight who want to write and share current events happening in the world. Editor in Chief, Ingrid Medgyesy, through her love of writing has created this amazing newspaper that the staff is proud to share with you now.

This is the second edition of the paper, so we are aware that there might be technical difficulties. If you notice any problems please contact our Editor. Additionally, if you would like to join or contribute to the newspaper please email the Editor.

Email: imed645@students.op97.org

Ueslei Marcelino, 2019, Brazil, https://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/npr/753721113/photos-the-amazon-rainforest-ablaze-in-brazil accessed September 30, 2019.

I’m sure that you’ve all heard of the astonishing fires in the Amazon that started in early fall and went on for more than a month. The fires in the Amazon may be said to be random, but there is a political struggle at the root of this issue.

According to the article, Fires are raging in the Amazon forest. Here's how you can help slow all rainforest loss by Amy Chllag, CNN.com, “The Amazon, the largest rainforest in the world, roughly half the size of the United States, is key to the health of the entire planet. Estimates show that nearly 20% of the oxygen produced by the Earth's land comes from the Amazon rainforest. It also puts an enormous amount of water into the atmosphere at a time when cities are drying up.” As you can see the Amazon rainforest is an important part of this world, especially when climate change gets worse and worse. Oxygen, water, and other essential resources are being destroyed through this fire.

The Amazon fire is, to be more accurate, a record breaking amount of fires at once. Fires are common during the dry season (April to September); however, these fires are spreading rapidly and out of control. The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro plays the fire off as an effect of the dry season and nothing out of the ordinary. Bolsonaro is clearly in the wrong as the fire continues to burn more than ever. Bolsonaro even went as far as to reject 20 million dollars in aid from the G7 Summit World Leaders. Bolsonaro tweeted his rejection on Aug. 26. According to the article from Time.com, “Bolsonaro said that the G7 leaders were trying to save the Amazon “as if we were a colony or no man’s land.” Bolsonaro spoke as if he didn’t need any help and that since the Amazon is part of Brazil, he’ll take care of it. Bolsonaro’s chief of staff, Onyx Lorenzoni even said that the money should be used towards Europe as they don’t agree with Macron and during the G7 Summit, tensions rose because Macron brought up the Amazon fires on twitter.

The fires started because of many farmers illegally burning the forest to create more space for agriculture, particularly soybeans. Growing soybeans would greatly boost the economy for Brazil, especially during U.S. trade war with China. However, burning the forest is against forest preservation laws. Before the fires, Bolsonaro even showed signs of not caring for the environment as he cut funds.

The fire is destroying our environment and affecting many people across Brazil. And no it’s not by chance; it’s a culmination of political conflicts and greed for money that created this disaster known as the Amazon Forest Fires.

Chillag, Amy. “Fires Are Raging in the Amazon Forest. Here's How You Can Help Slow All Rainforest Loss.” CNN, Cable News Network, 27 Aug. 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/22/us/iyw-how-to-help-amazon-forest-fires-trnd/index.html.

Aguilera, Jasmine. “Bolsonaro Says He Won't Accept $20m Amazon Fire Aid Unless Macron Apologizes.” Time, Time, https://time.com/5662395/bolsonaro-reject-g7-pledge-amazon-fires/.

Washington, DC, Physicians for Social Responsibility, https://www.psr.org/blog/2019/04/29/the-time-to-act-on-climate-is-now/. Accessed September 30, 2019.

Kids and adults from around the world joined forces for the Walkout For Climate Change on September 20th. It's all happening because of a girl named Greta Thunberg. Greta traveled all the way from Sweden to New York on a zero-emissions sailboat for the protest. She has inspired people all over the world, including workers in the world’s 2nd richest company, Amazon.

Along with climate organizations made by Google and Microsoft, according to Vox.com Amazon Employees for Climate Justice are walking out on September 20th; although, many are taking paid vacations to do so. The main goal is simple--make Amazon become a leader in stopping the use of fossil fuels. Employees have the power to do so and to get things done, because these people can bring the biggest impact to the fight. Amazon Employees For Climate Justice has another tough but achievable goal. They want Amazon to stop working with gas and oil companies, and achieve zero carbon emissions by 2030.

Along with GBMS, many other schools around the globe joined in this walk out. Students from Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, MD chanted “Whose future? Our future!” as they made their way up to the US capitol in Washington, DC. Three days after the strikes, the United Nations will meet to discuss our world’s future and what humans will bring to it.

Ghaffary, Shirin. “Hundreds of Amazon Employees Plan to Walk out of Work in Protest of Amazon's Environmental Policies.” Vox, Vox, 9 Sept. 2019, https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/9/9/20857030/amazon-employees-walkout-environmental-policies. Accessed September 30, 2019

On July 7, 2019 the U.S. Women's Soccer Team won the World Cup defeating the Netherlands. They were led by Captain Megan Rapinoe and stars Alex Morgan and Alyssa Naeher. The Women's Soccer Team has won four World Cups, including the last two back-to-back. The first Women’s World Cup was held in 1991. The U.S. women’s team has played in them all. They have also won four gold and one silver medal in the Olympics over that time.

The current members of the U.S. team are suing The United States Soccer Federation (USSF) for gender discrimination, which means they are paying the men’s team more than the women’s on the basis of gender. The USSF gave the men’s team more money despite losing the world cup in the round of 16 in 2014, while the women won in 2015. The men got $5.3 million, while the women received only $1.8 million. From March, 2014 through the end of 2016, female players earned $15,000 for trying out and making the National Team, while male players earned $55,000. Additionally, the game bonuses for playing in a World Cup game has been $3,600 for the women and $5,000 for the men.

From 2016 to 2018 the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team pulled in about $50.8 million in gate revenue, while the U.S. Men’s Team brought in only $49.9 million. This led to the Women’s Team having to give the men’s team money. This is called subsidizing; for instance, the USSF anticipated a net loss of more than $400,000 however, due to the success of the Women’s Team the USSF in fact saw a profit of $17 million.

The U.S. Women’s Soccer Team has accomplished a lot over the years. They have been the most productive team in women’s soccer over the past 30 years. The Women, justly, want to be paid the same as the men that they have outperformed for years.

Procrastination. It is a thing that we all do. Since it always seems like there is something more fun you should be doing instead. Take this article for example. As a student, I kept making promises to myself that, “I’ll do this tomorrow. I have other work I need to do.” However, I could never bring myself to sit down and actually do the work...until now. Because of this, I had a lot of unnecessary stress over the article. When I completed the article (with a lot of errors the Editor helped remove) I felt a sensation of relief. It is almost certain that every student here at GBMS has been through a similar experience, which is completely normal. Everyone goes through this at one point or another in their lifetime. Although, if procrastinating has become your regular way of life, it becomes unhealthy. As a fellow victim of procrastination, you may be wondering Why does this happen? That is a good question, let us see how this happens.

Many people would think that procrastination is a problem of laziness or poor time management. However, the truth is that it is more of an emotional problem. Procrastination happens when you are feeling anxious, stressed, or overwhelmed about the task you have to complete or the other things you have to do. For example, let us turn to our imaginary friend, Johnny. Johnny has nearly reached the end of the trimester and his Language Arts teacher assigned him an essay that is worth half of his grade. The LA teacher gives the class three weeks to work on it. When the magical moment of the final bell came, Johnny rushed out of school and ran home. After finishing his other homework, he comes upon the ordeal of the essay. Johnny manages to type up two sentences but quits for the day since he feels that he has worked hard enough.

Two weeks pass and Johnny has still only typed up those two sentences. It is now Wednesday and Johnny has two more days to finish typing the rough draft, edit, and finalize his essay. At this point, Johnny is nearly having a panic attack. Realizing that he has put off his work all this time, he promises himself that he will type furiously when he gets home. After an extremely stressful day at school, he finally gets home to deal with the even more stressful final essay. However, he decides to put it off for a bit in order to deal with his stress. He decided to take a thirty minute brain break on his phone, but thirty minutes turned into an hour, then two hours, which eventually led to dinner time. Even though Johnny found a way to take care of his stress temporarily, he felt even more stressed that he barely had anything done for his essay. That night, he managed to type up the intro and first paragraphs before going to bed. Sleep did not come easy that night.

The next day, when Johnny got home, he furiously typed up his second, third, and conclusion paragraphs. In the evening, he got his father to edit it, and turned it in the following day. The final result was a C. In this situation, Johnny found himself procrastinating because of how he was stressed and overwhelmed by school and the work he had ahead of him. Even though he was able to cool off temporarily with his distractions, it came back to bite him towards the end of the three weeks. In order to avoid ending up like poor Johnny, there are a few things you can do:

1. Make a list of priorities. This method is a great way to recognize what is most important to accomplish within your given amount of time. Do not try to do this during a test or a class period, since this will become a form of procrastinating. However, it will definitely help so that you know what is most important and what to complete first based on how important it is and how much time you have.

2. Point out what you can accomplish today, and execute that. This is a way that can help give you space to think and stop you from being extremely overwhelmed by your workload. Instead of playing it by ear, and doing as much as possible, take it one day at a time and make a list of things you can do to get closer to your goal for that one day.

3. Put all distractions out of your sight. Try to keep any distractions out of your sight so that you can focus. If you have no distractions, such as your phone, there will not be any temptation, thus making it less likely for you to procrastinate.

4. Take a brain break every once in a while. It is hard to stay focused on a task for a long period of time. Keeping this in mind, try to take a study break every 45-60 minutes to decompress a little bit. Just like eating sugar, do not take too many, too frequently since those study breaks will morph into procrastination.

Now you know that procrastination is not always your fault, and you also know ways to fight against it. Although no one can be completely free from procrastination, since it is a part of human nature, you are well-equipped to being a more productive person. Decreasing procrastination can help you get better grades, and take a lot of stress off your daily life. From now on, always think twice whether or not you should be reaching for your notepad or your iPad.