Youth

For the past four years, West Ottawa High School student Lacey Vande Bunte has given up her Sunday afternoons to rebuild computers. MORE »

Burhaan Hassan was a fairly typical kid, the kind who asked his mother for $20 when he wanted to go see a movie on weekends. But on Election Day, while much of the world — including his single mother — was consumed by the historic election, he and a handful of Somali-American teenagers quietly boarded a plane to Kenya, en route to the front lines of a Jihad in Somalia. MORE »

Posting a photo of yourself holding a giant bag of marijuana on Facebook and writing “Me and my friend Mary Jane” under it is asking for trouble.

In a speech to about 65 students at the University of St. Thomas in November, C.L. Lindsay, an attorney who runs a non-profit dealing with legal problems that often occur on campuses, warned students to think before they post. MORE »

College Application? Check. ACT score? Check. College essay? Check. Recommendations? Check. Facebook page? Check? MORE »

Sitting in one of the few chairs set up against the wall at DeLaSalle’s homecoming dance, I watch as the large crowd of excited students shrinks into one huddle as Soulja Boy’s Lyrics blast through the loud speakers: “Dis girl gotta donk. She finna shake it all night. Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow!” MORE »

Hypnotized by the idea of getting presents from a jolly old man who ate the red and green sugar cookies I decorated for him, the true Catholic spirit of the Advent and Christmas was lost on me as a child.

My parents tried their best to involve me in the more traditional activities: lighting the candles on our Advent wreath, counting down the days until Christ’s birth with an Advent calendar, setting up the nativity scene at our Church. This proved futile. As a young child I could not grasp the significance of the Christmas season any better than I could grasp the meaning of what it meant to be a Catholic. MORE »

A documentary offering firsthand perspectives on what it is like to be politically and/or culturally conservative a Carleton College, where the majority of students, faculty and staff identify themselves as liberal. MORE »

“I had to quit the team.”
“We moved from a house with six bedrooms, three bathrooms, a big kitchen, a nice large living room, and a great front, back and side yard to a two-room, one-bathroom apartment with a garage.”
“But at the back of my mind, the thought of my future keeps prodding my brain as an overwhelming feeling of dread begins to consume me.”

There were so many compelling examples of how teens are being affected during this economic downturn that we wanted to create a list of excerpts from their essays to share with you. MORE »