Lana Wood Johnson - Speak for Yourself

MRS. JAMES OF LOVELACE ACADEMY

HAS INVITED YOU TO

LOVELACE ACADEMYS SCHOLASTIC EXPOSITION TEAMS GROUPHUB.

The theme for this year is: The Second Industrial Revolution (18701914).

Lovelace Academys captain is: Skylar Collins.

Each Scholastic Exposition is made up of two parts: the Quizposition and the Booth Expo. Together they are meant to display your understanding of this years theme.

Quizposition is the exciting speed knowledge event ScholEx is known for. Teams must have enough scholars in two challenging rounds:

Achiever (three or four students with a GPA above 3.0)

Pathfinder (three or four students with a GPA below 3.0)

In each round, participating scholars will accumulate points for their team. All questions are based on information provided in the attached packet covering the areas of art, music, history, science, and literature. Get those buzzer thumbs limber!

The Booth Expo brings Achiever and Pathfinder scholars together to demonstrate an applied understanding of the knowledge they gained in studying for the Quizposition. At the competitions, six to eight participants will set up and present an interactive booth that uses multimedia to display a variety of aspects of the years theme. Every member of the team should be able to share their knowledge by presenting different elements of the booth through conversations with the Expo judges.

We will be meeting Thursdays after school in room 204.

Our first meet will be December 12 and will include a qualifying Quizposition. There you will have the opportunity to see prior State- and National-level booths. This will inspire us for our own booth, which well present at Regionals in late January. Where we go from there depends on you!

CLICK HERE TO ACCEPT THE INVITATION

I NEED YOU to accept Mrs. Jamess invite so I can configure the GroupHub before practice tonight, I say, loudly dropping my tray of salad onto my usual spot at the farthest table in the cafeteria. To make it seem like an excessively dramatic gesture, the sugar cookie decorated like a pumpkin jumps off and lands a foot away.

My best friend, Mads, looks up from her all-consuming conversation with Kaden on the other side of her and hooks her thin black bangs behind her ears. You need what?

Her mom finally let her dye her hair black this summer, and even though its November, Im still not used to it. Her equally darkened brows are furrowed at me. Her clothes match her hair, all blackness and laceon which she spends every penny she makes doing art commissions as the goth queen LeBrat. One of her pieces sold for almost a hundred dollars last month.

The Mads in my brain has mousy-brown hair, a squeaky voice, and ink stains on her hands and usually the corner of her lip, too.

The Mads in my brain doesnt wear lace at school.

The Mads in my brain isnt dating Kaden.

I should be grateful theyre not making out or something. Kaden used to be our friend. Its been the three of us at this same table since freshman year. But the two of them started dating last spring breakmaking me a third wheel in my own best friendship.

But while Mads has changed physically, Kaden is still Kaden: T-shirt, jeans, boots more suitable for a construction site than a school cafeteria. Like Mads and me and most of the school, Kaden is white, but unlike any of us, their hair has been buzzed out of existence. A choice made in ninth grade not long after they started sitting with us at the lunch table. But theyre not just Kaden. Not anymore. Now Mads and Kaden are a defined object.

I convinced Mrs. James were going to need a private group on HubBub, which I cant get ready until theres more people in the GroupHub. So I need you to confirm your invitations, I explain, sitting on the bench that is either too small or too big, but definitely digs into my legs in all the wrong ways.

Youre still active on that cesspool? Kaden asks, judgment thick in their voice.

Oh, come off it, youre still there, too, I say, settling into an argument that predates even their dating. HubBub may not be the only social platform out there, but its by far the biggest. Nowhere else has apps, chats, and groups. Its definitely the only one that makes it easy for individual coders to create or publish at the level of a development company. Which, I guess, is a thing Im the only one in the whole school cares about. But still.

Only because this bourgeoisie manufacturing facility known as our high school has sold out to the corporate overlords of the so-called social media site thats neither social nor media or even merely a site at this point, they say for like the fiftieth time.

Corporations pay HubBub millions for access to the extra services our school gets for free, I say. It would be ridiculous not to take advantage of all that the HubBub platform has to offer. Ever since Kaden discovered socialism theyve become a real snob.

Platform, like theyre trying to lift us up. They only do it to turn us into drones, so addicted to their mind-numbing content that by the time we graduate we assume theyre the answer for everything, Kaden says, leaning past Mads to glare at me. Wake up, Skylar, this is the real world.

Well accept later, all right, Sky? Mads says, laying a black-gloved hand on Kadens arm.

I bite back comments that, intellectually, I know would lead to a shouting match on whether capitalism has any merits in the first place. Because thats how all our conversations go now. Instead I decide to focus on what really matters. Please? I need at least three members to confirm before theyll let me install my app.

Of course this is about the app, Kaden says under their breath.

Does this mean were good to go for Study Buddy? Mads asks, perking up a little bit.

Ever since HubBub opened up their Young Developers track to our school, Mads and I have been making apps. I handle the coding, and she makes the graphics. It started with a kitty puzzle game in seventh grade that used a basic template. It got five hundred downloads, which is no small feat for middle schoolers. But Study Buddy is on a whole different level. It turns class notes into flash cards for better group studying. People actually need it, and Ill be the one who brings it to them.

Yeah. I got the last of the bugs worked out Friday, and your new buttons finally loaded in this weekend. The HubBub team that approves education apps is normally slowwere talking weeks. But since I was just addressing the edits they sent me, they put me into the priority testing queue, so its already live. I know Im talking nerd at them, but theyre the only ones in the whole school who have half a chance of understanding what Im saying. If I try to talk to my dad, he starts going on about what hes working on, and my mom gets maybe half of it. She wants me to use smaller words and less detail, but the details are important.

Plus, I got into the priority testing queue!

Normally if you want to get an app on their site, you have to build tests into it and have it pass some quality checks. The priority queue is for big software companies with whole departments that do just testing. Before now I had to go to the Young Developers Queue so HubBubs people could do quality checks for me and then give me a list of things that didnt work so I could fix them.