LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Dear students and staff of Lincoln Southeast High School, As I bid my final farewell to the Clarion, I’m also saying goodbye to you all. I have been honored to be this year’s Editor-in-Chief and witness the enthusiasm surrounding our newspaper and our words. Thank YOU for supporting our dreams and keeping journalism alive, for we wouldn’t be here writing stories if it weren’t for our readers. As I pass the torch on to next year’s staff I urge you all to continue the positivity and devoted eagerness to our newspaper. 

Our final issue of the school year is one that gets up close and personal, conquering the bulky topics that weigh us down. These subjects might be hard to digest, but they are conversations that need to happen. Publishing the unsaid, our staff is voicing their opinions and speaking up on silenced topics in our society. Arising from our theme, ‘Weight of the World’, comes stories of toxic positivity, the foster care system, eating disorders, the cost of therapy and what really happens when ‘troubled teens’ get sent away. 

Stemming from accounts from our very own student body, our journalists are focusing on the hard truths that many students experience, conveying that you’re not alone. Just as Atlas carried the burden of the whole world on his shoulders, we understand that you too carry your own personalized world full of relationships, school work, family, friends – and life on your shoulders as well. We all experience our own unique weight of the world, but maybe we aren’t alone. 

In our final days, hours, minutes and seconds within these walls of the 2021/22 school year, remember to look around and take it all in. The weight of the world might be on our shoulders now, but summer is fastly approaching and hopefully a break for you all is soon to come.

Have a fun and safe summer, knights!

ABOUT THE COVER ILLUSTRATION

The weight of the world – the only thing that seems to keep us all grounded on our own two feet. Although staying grounded is preached as a way to focus on the present to manage our anxieties and fears, the factor that isn’t acknowledged is the slow sinking into the ground as our feet begin to succumb to the desperate escape from the weight on our shoulders. As we sink further, we then begin to realize that carrying every ounce of the issues we endure is not the way to live. We exist to live; we do not not exist to survive. For this issue, we wanted to uncover the stories of the heavy issues in order to lighten the load we carry. 

I, the Design Editor, wanted to create a representation of how it truly feels to live in a state of heaviness; a state where the prominence of our problems seem to stand up and make their mark before we even receive the message of getting on our feet. 

For the cover, we all wanted to display the reality of our title, “Weight of the World.” With this, Atlas — the Greek mythology god, who carried all of the burdens of the world as a punishment was used as a reference, so I created an illustration of a person who carries a world that is bigger than them. The person is silhouetted to showcase how the weight of our problems seems to drown out our identity as we begin to disassociate from reality in order to hyperfocus on the issues that are occurring; the pigmentation of our skin dulls out as the life we have begins to feel like a chore more than an experience. The person is also relatively smaller compared to the size of the Earth to represent how weak and unimportant we feel when we are suffocating in the pain that is crushing us until we’re nothing but a pawn waiting for our next move to be meaningful enough; a move meaningful enough to make the pressure go away. I stuck with more cooler-toned colors to deepen the meaning of feeling trapped in the darkness but also to match the colors of the Earth: a natural green and blue. 

Even if we identify with Atlas more than we do with ourselves, we do not have to be him. We are our own people who deserve to live a life that is not dictated by the constant desperation to escape from the burdens that have torn us apart. We are here to build up our own strength with our successes, ambitions, and contentment; we are not here to build up our strength with our troubles.