The Paw Print

If it weren’t for the bowties and the pocket protectors, Livia Zambrano, 17, would consider becoming an accountant. But the number crunching dork image doesn’t appeal to her. Still, she likes the idea of serving her community like her “role model mom” who is a CPA.

“Seeing her perseverance and determination makes me as well want to take upon the challenge of becoming an accountant,” said Livia.

Livia attends Queens Gateway to Health Sciences Secondary School and she loves to run as a hobby. As a track runner, she wants to challenge herself in beating the time like taking upon the challenge of becoming an accountant.

Accounting is a field some teens are considering but they are having trouble with the “dork” image.

“I think on a typical day, they are on the computer all day long doing taxes for people,” said Cindy Wen, 17, who live in Chelsea.

It’s not true that accountants stare at numbers on the computer all day until their eyes go blind.

“I run around the firm daily, meet clients and file taxes,” said Xue Mei Gao, an accountant who worked at her firm in Mott Street for 5 years.

According to Gao, accounting tends to rank first among top employers with job offers for college graduating students. Teens are drawn to this field because accountants make a great deal of money.

“I think it is easy to make money in the accounting field because you just sit there and calculate taxes. Other professions require higher education and degrees that accountants don’t need in order to make a lot of money,” said Cindy.

“I wanna be a billionaire so fricking bad, as the “Billionaire” song by Travie McCoy says,” said Amanda Erakky, 17. “Who wouldn’t want a lot of money?”

According to the teens, they want to major in accounting but they are unprepared for their future career.

“At the moment, there is nothing I can really do to prepare for my future career,” said Amanda.

“Many teens have no idea what they want to do with their career until they have experienced so many other careers,” said Gao.

For Gao, she mentioned she worked as a McDonald employee, a bank teller, and a supermarket cashier when she was a teen. At the end, she chose accounting because it suits her the most.

There are many organizations out there that promote accounting to teens that are interested. Career Opportunities in Accounting Profession (COAP) is one of the programs that promote accounting and let teens experience what it feels like to be an accountant.

“After joining the COAP program, I had insight of two accounting firms which were very exciting to see accounting myths aren’t true and being an accountant is actually a really fun job,” said Livia, a member of COAP 2010.

“The COAP program was a great experience and it helped me learn that accounting is not about sitting at a desk and adding numbers but about being able to travel and meet new people,” said Daniel Rios, also a member of COAP 2010.

Accountant is not about being the smartest or fastest in calculating numbers but having leadership skills, technologically adept, strategic and critical thinking according to Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), one of the largest accounting firms in United States.

According to Cindy Wong, a bookkeeper and an accountant who works at a day care, accountants have to know the basic skills in Microsoft office suites, have ability to interpret financial information and possess strong communication and listening skills.

Accounting is neither a solitary profession nor the image of dorks glued to their seats, crunching numbers, and squeezing their brains until they explode.

On the contrary, accountants do a lot of traveling to sites, work in different teams for different clients, and continue advanced learning and training.

“At first when I did not know that much about accounting, I thought it was an extremely boring and dull job,” said Livia. “But after being exposed to the career and having professionals tell me about their experiences, I believe the myths are all wrong”.

Hands moving, fingers turning and bodies huddling with one another. Youths, seniors and urban planners were all grouped around four tables in the courtyard of Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE), a community organization in the Lower East Side. With scissors chopping and pipe cleaners molding into shapes, they built a model of the community garden that they collectively designed.

According to Abby Deatley, a staff member at AAFE, the community garden is being created to bridge a bond teens and senior citizens through community gardening.

Since May 2010, AAFE have been incorporating this garden initiative to their youth program Teen Action Club, funded by the NYC Department of Youth and Community Development. Youths meet once a week to help build the garden.

Community gardens “stimulates social interaction,” according to the American Community Gardening Association, and the one near Norfolk and Staton streets strives to do just that.

“We want to gather the youth and the seniors together,” explained Rebekah Meeks, a representative at AAFE. “The garden is for everyone for the youths to have a suburban experience and for the seniors to have a place to go to.”

The seniors joined the youths and urban planners in the brainstorming and planning process in early May before transforming the courtyard into a senior-friendly community garden.

Thirteen youths, eight seniors and seven urban planning experts huddled together in a table to play a planning game called charrette. Pipe cleaners and construction paper are everywhere; the youths leaned in closely to hear what the senior had to say and the seniors listened closely to the ideas of the youths. Talking, exchanging eye contacts, and laughing over ideas, the seniors slowly yet sharply cut out shapes with the youth, helping them create a paper and pipe cleaner swing, a tree, trousers, plants, and seats.

Wei Hua Mo, 22, a sophomore at Hunter College and part-time staff at AAFE said, “They [the seniors] are just like kids! They love to talk and they talk a lot.”

“We also asked the seniors to plant their own seeds and many of them just loved touching the soil,” said WenBin Kuang, 20, a student at Lower East Side Preparatory High School, which serves new and overage immigrant students.

He added that after the spring planning session, the youths and the seniors mingled to help move the plants the youths planted into materials donated by the community. More than 90 percent of the community garden is made from recycled materials. For instance, they used a broken green sink found near the Lower East Side as a planting pot.

The seniors are involved with the planning process, planting seeds and taking care of the garden in the future once it’s done building. The youths are responsible for the building. In the beaming sun, the group of 13 youths came to the community garden after summer school to get their hands dirty. They saw the wood, screw the woods together, painted trousers, planted seeds and drilled holes.

“The first day of building was hard. I remember five youths was trying to screw the bench and it took the youths and us [AAFE staffs] the whole day to build one bench. Now they build two benches a day by themselves!” said Meeks.

“I’ve always thought of my grandma as annoying, but now I like seniors. It was fun and eye-opening talking to the seniors, many of them sound so active,” said Manshui Lam, 19, a senior at Baruch College Campus High School.

The seniors at the community garden are from suburban garden-friendly areas in China. Living and working in the United States have limited their exposure to parks and gardens. As a way to thank the seniors for their support, this community garden has been built by youths just for them.

Deatley noted that gardening is a great way to interact different generations and races that speak languages.

“I can’t speak Cantonese but I can still interact with the seniors. They show me what to do and I show them what I want them to do,” said Jin Mei Chen, 18, a student at NYC Lab High School For Collaborative Studies.

Meeks said this community garden provides the seniors with a space that is made primarily for easy senior access, including his/her seats that didn’t require seniors to bend down when they are planting.

“They [seniors] teach the younger generation skills of gardening, teaching them how great it is to grow your own food,” said Deatley.

Many New York residents are using two wheels to fight against the MTA.

As the effects of the economy are being felt around the city, New Yorkers are looking for ways to save money. Biking in the city offers a unique way to get from one place to another, while saving money on one’s daily commute. With the cost of Metrocards rising all the time and the outrage at the MTA, angered residents are taking to the park on their bikes.

The bike path in Riverside was recently finished, allowing bikers to ride down from the George Washington Bridge to Battery Park at the bottom of the island, a project completed with money-saving New Yorkers in mind.

Lucca Zeray, a 17-year-old avid bike rider, has seen an increase in biking in recent years, even as far south as his neighborhood, Park Slope. He attributes this to the recession and people trying to save money anyway they can.

“There has been a drastic increase [in biking] since the price of Metrocards went up especially in the last four years,” Lucca says.

The city is promoting biking because they know that the recession is hurting people and the MTA is not doing anything to help. Government officials are making sure that people feel safe and comfortable in their city.

“In the Upper West Side, and all over the city, people are pinching pennies and tightening their purse strings. We realize that people are using the parks more and biking to save money. We are allocating money to provide these residents with appropriate places to do this safely,” said Shula Warren, chief of staff for Councilmember Gale Brewer.

With the completion of this path, people are riding not just for recreation, but also to make a statement to the MTA. Lucca thinks that the usage of bikes will only keep rising and the MTA will notice.

“This is going to show the MTA that they need to care more for [the citizens that use the subway],” he says.

Jesse Groom, 17, used to take the train, spending up to $50 a month on transportation, but the MTA’s actions have led him to become a devoted biker. He says biking makes him happy because he knows he doesn’t have to worry about money spent on transportation.

“Since I bike a lot, I can save my money for food and other things throughout the day,” he says.

With the current state of the economy, residents cannot afford to own a vehicle in the city. The upkeep of a bicycle is much less than a car. Residents do not have to spend money on gas or pay for parking.

“[Saving money] is the biggest draw that I have noticed for people switching to bikes, as owning a car in the city is a tedious experience,” Jesse says.

The city is providing people the opportunity to save money on their daily commute and feel safe and secure while doing it.

“What the bike lanes do is more provide a law based safety,” Jesse says. “When people are protected by the law, like they are in a bike lane, they are more likely to try biking and feel free to do it, saving them a great amount of money in their daily lives. ”

Teens have more free time during the summer:  free time to travel, free time to read and more free time to cyberbully.

Summer used to give teens shelter from schoolyard bullies, but some cyberbullies are just as active during July and August as they are the rest of the year. According to the Cyberbullying Research Center, as many as 14 percent of students are cyberbullies.

Maeve Koeltl, 17, from Westchester, N.Y., is a teen angel, a trained expert on cybersafety at Wired Safety, an online safety organization. According to Maeve, cyberbullying is defined as a malicious action using words or pictures over the Internet or any other type of interactive device.

“All you need is a computer, cell phone, or any other interactive media,” Maeve said.

Her research shows that cyberbullying takes place all year round. “What the Internet is allowing teens to do is 24/7 bullying,” Maeve said. “It’s not like they can go home and escape bullying. It follows them everywhere.”

Khalila Blake, 16, is one victim of cyberbullying. Khalila was looking at her friend’s comment on MySpace during the July Fourth Weekend in 2008 when she saw a comment made by an account that used her name. She commented on the fake MySpace profile and had an argument with the imposter. Though she hasn’t proven the cyberbully’s identity, “I believe it was somebody who I was close to,” Khalila said. “The person knew a lot of personal things about me.”

She immediately reported it to MySpace, but no one from MySpace did anything. Khalila followed her mom’s advice and stopped talking to the person who she thought was the cyberbully. She did not worry over the summer because she was not going to the same school as the cyberbully. The cyberbullying, however, did leave an emotional impact.

“It kinda made me nervous,” Khalila said, “because the person that you are really close to can hurt you the most.”

Jane, a high school student, was a recent victim of cyberbullying. Jane (who does not want her real named used) made an account on a website during the school year and received several callous comments from anonymous users. She had a feeling who wrote those comments and cancelled her account months ago. After the incident, Jane grew more cautious over the Internet.

“I have no one I can trust in at this point,” Jane said.

But for Jane, summer provides a respite.

“I feel much more protected over the summer on any website or anything online,” said Jane, relieved.

Although summer doesn’t affect some cyberbullying victims, some cyberbullies increase their activities in the summer. Tony Liu, 16, a self-proclaimed cyberbully, goes on online games like Counter Strike to curse and bother the other players when he is bored, angry, or as he puts it, “any given time and any given day.”

“I have free time and I don’t worry about school work or anything,” Tony said.

But some cyberbullies have better things to do during the summer than to be mean to people online.

“I cyberbully more in the school year because I was out more in the summer,” Tiffany Luk, a student at Baruch College, said.

Cyberbullying is getting more attention from state legislatures. Many states including New York, Missouri and Maryland have passed laws against digital harassment. California became the first state to pass a law allowing schools to discipline students online.

The Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act was proposed to Congress last April and named after Megan Meier, who committed suicide after being cyberbullied by her friend’s mother, Lory Drew. The bill states that “whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.” This federal bill has not yet been ratified

Just as how state legislatures are coming up with laws to stop cyberbullying, social networking sites such as Formspring are working to end cyberbullying too. Formspring, a website where users answer questions to ask other users questions, launched a privacy option in July, eight months after the site launched.

“Users can select if they want to make their account ‘Protected,’ which means (that) it is not viewable/searchable on the Web,” Director of Communication Sarahjane Sacchetti said, “and that they have to grant access to users they want to share content with.”

By making this option available, Formspring allows users to block out unfamiliar logged in users and anonymous users who can potentially leave offensive comments.

Even though efforts are going into cyberbullying prevention, the best prevention is to take precaution.

“I think I learned a lesson,” Jane said “Be very careful what you say online. It really affects you in the long run.”

On the way to his corner deli around Williamsburg, Danny, 17, walks past a poster that’s advertising cigarettes at $11 a pack. He takes a quick glance at the poster, shrugs and continues to the counter where he asks the cashier for a pack of Newport cigarettes.

Like Danny, some teenage smokers are unfazed by the cigarette tax increase from $2.75 to $4.35 on July 1. Though New York City’s cigarettes now cost nearly $12 a pack, many teenage smokers continue to smoke.

There have been many attempts to lower teenage smoking rates. These attempts include restriction of smoking and making it illegal for people to sell cigarettes to anybody under the age of 18. But one of the best ways to lower teenage smoking is to increase the price of cigarettes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But in this instance, things don’t look that way.

When Tony, 16, a student at Thomas A. Edison High School, heard about the steep price increase of cigarettes, he wasn’t happy but he wasn’t too concerned either. Like all teens interviewed, Tony asked that his last name not be used so his parents wouldn’t find out about his habit.

“I feel that the city shouldn’t add any tax to addictive products, especially when their products are used to relieve people’s stress. Even if the economy is in trouble and the cigarette prices are outrageous, I need something to relieve my stress,” said Tony.

“Regardless of the price of cigarettes, it really doesn’t matter to me, I don’t really care, I have other sources to get cigarettes; my friends. They usually charge me nothing but occasionally they might charge me a little bit, but it will come nowhere close to $11 a pack.“

“I normally buy cigarettes from a store nearby our school. They’ll let you buy anything, even if you’re a minor,“ he said.

Many of the teenagers that smoke aren’t happy about the new prices but most of them like Danny, feel that they need to smoke.

“I needed something that can make me forget about everything. Something that will relieve me of all my stress. Smoking can be considered my refuge, “ said Danny, who felt stressed out and depressed and started smoking when his family members got killed after a fight and his parents got divorced.

“I normally smoke a pack a day. If I do smoke less because of this increase in price, it’ll most likely be one less cigarette a day. If anything, I can always work overtime for some extra change,“ said Danny, who works as a supervisor for a children’s day care.

Most teenage smokers have other ways of getting cigarettes besides buying them, such as stealing from their parents.

“Sometimes my father will get them overseas. When he is not looking, I will steal a pack,” Danny said.

Over the past few years that Hyo Man Lee has been working as a manager for a deli at Cortelyou Road, he has had teenagers coming in trying to buy cigarettes. He understands that it is illegal to sell minors cigarettes but there will always be stores that will break the rules and sell cigarettes to minors.

“To teenagers, what matters to them isn’t the price of a pack of cigarettes, it’s whether or not they are able to smoke in general,” said Lee. “The increase in cigarette price will only decrease the rate of adult smokers.”

“If I’m really overly stressed, I’ll continue buying cigarettes no matter what the price,” said Danny, “even if it increases to $20 a pack.”

Laugh and the world laughs with you. This quote holds much truth. Movies with canned laughter receive more laughter than movies without any canned laughter. Sociologists researched and conducted many experiments to solve this psychological phenomenon. They came up with the principle social proof.

Recently, in Mosul, Iraq, members of Al Qaeda had been taking control over blood banks and hospitals. The point of this action is to steal blood for their wounded fighters rather than risk having them arrested.
Iraqi health officials said that these raids have been occurring for a while in areas with large Sunni Arab populations.
At the medical facilities, there are normally Iraqi security force members that guard them but when the robberies came, they often stood there, doing nothing and letting the robberies continue.
The question that comes into play when they steal so much blood is whether or not the stolen blood will do any good for an injured person. If you do not match the blood perfectly, it will be fatal. But most doctors in Iraq believe that Al Qaeda has its own specialist who can perform blood transfusions.
My reaction to this event that is occurring in Iraq is that I feel that Al Qaeda is getting desperate. They are losing large amounts of their soldiers to the point where they can’t risk any more casualties.
They are stealing blood from blood banks and hospital to heal their injured so that they can safeguard their main forces. I believe that they are almost at their limit since they are trying so hard to heal up their forces and to prevent any more casualties.
Al Qaeda is getting desperate and they are using any means to help their remaining forces, even if that means stealing blood.

The eight year school Eagle Academy has grown to be one of the best schools in the Bronx , in which it takes in young men of color and turn them into college ready scholars. Under the leadership of principal Afrieye the school has had four successful graduating classes of an overall 83 percent rate and compared to other co-ed and single gender schools 83% is pretty high. Due to administration problems principal Afrieye was recently fired and as a principal many people did not like him but he recieved respect which kept a sense of control and now that he’s gone who will control the Eagle Academy students? There is no leadership now that he is gone and students were comfortable with him after being with him for three years. So bringing someone in for our senior year is bad because students will not respect the principal and they will rebel which will also affect their academic performance, which may destroy the whole purpose of the school.

Making a change is always a good feeling everyone likes to experience. Especially when it’s a good change. I’m an active participant in a Hispanic youth group known as Journada. Journada is Spanish for the journey. It’s a metaphor for the morally correct religious choices that an individual should make in their every day life situation.

 As black teens we are taught that our future is determined on the color of our skin. That may have been true when the people who told us this were born but now it is not all about the color anymore, it’s not that our Caucasian counterparts are superior because their skin is the color of snow and ours is the color of the beautiful night’s sky. It’s merely about our intelligence, morality, and our persistence.

You may ask what I mean by our morality. When I say our future is based on our morality I mean that our future is dependent on whether or not we know right from wrong. FromWikipedia.org, morality is defined as follows: “Morality (from the Latin moralitaser manner, character, and proper behavior) has four principal meanings. In its first descriptive usage: morality means a code of conduct held to be authoritative in matters of right and wrong, whether by society, or religion.” If we as in black people took the time to think about what we do, what we say or what’s right and wrong maybe then we would get out of this trap, saying that it’s because of the color of our skin that we cannot get from this hell whole we call poverty or this slave ship we call jail. Because of our lack in understanding right from wrong or our lack in morality we cannot see the bigger picture; our eyes are being over shadowed by the past that we just stopped our success in the future. We are sitting here being morally wrong, still finding someone to blame for our own misfortune that we are not doing anything to change the future. As teens we act on what we hear. When your teachers or parents say that, because of the color of our skin we can hardly get good jobs we tend to follow down the path of being morally incorrect, our parents may not know it, our teacher’s may not know, we may not even know it, but they are a part of us being in moral captivity, because they are still living in the past they make us to think in the past as well.

    Persistence has a lot of effect on us in the future. If we continually, or persistently think in the past, walk in the past, talk in the past, talk in a racial tongue, saying nothing’s going to really come my way because I am black, or we look through our eyes and all we see is black and white we are going to persistently fall flat on our faces and then that’s when we are going to get nowhere. Every year every teen must have heard it once or twice from a teacher telling them to “worry about yourself and not about other people” well it does not seem that they or your parents are taking it to their own heads. They tell us not to worry about other people or we would fall flat on our faces, why are they consistently worried about the Caucasian race, maybe that’s why we are going nowhere.

   Our intelligence is another major key in our future, because of the knowledge that I parents or teachers bring to us about being black we{teens} think that since we are not really going to get anywhere, what is the sense of staying in school. {That is why we have such a high dropout rate.} We are taught to stay in school, and then we are taught that because of our skin color we are going to be deprived of some of the luxuries of life, and that is when our lack of morality kicks in, we don’t know that having an education is right and depriving yourself of one is wrong, that we choose mind over matter, we let whatever is in our mind chose, instead of thinking about the future where we as a race Is going to be in 20yrs, which really matters.

When asking question about how this article made you feel, I was left with a lot of positive feedback from the African American community: