Shea Flannelly POLARIS LITERARY MAGAZINE EDITOR Hello everyone! My name is Shea Flannelly, and I am eager to introduce myself as the Editor-in-Chief of Polaris. My role directly aligns with my deep love for creative writing. Outside of Polaris, I am President of Alliance, Vice President of SADD, a participant in Drama Club, and an active member of SWAC. I am thrilled to look at your submissions and see your unique creations! Your creativity is meaningful, and your art deserves to be seen! I Love the Color Green Shea Flannelly Polaris Read More

Back to Articles Feature Back to Sections ENL Buddy Program VSN By Alisson Alas Volume 2 Issue 6 April 14, 2022 Image provided by VSCHSD.ORG The ENL Buddy Program, advised by ENL Department Chair Ms. Swinton, is one of the many clubs offered at North . The ENL Buddy Program offers many activities: Students get to go into ENL classes and do fun and creative activities with the ENL students. Students got to make hallway decorations for World Language Week and participated in this year’s PS I Love You Day event. Students got to go into ENL classrooms and make holiday cards for staff members. Students can help other ENL students feel welcomed to North by helping them get around during their first days in the building. According to Ms. Swinton: “The ENL Buddy program is designed to help new and/or struggling ENL students connect to the North community. Mentors, who are current or former ENL students, work with students individually, visit ENL classrooms and facilitate lessons for students that are designed to build community and also lead after-school activities during meeting time.” For me I think joining this club is an amazing idea since I was a ENL student, I definitely feel like the ENL students feel welcomed to North because they have other students who know how they feel and who are willing to help them get around and get familiar with the environment. According to Ms. Swinton: “Mentors are typically current or former ENL students because they have a shared, lived experience with our newest Spartans. Mentors often also share a similar language and cultural backgrounds with the mentees.” Here's what she said about the activities and plans for the year: “This year, mentors have planned and facilitated classroom lessons that speak to the North's core values of respect, integrity, and kindness. Members of the ENL Buddy Program have also helped to create holiday cards for members of the community, participated in PS I Love You Day by creating positive messages and decorating the school hallway with them and designed flags from around the world in honor of World Language Week.” If you like helping, doing fun and creative activities, have been or are an ENL student, this is the club to join. If you share a similar language and cultural backgrounds with the mentees, you would really be able to make someone's day and transition into our school much easier and get that amazing rush of energy while helping somebody else. BACK TO TOP

Back to Articles Sports Back to Sections FALL RECAP Rehmat Kaur Volume 4 Issue 2 January 16, 2024 Image provided by Sophia Songveeratham Boys Volleyball had an undefeated regular season going 16-0 and winning the Conference Championship. They qualified for the playoffs where they lost a hard-fought battle to Great Neck North. Senior Danny Kosior earned All-County honors. Junior Erik Ziemblicki also earned All-County Honors and was named Conference Player of the Year. Girls Volleyball had a conference record of 5-9. They played Bellmore JFK in the playoffs where they lost a hard-fought battle. Alyanna Nadal earned All-County honors, Isabella Feldman and Nattly Lindo both earned All-County Honorable Mention and Cianna Nadal earned All-Conference. They also earned distinction as a NYSPHSAA Scholar-Athlete Team with a team GPA of 93.214. The Girls Varsity Tennis team had 9 wins and 5 losses. Anna Persaud received All Conference and Ella Cason received the USTA Sportsmanship Award. The players performed admirably in all their matches, making the season memorable. They also earned distinction as a NYSPHSAA Scholar-Athlete Team with a team GPA of 93.325. Boys Varsity Cross-Country won the Division Champions with Coach Tim Boyens. Kevin Beltran and Matteo Somma received All-County, while Chamar Borden , Mateusz Grabowski , Frank Polizzi , and Charles Wu received All-Conference for their amazing performance. They also earned distinction as a NYSPHSAA Scholar-Athlete Team with a team GPA of 95.971. Girls Varsity Soccer earned distinction as a NYSPHSAA Scholar-Athlete Team with a team GPA of 91.652. Dayanara Castillo received All-Country, while Lia Giaconelli and Elena Magno earned the All-County Honorable Mention. Claudia Sherman received the All-Conference for her amazing performance. The Boys Varsity Football season was summed up by 2 wins, against Division and Floral Park, and 6 losses. Senior Nicholas Naumov earned the All-County Honorable Mention and Terry Medor received All-Conference. Boys Varsity Soccer player Alexis Avila Bermeo received the All-Country, while Raphael Baez and Joaquin Perez earned All-Conference. District Varsity Girls Swimmer, sophomore Sarah Flynn, received the All-Conference and 100M Butterfly & 200 Medley Relay. Girls Cross Country earned distinction as a NYSPHSAA Scholar-Athlete Team with a team GPA of 93.496. Junior Manal Layachi represented the girls' team at the State-Qualifier Championships at Bethpage State Park on Saturday November 4th, 2023. BACK TO TOP

Back to Articles Entertainment & Media Back to Sections Spiral of Ants by Lemon Demon By Stephy Varughese Volume 1 Issue 6 March 18, 2021 Image provided by Onedio Spiral of Ants - YouTube Over and over The pheromones, the overwhelming harmony Consuming the colony The Circle rules your life Chop, chop! Don't want to be late Lift up and carry your weight You've got no choice but to dance in a spiral of ants True bugs might laugh in your face Don't fret, you're leading the race Don't let the bastards step on your hands in a spiral of ants You can't remember where you came from (In a spiral of ants) You can't remember where you're going (In a spiral of ants) You can't remember knowing You are one ant Over, it's over The pheromones, the self-avoiding odyssey Consuming the colony The Circle rules your life Now, now! Don't run out of breath Don't feel surrounded by death, no Take the wheel, this could be your chance, in a spiral of ants False bugs, you'll soon be alone See how they drop like a stone You're free now forever to dance in a spiral of ants. Now you remember where you came from (From a spiral of ants) Now you remember where you're going (To a spiral of ants) You've got to keep it flowing. You are one ant (Over, over, over) Over and over The pheromones, the overwhelming harmony Consuming the colony Creating its own gravity Before we knew it, we became a hurricane. And the bugs who laughed got blown away. As we proclaimed: The Circle rules your life _______________________________________ Lemon Demon is a band made by internet star Neil Cicirega. Cicirega had been on the internet making funny videos like “The Harry Potter Puppet Pals,” Ultimate Showdown, random skits, and of course, Lemon Demon, since the late 2000’s and as a teenager. The song “Spiral of Ants” comes from one of his more recent albums, Spirit Phone , which focuses on strange phenomena in history, mixed with a story. I highly recommend listening to his music if you like weird indie songs and overall randomness with upbeat tunes. Spirit Phone is a great starter album if you are interested. The title “Spiral Ants” is a natural phenomenon that happens in real life to a certain species of ant. There are ants called Army Ants who, unlike other species of ant, are completely blind. This is because of their compound eyes that are used to sense light activity instead of sight. However, because of this, these army ants have a tough time sensing each other out. The solution to this problem is releasing specific pheromones so that the ant before them can sense their pheromone and vice versa. When the scent of the last ant gets lost, the ant before that ant gets confused and get cut off from the main pack. The ants then look over and over, following the wrong trail which makes them walk in a never-ending spiral. Because they aren’t aware that they are walking this spiral, they keep walking thinking that they are reaching their destination. This leads to them walking till they eventually die. This is called the Death Spiral or, in this case, the Spiral of Ants. The speaker is never mentioned in the song, but we can assume that the speaker is a high being or just a disembodied figure. This is proven by the speaker speaking directly about you especially in line 20 “Now, now! Don't run out of breath” and the constant use of “you’re” in the chorus. Repeatedly in the song, the speaker tells “you” which is to assume is the listener. Also, in the song, they refer to the listener as “one ant”. This would mean that we are considered “ants.” The tone of the song sounds repetitive, mysterious, and collected in the beginning then goes into a very upbeat tune while still keeping the same unsettling vibe. “Before we knew it, we became a hurricane” is a metaphor that compares ants to a hurricane. This whole song in itself however is a metaphor in itself because it's comparing us people the spiral of ants. The song’s theme or the message is that despite living in and endless death loop, you’ll always be part of society. What I mean by this is that the “spiral” represents society, and the ant, you. The song starts you off with an omen-type tone as if you were not there at all, yet everything is still in shape. In lines five though eleven, the song hurries you up as if to say, “Come on, it's time to start your life!” Everything in the tone feels like you are new, unfazed by death or harm. This is supported in the lines when “you can’t remember where you are going” or “you don’t know where you came from.” This proves that at this stage, you simply are naïve about how the “spiral” is. Like how they, “you are one ant” like, you are only just a person existing. Then when it says “true bugs might laugh in your face”, they are referring to people outside of your life or people who try to weigh you down. This is confirmed later in the song where it says, “And the bugs who laughed got blown away.” This shows that despite people weighing you down and making fun of status, they aren’t in a worse situation as you. This also shows the change you felt before about the outside bugs changed when you got more engulfed into the spiral for in the beginning, these bugs were called “true bugs” while later in the song, these true bugs were now called “fake bugs.” By the second verse, the sudden realization that you are being controlled by society kicks in. Especially when the speaker says, “don’t feel surrounded by death.” You are now realizing the reality of it all, yet you try to get ahold of yourself and be a leader since “it could be your chance in the Spiral of Ants.” Later on, as stated previously, all the true bugs become false bugs as you realize that the true bugs you looked up to aren’t the same bugs anymore. The chorus of the song, however, brings this statement farther up by saying that you know where you are going and doing yet all in all, you are still just an ant. Yet you work and work to keep that spiral going. Then the repetitiveness of “over” really hits hard on this sad outcome of life. Then reaching the last chorus, we see the noticeability of the destruction of life. The overwhelming harmony of society that “consumes” the colony still goes on and on from the moment you were born till now. The remaining lines reflect how chaotic and crazy everything is to you as even society makes “its own gravity.” Everything is swirling around like a hurricane and all scattered in a mess. However, in the last two lines, it shows that despite it all, the circle still rules your life and repeats itself over and over again. BACK TO TOP

Back to Artwork The Memory Project Back to Sections Gilana Etame - Memory Project By Gilana Etame March 18, 2021 Volume 1 Issue 6

Back to Articles Science & Technology Back to Sections What Happened to DART? By Cody Sung Volume 3 Issue 1 November 7, 2022 Image provided by NASA While NASA was busy with many attempts to launch their Moon rocket in their Artemis 1 mission [1], they were also getting ready to crash a $314 million spacecraft into an asteroid [2]. The mission is named the Double Redirection Asteroid Test, or as it is commonly known, DART. NASA is conducting this mission to test whether spacecraft have the capability to change the orbit of an asteroid that could crash into Earth. According to NASA; however, the asteroid that DART crashed into, Dimorphos , doesn’t pose a threat to Earth [3]. Despite this, the mission would still provide useful information for scientists. By hurling DART at Dimorphos , NASA estimated that it would shorten its orbit time by around 1%, or 10 minutes [4]. Luckily, we likely won’t need to test this out soon, since according to NASA, there are no known asteroid threats to Earth for the next century [5]. Work beyond the initial conceptual phases for DART began in June 2017, and the final design and assembly phase began in August 2018. The spacecraft weighed 1,340 pounds, and its cargo includes devices needed for the mission such as sensors for navigation, a camera, an onboard computer for crash trajectory calculations, solar arrays, an antenna, and an ion thruster [6]. During the journey to Dimorphos , it had to carry an Italian spacecraft, LICIACube, which would be used to study the effects of DART’s impact. Despite all that the DART team had to accomplish, the spacecraft was completed in time for its launch on November 24, 2021, from Vandenburg Space Force Base in California in a SpaceX Falcon 9 [7]. It would be a long journey ahead. Even going at about 4 miles a second, it would take the craft 9 months to reach Dimorphos. In preparation for its impact, there were many equipment tests to make sure the craft functioned properly. Everything worked properly, and two months before the impact, DART detected the Didymos system from 20 million miles away [6]. LICIACube was released one and a half months later, 15 days before the impact. Finally, on September 26, 2022, DART crashed into Dimorphos . The mission was a success. To astronomers worldwide, it was well worth the total $330 million cost of the mission [8]. LICIACube started to send images back to Earth a few minutes after the impact, showing the debris from DART’s impact [9]. In the following weeks, images from more sources started to stream in. It became quite clear that the impact shortened the orbital period of Dimorphos by around 32 minutes [10]. Thanks to this mission, we now know that if there is ever an asteroid that could hit Earth, we have a way to prevent its impact, although NASA scientists caution that we would have to do so years in advance for such a maneuver to be a success [4]. BACK TO TOP

Back to Articles Science & Technology Back to Sections The Sasquatch: Fact or Fake? By Matteo Somma Volume 1 Issue 5 February 12, 2021 Image provided by Patterson-Gilmlin For centuries there have been countless sightings of the Sasquatch, more commonly referred to as Bigfoot, due to its large foot size. Over 10,000 “witnesses” claimed to have seen a tall, hairy figure walking on two legs. The species Sasquatch in question has been spotted everywhere from all the way north in Alaska to the swamps of Florida. Whether it be a person dressed up for attention or a failed science experiment, one thing’s for sure: there’s something out there. The common name Sasquatch comes from the primitive ages of the Native People. Sasquatch is believed to be a simplified version of the Salish word Sasq’sts meaning “wild man” or “hairy man”. The Salish people, known as the Sta’ailes, claimed to have a close spiritual bond with the Sasquatch. The Sasquatch can be described as tall and hairy. But if you look deeper into the Sasquatch, Yeti, Bigfoot, and other similar creatures that all fall under the Sasquatch profile, you can see a common theme among all of them; muscular and slim. Unlike bears, the Sasquatch is very muscular and thin. Also unlike bears, the Sasquatch towers at an outstanding 9 feet tall and is rarely seen on all four legs, rather standing on its hind legs like humans. The Sasquatch is also reported to have ape-like footprints similar to humans but substantially larger. In the United States, only one state out of fifty has yet to report a Sasquatch sighting and that would be Hawaii. The Sasquatch has been reported in countries all over the world such as Russia, Switzerland, Canada, and Indonesia. While not all descriptions match North America's description, they all fall under the same category or tall, muscular, hairy, and walking upright. One of many theories on the Sasquatch is that it is a group of Neanderthals that never died off or developed into modern-day human beings. A prime piece of evidence for this is Zana. Zana was a female Sasquatch/Neanderthal that was captured in the Russian wilderness in the 19th century. After the Russian government captured Zana, they kept her in a cage for the rest of her life and experimented on her. Recently a British scientist who goes by Bryan Skyes (a professor at Oxford University) has taken DNA and silica samples of the descendants of Zana, and his findings were remarkable. He found that Zana was a Sub-Sahara African that was probably once a slave during the ruling of the Ottomans. He also found tracings of Neanderthal in their DNA, more than the average human would have, at least. Billions of dollars have been put into proving the Sasquatch’s existing but almost all have come to a dead end. So that question lies on you, is the Sasquatch a fact or a fake? BACK TO TOP

Back to Artwork Who Am I Back to Sections Anonymous - Who Am I? - 3 By Anonymous November 19, 2021 Volume 2 Issue 2

Back to Articles Polaris Back to Sections My First Memory of Stitches By Navrosedip Kundlas Volume 2 Issue 5 March 28, 2022 Image provided by Pediatric Urgent Care of New York Life is full of troubles. Just waiting to unfold As fragile as bubbles But for a five-year-old, I was still bold The day was full of delight. However, the horror was yet to come As I approached the swings, the boy took flight Smashing my head till I fell, wishing I had never come The nails on the floor poking my ear Hoping they would fill their hunger RRRRIP as the world disappeared The last thing I heard was my mom screaming in anger. When I woke up, the nurse’s smile was as bright as the sun But I knew this was no fun My mother was a rabbit, scared and small I wished instead of the park we had gone to the mall I wished instead of the park we had gone to the mall BACK TO TOP

Back to Articles Polaris Back to Sections Pep Rally of '24 and Senior Year Cross Country Season Manal Layachi Volume 5 Issue 2 November 25, 2024 Image Provided by Mother of Manal Layachi Senior year has arrived A bittersweet and joyful time Back to a routine Living the dream Homecoming flies by Having the time of my life Pep rally gets me pumped I cannot wait to run and jump As my coach calls out the names of my teammates, He forgets to call mine, But I know he is playing and I have to wait As the only senior on the team, I feel special like a queen When my coach calls my name I run across the turf and accept all of the fame As I run under the tunnel made by my teammates, I feel amazing and great My confidence increases and I celebrate I have been doing cross country for four years Although there will be tears when I graduate, there will also be cheers As I run every day and receive my senior banner, I remember all of my athletic accomplishments without regrets as I am a master I know I did my best and got faster. BACK TO TOP