Doomtown

Cracks in the Road to Success According to a report co-authored by Robert Balfanz, a leading scholar of drop-out rates at Johns Hopkins University, the nation’s high school graduation rate is currently at 78 percent, the highest it’s been since the 1975-1976 academic year when it reached 75 percent. Many officials believe the increase is due to greater competition for jobs within a struggling economy. The national rate jumped from 71.7 percent in 2001 (the year America saw its longest period of economic growth come to an end with the fallout from 9-11 and the collapse of the dot-com bubble) to 78.2 percent in 2010. If the current trend continues, the rate will exceed 90 percent by 2020. But not all of the news is good. The report suggests that these rising numbers could be stalled by the sluggish academic performance and high drop-out rates of disadvantaged students. Students from low-income families are most at risk of dropping out before receiving a diploma. Why are these studen...

This is the final draft of my first English 101 essay of the semester. I’ve cleaned it up a bit to make it a little more readable than the draft I turned in. Bear in mind that I only had roughly two hours to write this thing with no access to research materials, so don’t be expecting a masterpiece. Alas, I did not receive extra points for catching my instructor’s cold. I still got an A-, so it’s all good. Enjoy.   Making Connections: The Importance of Internet A couple nights ago, there was a hail storm in my neighborhood. Hail the size of golf balls rained down, breaking car windows, causing damage to homes, and—more importantly—wreaking havoc with the power lines in my neighborhood. My power went out and with it, so too went my internet connection. I hadn’t realized just how much I relied on the world-wide-web until that moment. You see, I was in the middle of researching a topic I was told would be on my exit exam—an essay on health and fitness. I had no research mate...