5 April 2017

As m e m b e r s o f Okemos’ award-w i n n i n g c r o s s country and track t e a m s , B r o o k e

Soper (9), Ellen Mayes (9), Annie Burba (9) and Sal Bubolz (9) are no strangers to the track. On May 13, the ‘Honey Run,’ organized by Soper, Mayes, Burba and Bubolz, will take place at Playmakers on Grand River at 10:00 AM.

Cleverly named for its cause, all money raised from the 5K will go to the Michigan State University Pollinator Initiative in the Entomol-ogy Department to help alleviate the population decrease in honey bees.

This will be the girls’ sixth walk/run the four have organized together.

Soper, Mayes and Burba have been organizing runs since fourth grade. The money from their previous 5K’s have gone to neuroblastoma research, child hunger and malaria research.

“We love getting involved with the community, year after year,” Soper said.

The girls do not have a specific monetary goal, but they hope to raise more money than they have in the past. They expect a larger participant turnout this year, as opposed to pre-vious years where there have been around 30 people.

“We heard about the recent de-crease in bees and wanted to help make a difference,” Mayes said. “Some of our favorite brands like Burt’s Bees and Blue Diamond also

launched campaigns to save the bees, which inspired us to research the problem.”

Burt’s Bees is a manufacturer of health, beauty and personal hygiene products. The company is a subsidiary of Clorox and is committed to using natural ingredients and minimal pro-cessing for their products. The com-pany started when its founder, Rox-anne Quimby, began making candles out of Burt Shavitz’s leftover beeswax from his honey business. Since then,

the company has promoted honeybee health and sustainable agriculture.

Blue Diamond is a California-based agricultural and marketing organization that specializes in the manufacturing of almonds. Considering almonds are the only crop that is 100 percent dependent on honey bees for the pollination of its crops, according to Blue Diamond, the company has helped fund research in over 70 projects with a concentration of bees health, pollination and colony health. Blue Diamond continues to

commit their company to bee health research and even offers a full line of honey-flavored products that range from almonds and crackers to almond milk.

“The most rewarding part of or-ganizing The Honey Run is know-ing that we are doing something to improve bee health and the lives of pollinators,” Bubolz said.

Participating in the Honey Run costs $5. Registration will include food donated from local companies,

water stations to keep participants hy-drated and a booth set up by Michigan Pollinators where you can learn more about the bees suffering from Colony Collapse Disorder. T-shirts will also be available for purchase for $10 each. The money from t-shirt sales will also go to the Michigan Pollinators Initiative.

“Our favorite part [of organizing the run] has been getting to work together with our friends and knowing that our work is going to benefit a great cause,” Burba said.

Even with all the work these freshmen have put into preparing and planning for the run, volunteers are still needed to help mark the course and run water stations. To sign up to volunteer or to run in the race, visit thehoneyrun.weebly.com.

“We get to know that we are help-ing the world in some way, even from our small corner in Okemos, and it is fun getting the chance to create something on our own,” Soper said.

Haley RobinsAssociate Editor

Sal Bubolz (9), Ellen Mayes (9), Annie Burba (9) and Brooke Soper (9) advertise for The Honey Run, which will be held on May 13 and all proceeds from the 5K will go towards research to help alleviate the population decrease in honey bees.

Freshmen organize 5K to alleviate population decrease in bees

Among the top things teens want—besides food and sleep—is money. However, unless your parents are just handing it out to you, then you need to get a job.

Making minimum wage at a place you hate seems the fate that many people share in their quest for capi-tal, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Many students have OHS have beat the system and work at jobs they enjoy or volunteer to get work experience.

Some people, like Abdullah Hash-sham (11), aren’t in it for the money and would rather volunteer their time for a cause they are interested in.

Hashsham has been volunteering at Sparrow Hospital for a month, going in once a week for two hours. His duties include signing in, getting a pager, and waiting to be paged when a patient is ready to be discharged. Then he goes up to their room and brings them out to the front entrance and to their car if someone is picking them up.

Although he hasn’t been there long, he has gotten into the flow of things and started noticing the quirks of the hospital.

“I had no idea this was a thing be-fore I volunteered here, but whenever a baby is born, a jingle plays on the speakers and you can hear it every-where in the hospital,” Hashsham said. “Also, there is a lot to find at the escort desk. Almost always there is a book on how to play poker at a professional level. Sometimes there is a tally on how many U of M or MSU gear people are wearing.”

For Hashsham, volunteering has been a great opportunity to get his foot in the door of medicine.

“I want to go into medicine in some way or another in the future, so I guess you could consider this a start,” Hashsham said. “I’m not exactly doing any open heart surgery or anything, but I am getting familiar with how hospitals work.”

At a very young age, Nicholas Chamberlain (12) started working hard to get experience and learn for his future career on his family’s farm. As one would expect, no two days are the same on the farm.

“Some days I’m in a field driving tractor for hours on end,” Chamber-lain said. “Other days I’m working on a piece of equipment. That is what I enjoy best about farming is there are different things that have to be done throughout the year.”

Before Chamberlain can get to the farm he always finishes his school-work first, as during planting season or harvest he might not get home until 10 or 11PM.

“I love working long hours and driving the tractor, but I’m not always driving the tractor,” Chamberlain said. “There are days where actual labor intensive work has to be done on the farm. For example, cleaning out grain bins, working on a tractor and climbing down in tight spots to clean out the grain legs.”

According to Chamberlain two misconceptions about farming are how hard it is and how much money goes into price of equipment, land and seeds.

“Farming requires lots of money and it would be near impossible to start a farm in today’s economy,” Chamberlain said. “We run two com-bines and seven tractors. Both of our combines cost roughly $500,000 and our tractors were close to $400,000 each. So roughly 2.8 million in trac-tors and that’s not even including that land prices, semi trucks, fertil-

izer equipment, planting equipment and seed cost. Just to give you an idea, we farm 3,870 acres and one seed tote cost $10,000 that will plant 80 acres. $483,750 just in seed cost. Yikes!”

Also a lack of understanding on ter-minology can fuel an easily avoidable and unnecessary worry.

“People also can sometimes be scared of the term GMO which are actually good for you,” Chamberlain said. “I can almost guarantee, too, that most the food sold at the school is GMO food. GMOs provide much higher yields in the field which helps the farm so we can make money.”

Maggie McConnell (12) has spent her past summer, and soon next, as a camp counselor at Mystic Lake. As a counselor, she watches over the camp-ers and takes them to activities such as canoeing, biking or art.There are also activities that the counselors plan individually like lake showers, shaving cream fights, cookie raids, etc.

“My favorite experience from work-ing at camp was when I convinced my campers that the evil mythical creature ‘Bruno’ was actually a big friendly giant,” McConnell said. “They wrote letters to him and I would write them letters back with my left hand so it would look like Bigfoot’s handwriting.

Even though it’s a lot of work keeping up with the kids, McConnell doesn’t regret spending her summer at camp.

“Although it’s not the highest paying summer job, it is rewarding in so many other ways,” McConnell said. “It’s hard for me to imagine anyone regretting working at summer camp.”

McConnell also noted that being a counselor has impacted her future.

“I had considered elementary educa-tion before I was a counselor, but I never thought about it seriously until I had worked with kids for a whole summer.”

Chloe Soule (12) has been working at Breadsmith for the last two years

this July. Although balancing school and

work hasn’t proven difficult for her, she’s come accustomed to dealing with tough customers and problems that come up at work.

“Most people think it’s super super easy [working here], but you have to smile through screaming two year olds, old women who want to tell you that you’ve ruined their day, burning your hands on the oven and a line out the door around

holidays,” Soule said.Many of her routine tasks are at

opening and closing, stocking the bread, opening the cash registers and turning machines on for the morning baker. For Soule there is almost always something to do.

“We print and arrange labels for wholesale orders and prepare special customer orders and then wait for cus-tomers and bake or clean or try to find something to do,” Soule said.

At the end of the day Soule bags up

any leftover bread for donations and moves everything out of the way of the person mixing bread and night crew.

“I love my job, the little kids that are really excited to come in and how we donate to a different place everyday,” Soule said. “I also love all of my coworkers like they’re family and am sad to say that we don’t hire very often. I’m sorry if anyone’s reading this and thinking Breadsmith is your destiny.”

Joe ChappelleStaff Reporter

Annaleigh BarkerCopy Editor

Okemos High School hosts annual Greenhouse Open House

Okemos students hold captivating employment opportunities

On Friday April 21st, the Okemos High School Greenhouse hosted its annual Open House.

Every year, Dave Chapman’s independent study students open the Greenhouse to whoever may want a tour. People may learn about the vari-ous kinds of plants and regions of the world that they come from.

The Open House ran from 3:00 p.m to 5:30 p.m, with students and faculty dropping in. Along with complimentary snacks and drink, select plants were given out to those willing to take them.

In addition, the students had a chance to show off the various proj-ects that they have been working on,

whether it’s research, experiments or projects.

The Greenhouse is split up into two main biomes tropical environment and a desert environment.

Madlynn Preston (12) cares for the t ropi - c a l e n d , Carter Mash- b u r n ( 1 2 ) c a r e s for the carniv-o r o u s plants, I care for the a r i d / desert plants a n d Jacob Wolfe (12) helps with projects and other work to further better the greenhouse.

When asked why he decided to work in the Greenhouse, Jacob Wolfe said that he wanted to learn about plants and how they grow.

“I just like the Greenhouse when

I’m in here and I liked Advanced Earth Science,” Wolfe said.

If you are interested in taking this independent study with Chapman, you don’t need to be an expert on all things science or environmental. As long as you’re genuinely interested in bettering the Greenhouse and learning all there is to learn involved in taking the indepen-dent study, it will suite you well.

This year, a new project highlighted at the Open House was the african des-ert expansion. This new box adds an aesthetically pleasing place for plants native to arid environments, and is composed of a sand dirt mixture meant to help the water drain.

Not only is the Greenhouse Open House a great chance to mingle with peers and learn more about environmen-tal studies at Okemos, but it is a great opportunity to see new and ongoing projects in the Greenhouse.

A new project high-lighted at the Open House was the af-rican desert expansion

Photos courtesy Ellen Mayes

Photo courtesy Nick Chamberlain

Photo courtesy Nick Chamberlain

Photo courtesy Julian Fedorchuk

Photo courtesy Miles Bolton

Left to right: Carter Mashburn (12) waters plants before the open house. Dave Chapman shows Duncan Ross various rocks from his collection.Photo Courtesy Joe Chappelle Photo Courtesy Laura Ross