The HCOS WeeklyNinth Edition

Meet Megan Ferguson

An InterviewBy Jennica Wlodarczyk

1. For the readers who don’t know you very well, give us a rough ex-planation of who you are.Well my name, as you know, is Megan. I’m 14 years old and cur-rently in Grade 9. I live in a little town called Sooke just outside of Victoria on Vancouver Island. I have been homeschooled all of my life and have always loved Lan-guage Arts. I tend to lean towards the creative, artistic side of the spectrum; well minus the drawing and painting! I am a born again be-liever. I was baptized at my church in September. I try to follow God, but I’m not perfect and o!en have big struggles with obedience to Him.

2. What is one of your favourite things to do and why?Ooh, I have many favourite things to do. But if I can only choose one, I would choose reading. The rea-son I would choose reading is be-cause you can travel the world by opening a book. Middle Earth, Panem, Narnia, Medieval Britain,

even Outer Space are places any-one can visit at any time! I find it very exciting.

3. You’ve written most of the Verse of the Week articles for the HCOS Weekly. What usually in-spires your ideas for this article series?Well I try to make my articles somewhat relatable to everyone. I o!en think about struggles I’ve had and what got me through them or things I wish I had done. Occasionally I’ll write about some-thing that I need help with. Usually, I try and find a verse that will help everyone in their day to day lives. Sometimes when I’m running low on ideas I’ll go to this wonderful site called Bible Gate-way, read the verse of the day and come up with an idea of my own! Isn’t the internet wonderful? http://www.biblegateway.com/

4. Those of us who know you know that you’re a big Lord of the Rings fan. Who is your favourite character from this series and why?True, very true, I am a huge Lord of the Rings fan! This is a very mean q u e s t i o n ; I l i k e a l l o f t h e characters! Ahaha If you ask me this again next week I’ll most likely have a different answer! Currently, my favourite character is Faramir. The reason I adore Faramir is be-cause he is put through so much. His brother dies and his father nev-

er loved him. He has no reason to live but he presses on and serves his city and his people. I have com-passion for the innocent, broken-hearted and weak-spirited; the people who are empty inside.

5. What was one of the most meaningful moments in your life?This summer I went to a Bible Camp and I remember everyone talking about what was important to them and what they wanted to do in life. The things they needed. Such as a good job, friends, a house of their own. I’m positive God hit me with this; I realized that I didn’t need anything. I didn’t need anything at all if I had God with me. I could be homeless, I could have no education but as long as I had God I would be fine. It was such a strong overwhelming feeling and it gave me such strength and hope! That was one of my most meaningful moments.

6. What are you planning to do once you graduate from high school?Immediately a!er I graduate, I’ll probably go eat some dinner and watch TV. But seriously, I have no clue. I would like to go to College/University and get a degree in something or other, perhaps a Teacher’s degree. Honestly, I’m just going to have to play it by ear and trust God will show me what he wants me to do.

2 The HCOS Weekly

Ask Dr. Wise

By Kristina Fedorov

Dear Dr. Wise,

How much wood could a Wood Chuck chuck if a Wood Chuck could chuck wood?

Sincerely,Norris, Chuck

Dear Chuck Norris,

He would chuck as much would as a wood chuck could if a wood chuck could chuck wood.

Thanks for your question,Dr. Wise

Dear Readers,

If you were seriously wondering how much wood a woodchuck would chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood, here is an actual an-swer from an actual experiment.

“He'd chuck 361.9237001 cubic centrimeters of wood per day, which is the wood that a wood-chuck COULD chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood.”

Cheers,Jubilee Chiu, Editor.

Source: http://scientopia.org/blogs/scicurious/2012/10/05/friday-weird-science-how-much-wood-could-a-

Dating:

Is it Worth it?

By Jaleesa Taylor

Nowadays, according to society, dating is equivalent to being cool or popular. Studies show that 89% of teenagers are in a dating rela-tionship. I have to wonder if these teens are even considering the idea of dating or just going along with their peers and following the examples of celebrities. Since their friends have either a boyfriend or a girlfriend, they presume that they should have one too.

The chances are that school dating will not end in marriage. So, what's the point? I honestly cannot see one. School should be a friendly environment where students are enabled to learn and grow, while getting an education, not a signifi-cant other. I believe that if stu-dents started focusing on their schoolwork, instead of maintain-ing their dating status, we would start to see a notable increase in school grades.

We are now in a time when even el-ementary students are dating. This gives me a great deal of pause. Are these students mature enough to even think of dating? At an age when children usually play with Lego and Barbies, they are being taught that dating is perfectly ac-ceptable and even encouraged. I am compelled to believe that this is completely wrong.

Also, when you finally meet your prince charming or the fair maiden that you want to spend the rest of your life with, you want your rela-tionship to be special-not some-thing that you have done a million

times before. Whenever you date someone, you give a little piece of your heart away. I have to ask, what happens when you have

nothing le!?

7. What does the colour gold make you think about?It makes me think about the Deso-lation of Smaug and a part I can’t share because it would spoil it! Sorry everyone!

8. If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go and why?Out of anywhere in the world, I would go to the UK. Why? Most of my family originates in the UK, mainly Britain. Or if I couldn’t go the UK, Israel would be my second choice! It would be so neat to visit the country where Jesus and many folks in the Bible walked around!

9. Who is one of the greatest role models in your life and why?Jesus!!! Best role model you can ever have! He’ll never fail you, he never messes up like I do, and he’ll always be there for you! Also my Grandma is a huge role model for me! She’s not perfect but she is such an amazing lady! She has so many life experiences and stories to share! I feel that I gain wisdom by being around her.

10. And finally, since it’s a very im-portant question, what is your favourite colour?I agree! It’s a totally important question! Actually, I have three favourite colours: Blue, Purple, and Green!

Thank you so much for interview-ing me! It’s been wonderful! *lots of confetti* Oops… I guess some-one will have to clean that up. But seriously thanks so much to Jenn and the whole HCOS Weekly Team for all their hard work putting to-gether the paper!

3The HCOS Weekly

I.M.O. with GraceBy Grace Kelly

Hey guys, I trust your break from school was both beneficial and en-joyable; and if you think it was too short then you are correct. What bothers me is when teachers actu-ally expect us to do schoolwork over the holidays. I mean, there are some people that actually work over the Christmas break, and they’re the ones that get their dream jobs in the future and retire early. But if you’re like me, if you’re given work to do during Winter Break, you write it down on a pa-per, schedule it out so that you have a few days free, and then pro-ceed to berate yourself and moan and agonize every single day that you neglect to actually do your work. All this is to say that I got next to no schoolwork done over the holidays and I’m begging you to join in my angst.But the lack of my work ethic is surprisingly not the subject of this

rant, because if I actually got start-ed on that it could quickly turn into a full length book. I’ve decided to talk about New Year’s Resolutions, since any that you’ve made this year are probably already aban-doned. If they’re not, good on you.

This is going to be a relatively short thing, I only have a couple of points on this subject, so don’t mind me while I spin through them like a demented monkey trying to make a birthday cake for his moth-er in law. (Appreciate that analogy; it took me three minutes to think up.)

Point 1: Why Make New Year’s Res-olutions?

There is virtually no point. If you want to do something, just do it. For instance, more than half of the population makes their New Year’s resolution to lose weight during the year, and I believe that the statistic was that less than 20% of everyone that makes that resolu-tion actually goes through with it. I feel that New Year’s resolutions are too o!en used to assuage guilt over people not doing what they know they should be doing. An ex-ample: last year I resolved on the first of January 2013 to be nicer to my brother. That resolution lasted about seven minutes. I’m not nec-essarily saying this to make much of a point except that resolutions like that are stupid. You can’t be consistently nice to someone that your generally not nice to unless you have a change of heart, it’s just not the kind of thing that you can switch on and off by sheer power of will. If you want to do something you have to work at it. And the harder the task is, the harder you have to work at it. It’s that simple. Words alone are not going to spur you into changing anything signifi-

cant in your life. Hard work and dedication, coupled together, are the two things that make and numbers of events transpire.

Point 2: Stupid Resolutions.

Okay, so you all know those annoy-ing people that say stuff every New Year such as, “I want to grow my hair this year.” Or “I want to get taller.” Or, “I want to stop biting my nails.” A) Your body is going to grow by itself, there’s nothing you can do to help that. B) Stop resolv-ing to quit habits, everyone knows you’re not actually going to change anything. Shhhhhhh.

And then there’s the most annoy-ing one: when grade 12 students say, “My resolution is to graduate this year.” You’re in grade 12. You’re going to graduate. It’s pretty much the only thing you can do at this point (except failing grade 12 or dying.)

Point 3: People That Don’t Make New Year’s Resolutions And Grum-ble About Them Because They’re Too Lazy to Even Try And Motivate Themselves To Do Anything Of Im-portance.

It’s pretty much in the title.

So there’s my fairly short take on resolutions and doing stuff. By the way, if you’re one of the people that make resolutions and actually go through with them, I have im-mense respect for you and you should teach me your ways.

-GraceI’d love to get suggestions for fu-ture rants, just message me on moodle or the ning or find me on facebook. So many social network-ing sites, so little time.

woodchuck-chuck/

4 The HCOS Weekly

Homeschooler Reading - By Joshua Wlodarczyk

Super Comics

Verse of the Week

By Megan Ferguson

But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.” 1 Peter 1:15-16This verse urges us to be Holy. But do you ever wonder what it means

to be Holy? Well let’s take a look. In Romans 6 Paul states that we are not to let “Sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil de-sires” He also says that when we were sinners we were slaves to sin. However when we are saved we become slaves to God, willing ser-vants. He fills us with righteous-ness and our reward is holiness and eternal life with Him, so we are to be righteous.

In the book of Timothy, Paul re-minds us to lead “Peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holi-ness.” So we are to be righteous, peaceful and quiet. Paul instructs the women of the church to contin-ue in “faith, love and holiness, with propriety”. Yet I believe this applies to the men as well. Being holy is not something that happens overnight. You have to work at it. Righteousness, peace, faith and

love are not things that are easy to achieve. But we all have to try for it is written “Be holy, because I am

holy”.Dear Readers,

If you have requests for TV show or movie reviews, Davin, Noah and Jesse would love some sugges-tions! Grace is taking requests for rants as well, and she’s reachable through Skype (grace.olga1), Ning, Moodle, Facebook and email. Got questions, or need advice? Feel free to shoot Dr. Wise (Kristina) and the Editor an email. We are always ecstatic to hear from you!! Reach us at hcosweekly@outlook.com.

Cheers!

5The HCOS Weekly

Noah's Random Movie Review of the Week:The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

JubileeBy Noah Penner

(BC Consumer Protection Classifi-cation: Rated PG. Several scenes of violence depicting fighting, stab-bing, shooting, decapitation, im-palement and/or burning; several frightening scenes depicting super-natural beings.)

I have to admit, I wasn't really very excited about seeing The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. The first film was pretty good, but it was ob-viously stretching the source mate-rial to create a trilogy. The LOTR movies had 1500 pages to adapt, while the Hobbit has 200! As such, The Desolation of Smaug suffers from the dreaded middle-movie syndrome, not having enough sto-ry to wrap up in a nice satisfying package, while also having to en-tertain us for two and half hours. Remember when I said Catching Fire had a not-so-great ending? The Desolation of Smaug is even worse; it doesn't just end, it ends, leaving us completely unsatisfied and unhappy that the last 30 min-utes of the movie are effectively useless in the grand story. There's no semi-conclusion that makes us feel satisfied yet excited for the next installment; just a lame cliffhanger that significantly tar-nished my impression of the film.

Another big issue is the film's run-ning time. This wasn't a problem for me in the last four Tolkien films, but here, it's nearly unbearable! I blame it on the needlessly complex storyline, which delves into every detail imaginable, even if it doesn't

affect the big picture. It's obvious that The Hobbit could have been easily adapted into two films (as was originally planned), thus elimi-nating the awful middle-movie syndrome that affects The Desola-tion of Smaug. We already know the film won't conclude the story, and that the next film will of course be another two and a half hours, so why should we care? I suspect this problem will be lessened when the film is released on DVD and Blu-ray, since you can pause it, take a break, maybe finish the film another day, and then immediate-ly watch the next one, but in the theatre, it drags on. It feels like we should be watching a miniseries, not a theatrical film.

Now, despite everything bad I've said about The Desolation of Smaug so far, it's important to re-member that this is a Peter Jack-son film, and as such is filmed ex-

cellently, with great action scenes, great acting, and great special ef-fects. Do I even need to explain the plot here? Watch the first film, think about the second film's title, and it should be pretty clear. The new characters are alright, with the standout of course being the dragon Smaug, voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch. He's not as interest-ing as Gollum, but does make the final act of the film interesting. My only complaint in the storytelling aspect is that Bilbo, again por-trayed by Martin Freeman, isn't given enough screen time; he's there, and he's useful, but he isn't the sole focus of the story, which is odd considering that the entire thing is being told in flashback from Bilbo in the first film.

All in all, should you see The Hob-bit: The Desolation of Smaug? Of course! Otherwise you won't be caught up when There and Back Again, the final installment, releas-es in theatres. It's a good film, just packaged badly. I'd personally wait until it is released on home video, but if you're a huge Tolkien fan who could actually read through The Silmarillion in one sitting, of course you'll have a good time.

Two and a half stars out of four. A good film, just packaged badly. Would be far more enjoyable to watch in the comforts of your own home.

(For comparison's sake, since I didn't review it before, I would give the first film three stars out

6 The HCOS Weekly

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WeeklyLOL

of four.)Literature Corner Presents:

THE COURSE OF

CHANGE

A PoemBy Jennica Wlodarczyk

A brand new fightIt starts tonightThe crowd is cheeringAnd the price is rightThe same old danceThey see in meBut hold upThere’s nothing wrongWith holding onBut I’m so tired‘Fraid I’ll slip and fallI know there’s moreTo my life than thisSo change upThere’s something thereI know I’m not perfectBut even so this world’s worth itI’m fighting for my life hereI’m breaking strife hereChangin’ up the paths nowNot looking back nowThe war is on soNot looking back nowBreakin’ old habitsChanging the climateAnd so I’ll stay hereGiving my life hereStay on this path soJust holdin’ on now