Every year the Thunderword invites faculty and staff members to nominate outstanding graduates for its special Inside Scoop edition. This edition includes the remarkable stories of the standout students of the spring class of 2024.

These students represent a vast array of degree goals, career aspirations, and personal histories but what they all have in common is their tenacity of spirit and unmistakable attitude that brightens the days of members of the Highline community.

Arcturus, Highline College’s renowned publication, launched its much-anticipated 56th issue.

To celebrate the June 5 release, attendees shared food, refreshments, and a free copy of the latest Arcturus issue. The diverse array of contributors shared their works and the inspirations and processes behind them, even opening up time towards the end of the event for an open mic, allowing everyone to take part in the creativity.

This issue’s theme “After Image” explores the concept of the image that remains even after the original is no longer visible. It is the lingering picture when one looks away after exposure to a bright image. Contributors have captured this effect through prose, poetry, and visual art, probing into the lasting echoes of both big and small incidents.

If you’re like most college students, the weight of academic stress might be overwhelmingly all too familiar. When stress and anxiety begin to form due to the nagging need to meet both school and personal expectations, self-control and precision might be something you immediately fall back on.

Maybe you’re in the midst of figuring out how to pay for school, filling out internship applications, or simply feeling the anticipation of finals. It’s only natural to resort to a routine that ensures your ability to get things done. And, although this can combat the daunting feelings that arise from uncertainty, it can also add onto initial worry or stress.

The Pink Prom hosted by the LGBTQIA+ Task Force, Q Center, Center for Cultural and Inclusive Excellence, and the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Transformation consisted of a live DJ, pizza, cake, an assortment of flashing party favors, and performances by drag queens and kings. 

Held in the student union in Building 8 on May 24, tables were set out with bright flowers serving as the centerpieces. The majority of the bottom floor was set aside for a lively dance floor, with DJ Mike Baskett playing classic hits from artists like Madonna or remixes of the most popular songs of the 2020s.

The event had all the makings of a classic high school prom, something many of the attendees did not receive given the COVID-19 pandemic taking place during many people’s last years of high school. 

As Highline students made their way around campus this past week, many may have noticed the scores of American flags placed on the grass next to Building 8, each meticulously lined up in neat rows in order to honor Memorial Day.

Memorial Day is a landmark American holiday meant to remind us of those who died while serving their country in the U.S. military. It wasn’t until 1971 that the last Monday in May became a federal holiday, after congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act in 1968.

This federal holiday includes observation for the longest war the U.S. has been involved in from 2001 to 2021. This day is not just for having a day off from school or work. It’s for commemorating the veterans that did not get to come back home and hang up their uniform.

The familiarly used term FOMO is an acronym that stands for: fear of missing out. Popularized as a widely known term in 2004, FOMO is perhaps the best description for the ever tiring pursuit of a fulfilling life. As Generation Z, individuals born between the years 1997 and 2012 enter college and the workforce, FOMO can be both a motivator as well as a debilitating factor.

The slanginess of the term FOMO makes it difficult to take seriously in introspective or philosophical conversations, but it’s an effective description for the pressure young adults have to live up to their potential.

Highline College’s annual Global Fest, a cornerstone of the college’s 27th Annual Unity Through Diversity Series was a vibrant tapestry of cultures, showcasing the rich diversity of our world.

Hosted by the dynamic trio of Global Student Ambassadors, Muna Ali, Barok Yohannes Hailegiorgis, and Laiza Lim, the May 14 event attracted a large and enthusiastic crowd.

The stage came alive with an electrifying lineup of performances that captivated the audience. The powerful rhythms of Taiko drums set the tone, followed by the mesmerizing Oaxacan dances by Grupo Cultural Donaji. Eva Engelhard and Garvaundo Hamilton’s soulful singing

Rising college tuition and student loans are causing financial problems and economic risks. It’s a growing crisis that we must address for the sake of individuals, communities, and our economy as a whole.

The government has a key role to play. It should regulate colleges to ensure tuition hikes are justified by improvements in education quality. And crucially, it must take action to decrease student loan interest rates to alleviate the burden on students. This is especially important given that total student loan debt now exceeds $1.7 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve.

From the moment students wake up to the time they go to bed, music often plays a crucial role in their daily lives. Whether it’s the perfect playlist to help focus during a study session or a comforting song to heal a broken heart, music has the power to influence moods, productivity, and overall well-being.

Natalie Kim, a Highline College student, told the Thunderword about the role of music as a crucial part of her study routine.

As the Highline Thunderbirds gear up for the upcoming soccer season, the team is buzzing with anticipation under the leadership of newly appointed Head Coach Skyler Roehr. Roehr, who served as the assistant coach last year, steps into his new role with high expectations and a deep-rooted passion for Highline soccer, having played his final season with the Thunderbirds in 2018.

Last season, Highline came heartbreakingly close to capturing the NWAC Men’s Soccer Championship. The Thunderbirds finished as runners-up after a dramatic penalty shootout loss to Peninsula College. The match ended 2-2 after regulation and overtime, and the ensuing shootout extended to 11 rounds before Peninsula secured the title with an 11-10 victory.

Club América won consecutive championships and extended its record of Liga MX titles to 15 after defeating rival Cruz Azul 2-1 on aggregate in the Clausura 2024 final.

Thursday’s first leg ended with a 1-1 draw at Cruz Azul’s Ciudad de los Deportes Stadium. Sunday’s second leg at Club América’s Estadio Azteca ended with a score of 1-0 in favor of the team.

The Highline College men’s golf team concluded a commendable season with a notable performance at the NWAC Golf Championship, held at the scenic Apple Tree Golf Course in Yakima, Wash. Despite the tough competition, Highline standout player David Sibbett achieved a remarkable fourth place individually, underlining his skill and knowledge of the game.

This season, the Highline College golf team competed fiercely in several tournaments, building momentum and showcasing their talents. The culmination of Sibbett’s efforts was evident in the championship, where his performance was a testament to his consistency and ability to excel under pressure.

The 2024 season ends in a second-place finish for the Highline women’s tennis team, as they fell to a Spokane Community College with a 6-3 loss in the championship final. The season proved a rollercoaster of victories and setbacks, culminating in an exciting journey to the NWAC Championship.

Led by coach Laura Rosa, the season saw the team face tough opponents and made the six players truly prove their mettle on the court.

The season began with a dominant performance against Bellevue College, securing a solid 7-0 victory. Highline continued its winning streak with a convincing 7-2 victory over Spokane Community College. However, they faced tough losses against American River College and Menlo College, highlighting the challenges that awaited them.

The 2008 horror thriller “The Strangers” was for many years considered a cult classic, with eerie dialogue and morbidly fascinating character design keeping the film relevant throughout the years. As with anything, its continued popularity spurred several more movies.

“The Strangers”, loosely based on a few true stories of home invasions, follows a young couple as they are terrorized by a group of three masked strangers during a stay at an isolated cabin.

Starring Liv Tyler (“Lord of the Rings”, “Empire Records”) and Scott Speedman (“Underworld”) as a couple on the brink of a potential break-up, the movie is distinctive in that a fractured relationship must be put aside in order to survive together.

Centerstage Theatre closes its 2023-2024 season with “Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith”, a poignant family drama which follows the chaos that unfolds in an immigrant, Muslim-Egyptian family where the children of the family, all young adults in their own right, start to diverge and wrestle with the family values they’d been raised with.

The whole cast is stellar – bringing charisma, passion, and earnestness to their roles. The show itself is captivating and thought provoking, tackling powerful and heavy subject matter, mostly regarding religion, and the way those beliefs can become heavily intertwined with family dynamics, and an attempt to detangle the two and understand each other.

If you’ve played video games or at least have friends who do so, chances are you’ve heard about “Fallout”, the games series originally created by Interplay Productions/Entertainment, Black Isle Studios, and later by Bethesda. Set in a retro futuristic post-apocalyptic America after a devastating nuclear holocaust, “Fallout” is an RPG with a unique style known as dieselpunk.

Despite their games’ success, Interplay struggled financially for years, and eventually “Fallout” was sold to its current owners, Bethesda. Fast forward to today, and Bethesda has released multiple successful Fallout titles, which has led to the creation of Amazon’s Fallout series. ***Be warned, there are massive spoilers ahead.***

The game “Wuthering Waves” was released this month. According to the creators it’s a “story-rich open-world action RPG.” You start as the amnesiac character Rover, and you explore the world ahead of you.

The game had more than 30 million pre-registrations and the reveal stream has over 400k views. The game server opened around one and a half hours earlier than scheduled, leading many to be unprepared for the grand opening. Within the first ten minutes of the servers opening, over 100k accounts had been created already as signified by the user ID number.

“I Saw the TV Glow” is a captivating, heart wrenching film that perfectly encapsulates the lonely feeling of growing up queer in suburbia, and the confusion that comes when one doesn’t have the words to express it.

The film follows Owen, through middle school and high school all the way into adulthood, and his elusive friendship with a girl named Maddy.

They first meet when Owen is in seventh grade and Maddy is in ninth, and he strikes up a conversation with her about the book she’s reading: an episode guide to the fictional show, “The Pink Opaque”.

Have you ever wanted to play a game that lets you unleash torrents of magical destruction? Or do you simply wish to have conversations with dogs and skeletons alike? If that calls to you, consider playing “Baldur’s Gate 3”. “Baldur’s Gate 3” is a computer role-playing game (or CRPG for short), that allows you to adventure in the land known as the Forgotten Realms.

To those who may be unfamiliar with the genre, CRPGs are RPGs made originally for PCs and home computers. They’re designed a certain way with emphasis on intricate storylines and a simple yet effective gameplay style.

Netflix’s limited series “Baby Reindeer”, written by and starring Richard Gadd is a version of his own real-life experience with a crazed serial stalker. While stalking is the core element of the show, the deeper and more poignant theme is the human need to be known and the consequences of the perceptions of strangers.

Gadd portrays a fictionalized version of himself, Donny Dunn, opposite Jessica Gunning as his stalker ‘Martha’. The series is based on Gadd’s one-man stage play of the same name and with both presentations narrated by Gadd himself.

“Challengers” is director Luca Guadagnino’s latest film, which follows the turbulent relationships between its three main characters through the lens of their tennis careers. Unlike most love triangle romances, where one character is being chased by two others, this story gives each pairing equal attention, and showcases the ways the three get so deeply intertwined with each other over the years.

The movie itself is about tennis. Tennis is what connects Tashi Duncan, Art Donaldson, and Patrick Zweig. Art and Patrick had been best friends since boarding school, but once they meet Tashi at the start of their college tennis careers, a wrench is thrown in their friendship – they both like her, and she likes both of them, and they’re both sort of into each other, but none of them quite know how to make any of it work.

The search engine Google recently implemented an ‘AI Overview’ feature that is designed to summarize the search results of a user’s question. The AI Overview now pops up at the very top of the page with often unhelpful or factually incorrect information, replacing the typical links and data that used to make up this area.

Not only is the new feature distracting for many, the artificial intelligence has made a number of alarming mistakes during its debut month.

Pulling information from various sources on the internet means the AI is exposed to professional medical and news outlets, as well as user generated content on personal blogs, satirical websites, and social media. 

From plants and animals to fungi and bacteria, biodiversity is the remarkable variety of life on earth. Through its many forms and interactions, biodiversity performs valuable functions that support life itself, including humans. But as human activity is increasing the planet’s damage, we also face the risk of imbalanced ecosystems.

Biodiversity is the most complex system on our planet, as it provides plants, animals and humans with our most vital resources. It’s the sole responsibility of why we are here, and without it, there may be no future for humanity.

The company Boston Dynamics is the leader in the creation of dexterous robotics on a global scale. Their robots are revolutionary. Their robots can navigate. They can lift heavy objects. They can jump. But most importantly, they can dance.

Their first viral robot would be Atlas. Atlas is a hydraulic robot that stands on its own two feet. Atlas is a robot that walks, jogs, and jumps. With these abilities, Atlas is about to maneuver around. The power of Atlas’s hydraulics allows them to lift and throw objects, even to places above it. Atlas has dexterity, agility, and strength.

Virtual YouTubers (VTubers) are internet personalities who usually represent themselves through digital avatars. These avatars are typically in the style of anime. There are many different anime art styles and so there are consequently just as many styles for avatars.

These avatars have a few different methods with how they move. Most common would be Live2D. The most accessible are PNG-tubers. The most complicated of them are the 3D models. The avatars are controlled through either camera or trackers. Each of these methods has their pros and cons, it mainly comes down to preference.

Registration for summer and fall quarter is now open to all Highline Students. Summer quarter is shorter, more faced paced as it stretches over eight weeks as compared to fall classes, which last 11 weeks.

Summer begins June 24 and ends with exams being Aug. 14 and 15.

For students wanting to receive financial aid for the summer quarter, a separate form is required to be completed as it is processed differently than the typical academic year (fall-spring). Students must ensure they register for classes first and then fill out the Summer Aid Request Form.

Coming soon to a heater near you: Trailers that either tell you the entire plot of the movie or absolutely nothing at all. No doubt this is a familiar sentiment that has only grown in the last few years. At some point, trailers took a nosedive in quality, and now all we have left are trailers that spoil everything about a movie or series, or ones that are beyond vague.

Think back to the last trailer that gave you an idea of what the movie was about without showcasing all the twists and turns and ruining what makes them so impactful before you even see the thing it’s advertising.

Many anime fans can find it awkward talking about the genre due to some of its more toxic fans. Places like the main anime subreddit, r/Anime, often shows droves of users ranting about censorship of sexual content at every turn, even if it’s merely reducing the visibility of a female character’s undergarments.

Often it’s difficult for a more relaxed or “casual” fan to speak about it with others because of the large amount of overtly inappropriate content that somehow permeates almost every anime out there.

Disclaimer: Please consider where you are mentally and emotionally right now. The following article addresses and elaborates on the subject of abortion, sexual assault, and death.

Our campus received a visit from a group of men this past week. They brought with them enlarged photos of fetuses in an attempt to spread their belief that abortion is wrong, and nobody should have access to safe reproductive healthcare.  

It is clear to me that they did not come to fight for a woman’s right to choose to see her pregnancy to term. Women already have that right, and nobody has tried to take it away. Instead, they came here to prevent women from ever having that choice.

Dakota Johnson stars as the subtly-named Cassandra Webb in Sony’s newest attempt at money laundering: “Madame Web”. Boasting a 3.8 out of 10 stars on IMDb, a 13% critic rating, and 55% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, “Madame Web” is, in my opinion, actually not a bad movie – but perhaps the greatest Pepsi commercial ever made.

While product placement is a common aspect in film, especially modern film, “Madame Web” seems to hint at Spiderman characters as side plots to a larger, expanded “Pepsi Cinematic Universe” (PCU), which I personally find inspiring.

Even the climax of “Madame Web” is atop a giant Pepsi sign, wherein one of the letters falls off and crushes the villain, almost suggesting that the hero all along was Pepsi Cola, with some assistance from strong independent women. 

Taylor Swift is the talk of the town these days. Which town? Well, all of them really. The music icon continues to dazzle and delight while on the top of the world. Although she’s seen almost two decades of success and a plethora of awards, she may have just concluded one of the best weeks imaginable. 

Between the previous Sunday (the Grammys) and last Sunday (the Superbowl), the “Fearless” singer won a record-breaking fourth Album of the Year Grammy, announced the release of her 11th album, completed an international leg of her iconic Eras Tour to a sold-out crowd in Japan, oh, and she made it back to Las Vegas in time to watch her famous, arguably the best-there’s-ever-been tight-end boyfriend win the Super Bowl. It doesn’t get much better than that.

The long-fought war between dog and cat lovers is still ongoing. Dog people claim dogs as “man’s best friend”, while cat lovers claim loving cats requires a certain appreciation for individual autonomy. While these paradigms are a couple ways to look at the issue, there is also the extroverted dog versus introverted cat debate. Regardless, all animal lovers can agree that animals improve our lives.

According to Forbes, 66% of households own pets, and of those 66%, 46.5 million households have cats. While dogs beat them out for the majority, 46.5 million is no small number.