The McChronicle b y R E P L A Y d e c e m b e r 2 0 1 9 i s s u e o n e INTRODUCTION BY HARINI REPAKA AND ALEX ZHANG Welcome to this first issue of the McChronicle, TAMS’ first newspaper! As we attended new classes and joined the TAMS family after the summer break, we also had lots of fun at many events and with many friends. We hope this newspaper helps you recollect the memories that made up our first semester of the 2019 - 2020 school year! Here are some of the things you can look forward to in this issue: T H E T A M S N E W S P A P E R b y R e p l a y | P a g e 1 IN THIS ISSUE TCS Cookbook and Club Announcements: Pg. 2 Club Feature (Replay): Pg. 3 Interview with Meg Winkler: Pg. 4 Humans of TAMS: Pg. 5 After a night of performances at Ambassador's Dr. TAMS , HOPE won the Crowd Choice Award for their performances by president Rayyan Khoja and junior Rithi Kowtha. "My experience at Dr. TAMS was pretty amazing, because not only did I learn more about various clubs at TAMS, but I also got closer to all the talented people representing each club. It was so fun to be able to bring our own personalities to the competition, and I truly loved the overall experience!I definitely plan on participating in it next year, because I'm so grateful for all the club execs who made it such a fun experience. I hope that I can help make it just as amazing for next year's juniors!" -Rithi Kowtha d e c e m b e r 2 0 1 9 t h e m c c h r o n i c l e T H E T A M S N E W S P A P E R b y R e p l a y | P a g e 2 "For Dr. TAMS, I represented HOPE with Rithi Kowtha as our junior representative. For the talent portion of the competition, Rithi and I performed an interpretive dance to the infamous “Mii channel music” dressed in suits. For the catwalk portion, we stuffed numerous articles of clothing into our pants in order to properly exhibit our voluptuousness as we proceeded to 'throw it back' for the audience." - Rayyan Khoja Junior Siddharth Thakur (right) and TAMS Medical Society President Wail Aldahni won the Judge's Choice Award for TMS. DR. TAMS BY HALLE SUMMIT Rithi Kowtha (right) and Rayyan Khoja pose for their picture before Dr. TAMS. FROM TAMS CULINARY SOCIETY'S COOKBOOK: PEACH COBBLER BY ERIC BAU Read for a quick peach cobbler recipe which tastes amazing. Great for all of your holiday needs! Ingredients: -½ cup unsalted butter -1 cup all-purpose flour -4 cups peach slices (about 5 fresh peaches) -2 cups sugar, divided-1 tbsp baking powder -1 cup milk -1 tbsp lemon juice (if using fresh peaches) -¼ tsp salt -Ground cinnamon or nutmeg (optional) 1) Melt butter in a 13x9 baking dish while the oven preheats to 375 degrees. 2) Mix flour, baking powder, 1 cup sugar, salt, and milk in a large bowl. 3) Mix until the dry ingredients are just combined and pour over butter - do not stir the butter and batter together. 4) Add sliced peaches, 1 cup sugar, and lemon juice to a saucepan on high heat, stirring constantly. Cook until sugar fully dissolves. If using canned peaches, skip this step. 5) our the peaches and syrup over the batter (do not stir). 6) Sprinkle cinnamon/nutmeg over the top.Bake at 375 degrees F for 40-45 minutes until golden brown. Serve when warm; vanilla ice cream a la mode is highly recommended. Source: https://www.myrecipes.com/recip e/easy-peach-cobbler ANNOUNCEMENTS Ballot is holding SciMUN on February 8th, and it's completely beginner- friendly! You can register on Ballot's website, and all profits go to charity! C L U B F E A T U R E : R E P L A Y B Y A L E X Z H A N G Throughout the year, we plan on highlighting various clubs' contribution to the TAMS community. For this issue, we chose Replay, the club that brings you the yearbook and this newspaper. The activities Replay does certainly aren't new, but the club is: last year, the Ion Newspaper and Yearbook boards chose to combine the clubs into one. Said last year's editor-in-chief Melanie Che, "We chose to combine the yearbook and newspaper clubs because we saw a lot of synergies between the two organizations. The goal of both clubs is to share TAMS memories and events with the student population, so it made logical sense to merge the two. Ultimately, staff support and general agreement among the executives led to the creation of Replay." As a new board, we were faced with a daunting task: bringing the club to engage more with the general TAMS community. One of the things we adopted was ION's tradition of Humans of TAMS. Partnering with Project Smile, we take weekly photographs and interviews of students nominated by the staff. Photography Head Raffer Li said, "I chose to have [Humans of TAMS subjects] in focus and the background super blurred out so that people can really focus on who is being pictured." You can read more about Humans of TAMS on page 3. When I asked Editor-in- Chief Khyathi Reddy what she was most excited about, she said she was "super excited to build a time capsule for the Class of 2020!" The capsule is a project we are starting in the spring, to be opened at the Class of 2020's ten- year reunion. Videography Head Alana d e c e m b e r 2 0 1 9 t h e m c c h r o n i c l e T H E T A M S N E W S P A P E R b y R e p l a y | P a g e 3 Park wants to commemorate our time at TAMS by capturing "small moments that I may not have been fast enough to capture with a camera. We are currently working on some interview with seniors, which I will repeat at the end of the year to see our growth." In addition, she'll be producing the senior video shown at the end of each year. Design Head Sydney Zhou puts her effort into the yearbook. When I asked her why she chose to be an exec, she said, "I really enjoyed my time on the photography team last year and I had previous experience... designing spreads." If you would like to help out with any of these projects, you can email us at tams.replay@gmail.com or message an exec. If you would like your club to be featured in a future issue of the newspaper, email us or contact Alex Zhang. A CONVERSATION Resident Assistants are a staple of college life—the dedication they put into helping their residents builds a sense of community in every dormitory. At McConnell Hall, the application to be an RA is a lengthy process. Applicants are required to provide references, a resume, and responses to six essay questions. This application reveals the reason behind TAMS’ use of Resident Assistants: our RAs have a second job, as they also have to act as mentors to high-school students. For this month’s newspaper, I interviewed my RA Meg Winkler, of Wing A200, to get a staff perspective of how the new school year was going. Originally from Temple, Texas, Meg is studying Technical Theater with a concentration in scenic painting and properties. Before Thanksgiving Break, I invited Meg to my room and spoke to her on behalf of Replay. “My stepmom was a TAMS student, and so I’ve been kind of emerged in the culture since I was a teenager,” said Meg when I asked her why she wanted to be an RA. It’s clear that she still has a unique appreciation of that culture. VOLUNTEERING: CIRCLE OF FRIENDS BY HARINI REPAKA In future issues, we hope to highlight volunteering opportunities at TAMS. This time, I spoke to Maansi Srinivasan about Circle of Friends. Although the interview was too long to put in this paper, the full article will be online. Hi Maansi, thanks for speaking with me. Tell me a little about FEE, which you are in charge of. FEE itself is a club and it stands for Facilitating Education Everywhere. What we do is help underprivileged schools around the Denton community. We are looking towards expanding. d e c e m b e r 2 0 1 9 i s s u e o n e T H E T A M S N E W S P A P E R b y R e p l a y | P a g e 4 by Halle Summit WITH MEG WINKLER So I wanted to talk to you about Circle of Friends, where I have volunteered. What is Circle of Friends and what is its purpose? Circle of Friends is a committee under FEE and it promotes volunteerism and helping out the community, especially [in] underprivileged schools. So the two schools we work with are McNair Elementary and Sam Houston Elementary, and both schools have been recorded on a list of having children who belong to financially underprivileged families. In addition to that, [many] also belong to broken families. Tutoring children with special needs is just another way to give back to the community and it also corresponds to the general mission of FEE. Could you provide a general outline of what Circle of Friends does? So a general outline is that we tutor kids, [including those] with special needs, and we have three groups of students who go [weekly on] Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. So we have one batch which is a junior lead batch and they go to McNair Elementary School and the other two batches go to Sam Houston Elementary School. Based on the placements [at] the beginning of the semester, [volunteers] are either placed with an individual with special needs, a regular student, or with a classroom. So they could either work in a classroom and help with [tasks including] passing out assignments [and] helping teachers out with mathematics concepts. So that is an example of what I do. To read the rest of our interview with Maansi, go to replaytams.com. Speaking about her residents, she said, “you don’t act like other teenagers [their] age.”“You’re really funny and mature,” she continued, “I could see myself being friends with all of you.” As one of her residents this year, I can personally see the relationships that Meg has helped cultivate throughout her wing. “I’ve always liked working with people who are younger than me, and I wanted more of a little sister relationship [with my residents],” she said. I think I can safely say that my whole wing loves Meg as our RA and appreciates everything she has done for us. She works really hard at her job and through it, gives back to the TAMS community in countless ways. Humans of TAMS This month, we partnered with Project Smile's TAMStar program to bring you interviews with twelve students who are taking initiative at TAMS, both in their social and academic lives. You can read all interviews at www.replaytams.com/humans-of-tams-1. d e c e m b e r 2 0 1 9 T H E T A M S N E W S P A P E R b y R e p l a y | P a g e 1 d e c e m b e r 2 0 1 9 t h e m c c h r o n i c l e 1) Tara Roshan, Senior 2) Grace Huang, Senior 3) Issac Matthew, Junior 4) Sai Sarnala, Junior 1) Lexie Kwon, Senior 2) Tara Roshan, Senior 3) Sage Copling, Junior 4) Harish Suryadevara, Junior 1) Aishwarya Mitra, Senior 2) Apsara Mitra, Senior 3) Puranjay Shori, Junior 4) Siddharth Thakur, Junior b y R e p l a y | P a g e 5 d e c e m b e r 2 0 1 9 i s s u e o n e THANK YOU FOR READING! HARINI REPAKA AND ALEX ZHANG Though the first semester of the year is almost over, there is plenty yet to come. Our goal for future McChronicle issues is to detail the stories of TAMS that don’t get told (personal stories from staff members, students, and other members of the community) and the opportunities that don’t get sold (from small clubs and committees to activities entirely outside of TAMS’ clubs). We hope to improve ourselves in any way possible so if you would like to make any suggestions or give feedback to the newspaper creators, please contact us. Also contact us if you have an idea for how you could contribute to the paper. You don't need to be part of our team to write! T H E T A M S N E W S P A P E R b y R e p l a y | P a g e 6 d e c e m b e r 2 0 1 9 d e c e m b e r 2 0 1 9 t h e m c c h r o n i c l e CONTACT US Email: tams.replay@gmail.com Message: Alex Zhang, Writing Head OUR TEAM Alex Zhang, Writing Head Halle Summit Harini Repaka CONTRIBUTORS Eric Bau and TCS Khyathi Reddy Raffer Li Alana Park Sydney Zhou Fre'Dasia Daniels