Lindsay+Powell+Interview+Transcript

Nick Barts =N Steven Stehnach=S Lindsey Powell= L N: Who are you and when did you graduate? L: My name is Lindsey Powell and I graduated in 2005. N: And what activities did you do at West? L: Um, I played soccer my freshman year, I was in Student Council my freshman year, I helped make the frames at the old West, I was in NHS, and I was a volunteer worker for Mr. Stopka. N: Okay. L: That’s all I can think of right now. N: Um, what was it like transitioning from the old campus to the new one? L: Awful, absolutely terrible. All of the freedom was taken away, like you couldn’t even go outside, you couldn’t even open the windows. You can’t open the windows at the new West, and maybe the fact that I was going from an under classmen to an upper classmen too. I liked being an underclassmen. N: Why? L:Why? Uh, I don’t know, because I had older friends and that was fun. They could drive, oh and the whole parking lot situation at the new West I don’t like because I got into a car accident. N: Me too. Did you like the new or the old West better? L: The old West! S: You already answered that question. N: Um, what’s your favorite memory from high school, or more than one. L: Does it have to do with Belleville West? N: No. L: Probably all of the partying. Uh, that and meeting all the new people I guess. I went to Emge, so I got to meet a wide variety of individuals, including Kayla. N: What was your favorite memory about West? L: I don’t know. What’s an answer to that question? N: Did you like anything about it at all? L: I liked West. I liked meeting the people. I liked anatomy. N: Who was your favorite teacher? L: Mr. Stopka, Mr. Tallman, Mr. Brunner, Mr. Appell, Dr. Fraser. I have lots of favorites. N: Why do you like them? L:They’re pretty easy going. My favorite was Mr. Stopka. He’s pretty cool. N: What was your favorite class and why? L: Anatomy. I loved it. Well I had Ms. Gessford, and she wouldn’t let you get away with anything so it was a good class to prepare you for college. And I knew I wanted to go into the health field. We had devote an entire semester to dissecting a cat. We got to see its muscles and its bones. She was a really good teacher too. N: What were the sports teams like when you were there? L: Um, all I really remember about the sports teams is that at the old west the basketball team went pretty far. They were good. The football team was always pretty bad. Uh, soccer wasn’t too great, girls soccer anyway. Volleyball was good. That’s all I really know. S: How did West change while you were there? L: It got a lot stricter. S: What kind of restrictions? L: Um, well I guess you weren’t allowed to leave off campus. I always brought my cell phone and from the old West you could mildly text but at the new West you couldn’t. S: That’s not necessarily true. L: The rumor was that they had cell phone scramblers and we never had service. The only time you could really do it was in the cafeteria and we never had service. S: It’s kind of scrambled, but its okay. L: We could text in the locker room. I guess that, and the classes got a lot harder. Oh, another favorite teacher is Mr. Roger. I don’t know how I could forget him. S: Do you still talk to your friends from high school. That’s kind of a given. L: Definitely I do. I talk to a lot of them. Whenever I’m in Belleville. S: What do you do now? L: I graduated from Northern during a recession, so I couldn’t get a job. Now I’m taking classes at SWIC for medical technology. S: What did you do for fun when you were in high school? L: Um, I hung out with my friends a lot. N: You’re not going to get into trouble. L: I drank at parties. We went shopping. I don’t know, on occasion we would travel and stuff. I don’t know. S: What kind of music were you listening to? L: 105.7 the Point. Incubus. That’s my favorite band. Dave Matthews Band. N: Did you listen to rap music back then? L: No, I’m not a big fan of rap music. I hate country, I don’t listen to country or pop. I’m just more of an alternative kind of person. So anything on the Point. S: What was the style like? L: What was the style like? For some reason girls always wore belts. I just thought about it the other day. We always wore belts with our jeans, and I guess we don’t do that anymore. Um, I don’t know. Typically the little zip up things. I always wore a sweatshirt and a tye-dye shirt and holy jeans to school. Flip flops. Boys always wore khaki shorts. No more jean shorts. There were no skinny jeans back then. S: What year was the dress code? Was that the year after you left? L: Uh yeah. I was the last class to not have to succumb to that awful satanic ritual. S: What was your reaction to 9-11? L: Oh wow, I remember that exactly. I was a freshman and I was walking into Mr. Mitchell’s biology class, and his television was on. And no one knew why it was on, we only had it on when we watched movies. And the towers were just smoking. He let us but our bags down and we were just watching it. Second hour, I forget what we did. Oh, I was in health class, and there wasn’t a tv so we just had class. And then I went to English class with Ms. Hoelscher, and all she did was talk about it. She was one of the only teachers who talked about it and got feedback. But my reaction was definitely sadness. I didn’t really watch the news and I was like, why is this country attacking us? We didn’t do anything wrong, but in reality a lot was wrong. S: What did kids wear to school without the dress code? L: Uh kids wore whatever, except no spaghetti strapped tank tops for girls, and guys had to wear their pants up. They couldn’t be looking like fools with their pants on the ground. I don’t know. I was just real casual, some girls got really dressed up. Oh, the Dress for Success. Every Wednesday kids would wear business attire. They would wear something like you would wear to an interview. Um, and kids that wore that got entered in a drawing to win something. S: How many kids did that? L: Um, Kyle Wilson always did it. And Ms. Stevens made all her students do it. And I had a friend who was a cheerleader who used to complain about it because she didn’t have tons and tons of clothes to be wearing for it. And you know, girls can’t be seen wearing the same outfit more than once. N: Kayla said there used to be this girl that would wear prom dresses everyday? L: Oh, yeah. One time she wore fairy wings. Like, some kids wore whatever they want without being revealing. If the hippies wanted to wear their headbands and tye-dye shirts, and the preppy kids wanted to wear their polos and cardigans and stuff. Druggies could wear, I don’t know, yesterday’s clothes. Anyone could wear whatever. S: What were the racial demographics? L: Um, it’s a good amount. The African Americans kind of kept to themselves. I kind of recognized it more at the old West because they hung out in the N building. Um, but I mean, I don’t know. I guess I’m kind of being judgemental because I know what it’s like now. But I mean, there were still more white people than black people. N: Okay. Um, did you guys go to the sports games. L: Oh yeah, more when I was younger than when I was older. That’s the good place to be when you’re younger. I went to all the games when I was younger. A lot of my friends were cheerleaders so I went and hung out with them and other friends. We would just go and afterwards and stuff. When the West basketball team was really good we would go to those games. I think I went to one volleyball and baseball game. I don’t know. I wasn’t really into watching Belleville West sports? N: Is there anything you can think of that we didn’t ask? L: Um, I don’t know. Just basically how much better the old West was and I don’t understand why they make you guys wear uniforms. I mean it’s public school. Catholic school I understand because they can pay for them. But everyone should be an individual, and I think clothing is an excellent opportunity to express who you are. And like I said, and with the different groups of people, like the preppy guys wearing their Abercrombie, and the stoners wearing their Grateful Dead shirts, and then the jocks wearing whatever the school gives them to wear and the prestigious people who wanted to dress for success. I think that it is so silly that they took that away and make you act as one. It’s something that Saddam Hussein would do. N: Was it hard to transition schools? L: I guess not so much because I already knew people. But the part that all of us had problems with was that we were getting lost. We were in the same boat as the freshman. Something that was really helpful was the tardy bell. I want to say they introduced that sophomore year. Do they still have the tardy bell? S: Yeah they do. How many years were you at the old West? Two and two? L: Yeah, equal. N: Um, what did you do for NHS? L: Obviously I made bomb grades. And I like community service because it always looks good on a resume. Um, I liked to have the opportunity to be on NHS because I wasn’t an athlete or extreme scholar. My junior year at NHS we volunteered hours upon hours at the corn maze. And that was fun, there was a group of five of us and if someone raised the red flag we had to go find them. But no one ever did because it wasn’t that hard. But we did that. And senior year me and the same group volunteered at Roosevelt’s latchkey because it was more beneficial to realize how much I don’t like kids. But I mean like it was obviously a rewarding experience. And I wish there were more opportunities out there to accept kids like that because not any kid makes NHS, they are intelligent. Most kids are good, but some businesses frown upon it. I liked NHS, I didn’t like how early the meetings started or how crowded the rooms were. N: Did you do anything for prom when you were in high school? L: See, prom’s a tricky subject for me. I didn’t really do the whole prom committee thing even though I said I was going to. I just went and looked at it. I went to two proms my sophomore year and went to my prom junior year. But I didn’t go to prom senior year because I was kind of burnt out on it. I feel like it would be much more special if West let kids go somewhere else and had prom not at West. It’s too much stress, it’s very stressful for a girl. N: Was after prom still at Bel-Air Bowl? L: To be completely honest I didn’t go to after prom, but I think it was. S: I thought it was something recent. N: No. I think it’s been around for awhile. L: I think It was at Bel-Air Bowl. But I definitely didn’t go to after prom.