During the week, I went over my old high school which is New Utrecht High School located in Brooklyn, NY.  I went around the time the students are dismissed which is 2:18PM. Getting off 79st stop on the D train, I can already hear the rowdy kids that’s near Dunkin’ Donuts right across from the school. I walk around to see if I can spot my little sister and her friends. As I’m walking around, I see one of her friends run up to me to give me a hug. My sister was wearing her white hijab, a neon green hoodie and regular blue jeans. Her friend, Ayah had her long brown hair down, wearing a white tee-shirt and black jeans. After meeting up with my sister and friends, I noticed they were smoking a stig (which is another form of a JUUL). A stig is a disposable e-cig that looks much like a USB drive and it comes in many different flavors. Walking into Dunkin’ Donuts and trying to grab a seat, I noticed that they weren’t the only ones smoking a stig or their JUUL. As I walked into Dunkin’ Donuts, it was just crowded with kids from New Utrecht. The manager, you can say, was trying to kick the students out who weren’t buying anything and was there to chill.

While being on my phone and jotting down notes, I was being observant and see what the kids were doing. I tried to act nonchalant and normal so the students don’t come to me asking what am I doing and bother me. I noticed that it was a norm to be smoking JUULs and stigs. I see kids young as freshmen pull their JUUL out and smoke out in the open.  I would overhear some of the football players asking one of the kids for “a hit from the stig.” I saw one football player wearing his green Utrecht practice jersey with the number 33 on the back of it go up to who I believe is his friend for a JUUL. I also noticed that athletes who shouldn’t be even smoking since their season as started were smoking and passing their stigs along to share around their friends. I stood around about an hour and a half just observing these annoying kids. One of the kid’s stig died when he was trying to smoke it. He immediately left Dunkin’ to the bodega which was right next to Dunkin’ to buy ANOTHER stig. I was in shock on how quick this young man was to go get yet another stig.

After an hour and a half, I was in complete disappointment to what society has become to; shaking my head and heading out of Dunkin’ Donuts, I see a bunch of students crowding around the bodega on the corner across the street. I was confused as to why there’s so many kids so I walked by to see what was happening. Nothing wrong was happening. It was just a bunch of high schoolers chilling around and smoking. This time, it wasn’t a JUUL or stig. It was blunts of weed. You can smell the aroma of weed when walking passed by them. Being that they’re ONLY high schoolers, them being around young as 16 and smoking at this age is just crazy to me. The D train stop is right next to the school so about every five to ten minutes, you would hear trains from both the Manhattan side and Coney Island side bound. The environment itself looks and feels dirty. There was garbage almost everywhere on the sidewalks and the air just felt really disgusting and nasty. Walking up the stairs to the train station and heading towards the Coney Island side to head on home, they were high schoolers also waiting for the train too. It was a bunch of maybe I could say 16-17 year olds just play fighting and goofing around near the tracks. They’re would be two boys play fighting and the others would watch, record or smoke. Overall, observing the high school students at New Utrecht high school gave me an insight on what goes on in today’s society and the trends in the younger generation.

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