Evan Howell

      After watching the citizen four documentary, I found what stuck out to me the most was actually a personal experience related to when Snowden initially released the information. My parents growing up always told me to be careful with what I do or say online. They were very cognizant of my online presence, ie what I was looking up and or who I was talking to. They had mentioned that nothing I do online is private, and that someone is basically always watching. What they meant in this case was more than likely they as parents knew everything I was doing. That comment always stuck with me for whatever reason. Fast forward to when I first remember Snowden being in the news, I remember thinking "oh, my parents were right". I also found it very interesting that someone blowing the whistle on surveillance in a free country has to hide. This to me is very counterintuitive, and is arguably worse than the surveillance itself.

My experience with Hurricane Helene was much better than that of my peers. I live 30 minutes away from Boone, down the mountain. We had quite a bit of rain, and the wind was pretty intense. Trees fell in my neighborhood, and we lost power around 8 a.m. on Saturday. My dad and I went about 10 miles up the road to get a generator. The roads on 421 weren’t too bad, and it honestly just looked like a severe thunderstorm. The storm where I live was extremely mild compared to every surrounding county, which was mind-blowing. I had no idea how severe the storm was until around noon or 1 p.m., when my Instagram and TikTok feeds were flooded with videos of the surrounding counties. I was able to communicate with my peers on Discord, and that’s when I realized this was going to be a major disaster. One notable thing in the days following the aftermath was that with the power being out, I saw families walking around and talking to each other. People were cooking on grills and sharing meals with o...