With technology advancing every day, it’s not hard to visualize a world where your doctors, teachers, and lawyers become computer programs. Jobs are becoming increasingly harder to get, or even to find-and being average is no longer enough. Competition for jobs is high with increasing technology. Jobs are being filled by machines and robots; and when it comes down to it, it’s the people who put themselves and their work out there that will stand out and succeed in this competitive, technology dependent world. Tiger Scholar is an online tool accessible to all Joliet West students that can be viewed by anyone with access to the internet; which, nowadays, is anyone. Anything from photography to poems to biology labs can be published here by simply emailing the work you want to submit to a team of honors English students, who will then look at and upload your work to the website. It’s this exact type of exposure that colleges look for, and they may do just that!

Though Tiger Scholar will only publish work from Joliet West students, it is open for the public eye. Published work can be viewed and commented on by your peers, teachers, parents, and anyone else who comes across your piece. Joliet West teachers and staff want nothing more than for their students to succeed-and they know better than anyone that colleges are becoming pickier and pickier. “Colleges like that,” said Mr. Hackney, an honors English teacher at Joliet West, “when students are confident and put their work out there to be seen.” 22 credits and 40 hours of community service to graduate seems easy enough, which is exactly the problem. A C-average student who does an hour or two of community service every other weekend can graduate high school. It’s the students who do more, learn more, and want more that will make a name for themselves. “I would publish my work onto Tiger Scholar, because it’s a good way to get constructive criticism and practice real life exposure of your work,” said Mary Talarico, a freshman student at Joliet West. It’s no secret that the real world has pretty high expectations. A click of a button now could mean a job or entrance into college later. In a world that’s all about simple and efficient, Tiger Scholar is the most of these things.