Synopsis: The author, Elisha Cooper, spent a year documenting the lives of 8 students, mostly seniors, at Walter Payton High School in Chicago. 
Review: When you spend your days reading YA novels like Gossip Girl and Gingerbread, you tend to view high school as a place where a bunch of shallow, back-stabbing, albeit totally together and well-coiffed, brats come together to compare notes. Ridiculous/ Hilarious/ Terrible/ Cool reminds jaded adults like myself that this is so not the case. This book reminded me that it's not easy to be a high school student, and it's particularly hard to be a senior. Work, tests, college application essays, dance, theater, soccer, student council and other extra-curricular activities in and out of school - it's enough to give any adult anxiety, let alone 17-year-olds. How do they do it? And in the case of 6 of the 8 students observed in this book, how do they do it so well?
Daniel is the high school class president. He's applying to Harvard, but knows that it might be tough because his ACT scores and grades aren't as high as they could be. He sells shoes part-time. Emily is the captain of the soccer team. She's won numerous awards for her talented playing, as well as being a scholar-athlete. She's applying to Yale. She's hopes an Ivy League degree will lead to making a lot of money and attain her power. Maya dreams of being an actress and hopes to attend NYU. Diana is on the Payton swim team. She would love to be the first person in her family to attend college. Her three older siblings didn't go to college. Currently they don't even work. Aisha is the only new student in her class, and the only Muslim, but she doesn't let it bother her too much. Her parents are both engineers, and she's used to being the new kid and being alone. It's only another school year to her. Beautiful Anais just wants to dance, and if she can stay injury free, it will be either Juilliard or Indiana for her.
Anthony and Zef are the strugglers of the bunch. Anthony, a junior, hardly ever goes to class. He sits in his same spot in the cafeteria pining over The Girl. He'd like to get it together enough to play football for the school, but he just can't seem to get focused. Zef, also a junior, stays up all night working on his music. Consequently, he can't stay awake in class. He's well liked by his classmates, but something has to change if he desires to become a senior at Payton.
Walter Payton High School is a good high school. Teens from all over Chicago apply to become students, and with the motto "We nurture leaders," it's no wonder so many kids want to go to this new school. It's also no wonder that so many of the students observed succeeded in accomplishing their goals, or at least most of them. Having said this, make no mistake, Walter Payton is still an urban high school. The infamous Cabrini Green Housing Projects loom to the West of the school. It is diverse with a third of the students being black, a third white and a third Latino, and with a small percentage of Asian students. Expectations are high, and security is tight. It's not easy to succeed at Walter Payton. What these six seniors accomplished is pretty impressive. As for the juniors, Anthony and Zef, they have another year to get it together, and the reader has no doubt that they will. This book definitely fills one with hope for future generations.
