For most of his high school career, Louis lived in a way that he later came to regret. This piece is his investigation into why he did what he did, what made him stop, and, most importantly, if he's really changed for good. Louis tells his story in a straight-forward and engaging manner, often using conversations and interviews conducted with various figures in his life.

More and more these days Jeff finds himself thinking about race and being forced to answer the question "What are you?" "When I was younger - you know my father's black, my mother's white - that's the way it was supposed to be: father meant black person, mother meant white person. Race had no bearing on anything. To me, two Asian people could just have a black kid. It made perfect sense when I was younger."

This story is part of the Teenage Diaries series produced by Radio Diaries for NPR. Since 1996, Executive Producer Joe Richman has been giving tape recorders to young people around the country to document their lives. In December of 2012, Radio Diaries will revisit five of the original diarists 16 years after their first recordings. The series is broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered. 

In this piece, Winooski High School student Chelsey Russell interviews her grandfather about his struggle with alcoholism, and the role he hopes Jesus will play in his recovery. This piece was created during a religion unit in Kate Toland's world history class at Winooski High School in Winooski, Vermont.