Opinion | Columns - The Independent Florida Alligator

OPINION | COLUMNS

We get by with help from our friends: It’s important to be selfless sometimes

Apr. 11, 2017

The human race is intrinsically a selfish bunch. When we’re born, we are strictly self-serving. We exist only to keep ourselves alive and to advance ourselves to the point where we can do this without help. We communicate our needs by crying, screaming or doing whatever it takes to get our parents’ attention, and once this is complete, we just head on back to whatever we were doing before we decided we needed something.

OPINION | COLUMNS

You can’t heal your broken ego from the inside

Apr. 11, 2017

I ended last week’s column with an image of a man limping through life with a broken leg. I made the comment that this image captures the problem with our cultural dictum: “Believe in yourself.” The meaning behind my comment is twofold. First, people generally suffer from self-doubt, a certain awareness that all is not well within one’s self, or from an inability to feel affirmed, confident and whole. Second, the solution to this problem cannot be believing in one’s self because the problem lies primarily within the self. Thus, the image of a man who thinks he can mend his leg by walking on it.

OPINION | COLUMNS

I spent the past year writing a sixty-page thesis

Apr. 10, 2017

In all honesty, I’m still not entirely sure why I decided to write a thesis. Maybe I decided to do it because I like making my own life difficult. Maybe I like having something to complain about at all hours of the day. Maybe I just wanted to be able to say, “I have to work on my thesis” out loud, leaving friends and strangers alike dazzled by my dedication to long-form academic inquiry.

OPINION | COLUMNS

Mistakes, misunderstandings and nature of jazz

Apr. 9, 2017

As with most cliches and motivational quotes, I’ve forgotten where I first heard the following one regarding jazz music. It goes something like this: “When you play the wrong note once, it’s a mistake. When you play it again, it’s jazz.” On first pass, it seems like a subtle jab at jazz music as a genre, as if every jazz musician out there just hits wrong keys all the time, muttering something to the effect of, “Yeah, man, it’s interpretive art. You wouldn’t understand.”

OPINION | COLUMNS

Gorsuch confirmation: A Senate turned sandbox

Apr. 6, 2017

By now, the U.S. Senate may already have dispensed with tradition and confirmed Judge Neil Gorsuch by simple majority. They would have done this by invoking what is dramatically termed the “nuclear option” — a process by which Senate rules are changed to allow a confirmation vote of Supreme Court nominees with 51 (instead of 60) votes.

OPINION | COLUMNS

When we ask questions of moral 'good' or 'bad,' we are missing the point

Apr. 4, 2017

What makes a person good or evil? For many, the answer lies in intent and individual responsibility. Today, I’m going to tell you why it has little to do with either. At least, not in the way you think.

OPINION | COLUMNS

Believe in something else besides yourself

Apr. 4, 2017

I can’t count the times I’ve heard a pop icon or a public figure say, “Just believe in yourself.” A famous person is asked something along the lines of “How did you get to where you are today?” and the response is normally the same: “I believed in myself.” It is said so often that it has become a platitude. But why is it said? And what does it actually mean?

OPINION | COLUMNS

Find what you’re passionate about, and pursue it

Apr. 3, 2017

Passion. What a word. As college students, this word probably means a lot to a good number of us. We’re told time and time again to major in something we love and to join organizations centered around ideas we’re passionate about. The funny thing about this is that when we first arrived on campus armed with twin XL sheets and a shower caddy, a lot of us may have thought we knew what we were passionate about, only to change our minds a little further down the road.

OPINION | COLUMNS

When pondering theories, focus on getting everyone on the same page

Apr. 3, 2017

The other week in my English theory course, we were talking about sexuality, feminism and the issues of gender. Specifically, we were dissecting works like Michel Foucault’s “The History of Sexuality,” Donna Haraway’s “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s” and Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble.” If you know any of the three of these works, then you’d know they all share one thing in common: density. These works are all so dense that it takes a significant amount of poise to parse through them, though even at times, I find the lazier side of myself resorting to calling their arguments “wack” and closing the book.

OPINION | COLUMNS

Student fees shouldn’t go toward hateful speakers

Apr. 2, 2017

When a liberal speaker comes to UF, there’s conservative outcry. “How come we never get any conservative speakers?” they say. They claim to be suffocated by safe spaces, when their safety was never actually threatened. Yet when there’s opposition to a conservative speaker, those on the other side of the political spectrum are called snowflakes and crybabies.

OPINION | COLUMNS

I am grateful for the elements of my 20 years and look forward to 21

Apr. 2, 2017

I recently read a collection of short essays by Oliver Sacks titled “Gratitude.” These essays, particularly “My Periodic Table,” got me thinking about my own experiences, and this got me writing about my life.

OPINION | COLUMNS

Don't focus on protesting individuals

Mar. 30, 2017

About two months ago, a man wearing an armband depicting a swastika stood firmly on Turlington Plaza. Jewish professors came to his aid to ensure he was not harmed. Passionate students came forward in art and song to discredit his hate. Well-meaning as his opponents were, he still got the attention he wanted, and a debate sparked on campus about the nature of free speech and how far the public is willing to limit that sacred right for the safety of all.

OPINION | COLUMNS

The average American city is boring, but that is OK

Mar. 30, 2017

In a short piece for The New Yorker, Cirocco Dunlap describes the wandering between New York City and Los Angeles that was much of her young adulthood. From within the limits of each city, the other seems much more appealing, yet when she gets there, the culture and habits of the locals only make her long for the place she just left. Back and forth, she wavers between both ends of American culture, eventually ending by stating “halfway between New York and L.A., I imploded. I am so much happier now.”

OPINION | COLUMNS

No man’s land: in between pro-life and pro-choice

Mar. 29, 2017

I’m not a big fan of Tomi Lahren — never have been. The 24-year-old ultra-conservative pundit from TheBlaze has made a career, if only for a few years, by belching her intentionally inflammatory opinions to arouse a like-minded right-wing audience. But last week, she finally said something of interest while appearing as a guest on “The View.”

OPINION | COLUMNS

Don't settle for face value and stop relying on social media for your news

Mar. 28, 2017

When the president of the U.S. uses Twitter to get his message out, it’s safe to say that Twitter has become part of mainstream media consumption. With 140 characters or less, there’s a lot of room for misinterpretation or misrepresentation of the facts.

OPINION | COLUMNS

Is ‘law enforcement’ actually what we want?

Mar. 28, 2017

There has been some debate about the ethics of so-called sanctuary cities. Let’s look at one argument against non-compliance with federal law enforcement and whether it holds up.

OPINION | COLUMNS

Don’t be ashamed of your cheap taste; cherish it

Mar. 27, 2017

In my time at this university, I’ve found the college experience often presents a fascinating intersection of tastes. Some of us consider ourselves full-blown adults, while others lean more towards an “adult-lite” classification, resulting in a hilariously wide variety of hedonistic preferences.

OPINION | COLUMNS

Why fictional shows like anime can be a source of inspiration in our lives

Mar. 27, 2017

I’ve always been an anime fan, and I’ve never been too keen on hiding it. That’s not to say I go around wearing metal head covers or writing names in my black journal, but if anyone asks me, I’m never shy. In fact, it hypes me up. I love talking about new anime or what will happen in the next episodes of unfinished shows. However, what I want to talk about today is not which anime I think are worth watching, but how I got into anime, and why you should, too.

OPINION | COLUMNS

Why it's ridiculous to slash funding from the National Endowment for the Arts

Mar. 26, 2017

Let’s think about what the figure 0.00003 percent means. Imagine taking a test with 1,000 questions on it and getting three questions correct. That’s pretty awful, right? It’s bad enough you only got three questions right, but at least you got something. Now imagine you got three questions right, but then you wanted to retake it. You were hoping to get maybe four or five right this time. Nothing too crazy, but a small improvement would be nice. Instead, you get the test back to see you didn’t get any questions right. Out of 1,000, not even one. Think about this, but instead imagine you didn’t take a test at all. Imagine you are a government agency relying on funding, and you only receive 0.00003 percent of the budget. Then imagine your portion is out of your control, but you hoped maybe you could at least keep your tiny, tiny slice of the pie. Instead, you discover you’ve been eliminated completely.

OPINION | COLUMNS

The importance of a generation of problem solvers

Mar. 26, 2017

Last Thursday, standing among more than 100 fellow students and poster boards at UF’s Undergraduate Research Symposium, I presented my research project, which aimed to understand and evaluate Common Core — the guidelines that have helped shape our current educational system. Across from me, one student explained her research on autism. Across the room, another expounded on her analysis of French literature. All throughout the vast ballroom we had populated with our projects, images of microscopic cell scans and medical illustrations bumped up against statistical analyses and comparative charts: A metaphorical handshake between the science, technology, engineering and mathematics field and the humanities came to life.