As 2017 nears its half birthday, it is only fair for people to reach a progress report-type summary of successes and failures. Society collectively established 2016 as a bad year, even though life as a whole is a photo of us with a radial blur filter. The only ones who truly decide this fate of perpetual misfortune are us.
The phrase my mother consistently used to persuade me to clean my plate at dinner gradually became more personal as I got older and as our country started entering hysteria. That phrase was, “There are starving children out there.” These children are not those we are appropriated to believe come from charity commercials. These children take the form of my family and other oppressed people in Venezuela.
President Trump fired FBI Director Comey, a move that was long overdue
If you’ve scrolled through social media recently, you’ve probably seen references to a new television show. It’s called “13 Reasons Why.” Now, before you aggressively leap to a positive or negative reaction to those three words, hear me out. I’m not going to spoil anything other than the general premise, so if you haven’t watched the series, don’t worry about me ruining it for you.
I have heard many times that “time” is one of those things you cannot get back. I also find myself occasionally repeating this same message when giving advice. It makes sense that time won’t be given back to you, and you should cherish it, but I feel people abuse the saying — even for the smallest of things.
The hallways of The Carolina Inn on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are filled with photographs and paintings of people who made a difference in the university’s 228-year history. After staying in the inn for three nights last month, I felt like I had a sense of how UNC was influenced by the two centuries of faculty, staff and alumni whose likenesses lined the halls.
My faded black Jimi Hendrix T-shirt was drenched in sweat as I walked across UF’s campus on a blistering August day.
With graduation nearing, you might be feeling a bit stressed.
I love science fiction. My favorite works come from the ‘60s and ‘70s, when novels like “Childhood’s End” and “Stranger in a Strange Land” crystallized the genre, pioneered by writers like Isaac Asimov, of utopian speculative fiction. Don’t get me wrong, “Alien” and “Blade Runner” hold a special place in my heart, but there was an optimism in “Star Trek” that seems to have been fading since writers like William Gibson and Philip K. Dick popularized stories of a grim, dystopian future.
Due to the increasing pervasiveness and equal awareness of obesity as a health problem, especially in the U.S., it has become a truism today to inform the public about caring for themselves and their bodies. I’m quite aware of this beneficial trend in fitness, and I’m a firm believer in the idea that “your body’s a temple, and you should worship it.” However, in a quasi-paradoxical fashion, I also believe you should go out into the great unknown and destroy yourself if you must.
Nearly two years ago, I received a text from the newly appointed Alligator opinions editor while on a Greyhound bus full of potential sorority girls barreling down Museum Road toward Pi Beta Phi. It read, “Hey. Do you want to have a column in the Alligator?” Immediately, I thought to myself, “Hell no.” Yet for some unbeknownst reason, I texted back, “Sure, when do I start?”
I have seen many of the photographs. I have read the news. I have cringed as I read through tweets about the crisis in Syria, where more than 80 people, including children, died in a chemical gas attack on April 4, and then hated myself for cringing when I should be translating that sorrow and disgust into action. So today, I provide you — by way of researching this myself — ways we can support Syrian refugees.
His name is Jared Kushner, and you probably have never heard of him. If you have, then it is only for being the husband of one of the most influential women in the world at the moment: Ivanka Trump. But what many do not know about Jared Kushner is just how significant a role he currently has in the White House, and as he is a man of very few words, this has been a cause of concern. Since long before Election Day, Kushner could be found lurking in the shadows of President Donald Trump as he made his cantankerous, political-landscape-altering, scorched-earth trek through America. The Trump campaign might have had a revolving door of campaign managers and aides, but it was the reserved Mr. Kushner who, as we are now learning, led Trump to the presidency.
The U.S. has seen a boom in feminism lately, something that I, a long-time nasty woman, should be elated about. However, and much to my own dismay, I’ve come to realize this new wave of feminism is nothing to be exciting about.
Seven-hundredths of a second.
There’s an ailment afflicting young people today. It’s not a disease or a behavioral epidemic, but an idea. It is an idea that affects our entire approach to intimacy. It stems from our phobia of discomfort, of appearing foolish or being declined. It is the idea that there exists such a thing as a “right moment.” Allow me to elaborate.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
Solutions by The State News
