Most of the time, students find themselves engaging in activities that help them cope with the stress of college. Some of these include overeating, getting emotional or trying new relaxing experiences. Sadly, some of the students start to get involved with harmful activities that dissociate them from their anxiety.
Hello, everyone. To those of you who don’t know me, my name is Zachary Lee. To those of you who do know me and enjoy the column, I sincerely thank you for your time, and I’m glad you’ll be joining me again this Fall. To those of you who do know me and don’t like my column, thanks for reading it anyway. I’m grateful you read the column the way I watch Fox News: to hear the other side of the conversation.
No one calls me “Open Mike.”
Frank Ocean’s name will forever be linked to my languid, quiet Gainesville summers and feelings of intense disappointment. With so little to do in this collegiate ghost town, any word of the neo-soul artist’s elusive and highly anticipated second studio album was guaranteed to make my day. Ocean’s acclaimed debut studio album “Channel Orange” was the soundtrack of my waning high-school years and my personal introduction to how alternative rhythm and blues could sound and feel. “Pyramids” constantly streamed out of my car’s stereo, mixing with the sounds of teenage prattle and late nights on the interstate. So when the hype surrounding his next album began to reach a fever pitch, I was undoubtedly invested.
I am exhausted from the emotions of the past few days.
I could use this column to tell you how much I love Gainesville and the surrounding areas — places where you can swim in a cave at Devil’s Den, join the drunken zoo that is Midtown or watch thousands of bats fly into the sunset at UF’s Bat Barn and Bat House.
Over the past two years I’ve learned a lot, and it has been an immense privilege to be able to share my opinion with all of you once a week. I had my first opinion piece published in a newspaper when I was thirteen, and since then it has always been a thrill to see my writing in print, but also somewhat terrifying!
The health of our unborn children is at stake — if they are born in Florida, that is. Everyone should run for the hills, aka somewhere that isn’t flatland Florida. What with the sudden lightning storms that can crop up at any minute, the 14 cases of Zika infections found in the Wynwood area of Miami-Dade, the alligator attacks, the vicious road rage due to our standstill traffic and a host of other dangerous occurrences that happen daily in our “sunshine” state, nowhere is safe. Even the people here have been lumped together as the crazed “Florida Man.” National headlines read, “Florida Man accidentally shoots himself during job interview at elementary school” and “Florida Man attempts to smoke crack in ICU, almost burns down hospital.” It’s no wonder the people here are close to self-immolating.
In the opening scene of the adored Disney classic “High School Musical,” an eclectic set of multi-dimensional and well-intended teenagers burst out of a classroom in song, vividly expressing the excitement of the summer vacation to come. For those of you whose teenage blunder years were also not nearly as animated as this scene, there was one student made for us. In the back of the classroom, for the entirety of what is really just this obnoxious flashmob, an adolescent young man lays head-in-arms on his desk.
Smaller pieces create what we consider life. Therefore, understanding the building blocks of existence makes us not researchers, but rather seekers of understanding. These were the welcoming words of Dr. Juan Manuel Lopez-Alcorocho, the director of quality control of Amplicel, on the first day of my internship.
Throughout high school, I spent my weekday mornings watching “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” before having to catch the bus for school. As the complexity of classes increased, so did the need for a working knowledge for the world around me. But traditional news shows were too biased or analysis on economic policy was followed by the latest fashion trends. So, like many teens, I felt the best way to catch up on current events was to watch satirized segments to truly understand what was going on.
For the past seven weeks I have been engaged in an intensive language program, studying Yoruba for eight hours a day. I have studied and speak six other languages, including Swahili and Arabic, and I can say with complete certainty Yoruba is by far the most challenging and difficult of them all.
My roommate, a modest conservative, had to endure the sight of me last week going full-fetal on our sofa, hugging a pillow, while I watched Fox News coverage of the Republican National Convention. “Why are you even watching this?” he asked, knowing full well my left-of-center views. “It’s like a train wreck,” I replied. “You just can’t look away.”
On July 15 in Istanbul, Turkey, soldiers closed the two bridges across the Bosphorus, the first indication that elements of the army were planning to remove the government of President Recip Tayyip Erdogan. In Ankara, the national capital, other soldiers took control of television stations and shelled the parliament building. President Erdogan had to use social media to rally his supporters. But by morning it was all over with Erdogan in full control.
First, it’s a way you can change the world. We need to produce more food over the course of your working lives than we have in the past 10,000 years. We’re not going to get there if people like you don’t come up with the scientific advances.
The lights were hot on a stage that could barely fit the ringleader’s ego. Inside the tent, a frenzied audience, crying out with ayes and nays, hollered when the silhouette of a man awkwardly moseyed on stage. With a flourish of hand gestures, albeit tiny ones made with tiny fingers, he grandly introduced his prized lioness: Melania Trump. And so went the first night of the “Republican National Circus.” On the second night, dozens of entertainers, a UFC president and a pro golfer among them, paraded to the stage to excite an audience thirsty for Democratic blood and a Republican victory. Meanwhile, spectators at home and commentators on TV marveled at their performances, a series of acts that would make the Ringling Bros. proud.
Pokemon will celebrate its 20th birthday this year. Since 1996, 721 pocket monsters have come into creation, 73 different video games can possibly be played and 21.5 billion trading cards have shipped globally. Nintendo released “Pokemon Go” two weeks ago, and the free game has added $7.5 billion to Nintendo’s market value. The game has already surpassed Facebook and Twitter in daily active users. Nintendo’s newest creation satisfies the yearning for the nostalgic days wasted on Game Boys. However, as the new game can no longer be played sitting in the corner, walking around with a phone glued to one’s face yields some danger.
The past few weeks have been troublesome for our country. Rather than add my voice to the chorus (read: cacophony) of those opinionating, I chose to listen, weighing the implications of cyber grief and outrage.
Solutions by The State News
