You pop your head out of your apartment door. It’s Monday, Sept. 11, 2017 — the day after Hurricane Irma hit. You and your roommates decide now that the storm has passed, it would be fun to navigate the great outdoors and investigate the damage Irma left behind.
Last week, I went to Midtown with wet hair.
When I tell people I am a journalism major, I am often met with wary looks. I have had some people make statements about how much money I will make. Others have the completely wrong image of what I want to do.
We were lucky. Other areas? Not so much.
During the past long weekend, I had a lot of time to reflect on how our community comes together when the possibility of a natural disaster looms over our heads. For one, it touched my heart to see just how close this community has become within the last week or so.
You slowly make your way into the Marston Science Library Starbucks, sleep-deprived and in desperate need of your favorite holiday beverage: the pumpkin spice latte. Yes, dear readers, it’s back.
I wanted to write about something political. I really did. I wanted to write about how I was told by two professors that class might be canceled either due to weather conditions or the violent threats of white supremacists. I wanted to write about the repeal of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
At this point, everyone has heard the saying chivalry is dead. Honestly, I don’t know whether that’s true, but I have some better news. Regardless of what the boys are up to today, I can affirm that humanity, at least, is still very intact.
Man created computers, but could computers be what ultimately brings mankind’s demise? With the advent of artificial intelligence in the last couple decades, computers have not only developed a mind of their own, but have become better at many of the things humans try to do. It is the classic tale of the apprentice rising up and turning on his master, and I fear we are quickly approaching the iconic moment in every film that has this sequence: the fleeting moment of stillness when the master realizes his fate and that his end will come from the exact thing he created.
There’s nothing like waking up in the morning and reading a column that makes your blood boil.
If you haven’t been living under a rock for the last week or so, you’ve probably read coverage on Hurricane Harvey.
At this point, we have seen our fair share of anti-Trump posts during his presidency. We realize, of course, that a lot of President Donald Trump backlash is driven by emotion. However, a lot of the resistance Trump is met with has been valid and important for Americans to take note of and discuss.
Yesterday, President Donald Trump announced his decision to end DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the controversial Obama-era executive order that allowed illegal immigrants who were brought here as children to remain in the U.S. and receive work permits. The fact is, DACA was the epitome of our nation’s foolish immigration policies, and President Trump was right to put a stop to it.
It’s not uncommon to feel like you have a million things to do but not enough hours in the day to get them done.
In an interview with Playboy, singer-songwriter Halsey recently opened up about the struggles of identifying with her black culture while being white-passing. Depending on what form of social media I saw this article, I either saw people supporting her — often those of multiple ethnicities who felt a struggle to connect with their cultures — or people telling her to grow up and just get used to the fact that she’s “white.”
As I start to type this, I can already envision your eyes rolling at the headline. Nonetheless, please hear me out. Trust me, I do know that anything said in Taylor Swift’s favor is shot down pretty fast, and I know there are a million reasons as to why, but this is important.
Over the summer, I had the opportunity to visit some of the most unique cities America has to offer. From New York to San Francisco, Savannah to Berkeley, the more culturally rich and fascinating cities of the country tend to also be home to some of the best bookstores on Earth. Comfortably nestled somewhere in the beating heart of a city, often miles away from the nearest Barnes & Noble or Target, the independent bookstore thrives.
You step into the ballroom, four hooded figures following you on either side. The figures on each end carry torches, and the others carry various gemstones. You recognize that one is an emerald, another jade and another topaz. The rest of the stones you can’t discern, despite having a masters degree in geology. The two figures nearest to you grab you by the arm and strap you down to a chair at the end of the ballroom. Someone pries your eyes open and forces you to stare into the light. The hooded figures assemble in front of you, each holding their gem in a different orientation and position. The light shining from the ceiling focuses into a beam, which begins to refract from one gemstone to the next. Once the light passes through the sixth gemstone, the beam hits your eyes, and everything goes white. Out of the whiteness comes a message, and upon reading it, your fears and doubts vanish. The message, of course, reads:
A Twitter search of the hashtag “goals” revealed to me a serious cultural problem. It led me to this tweet: “Today at Chipotle a girl asked her boyfriend if she could get chips with their meal and he replied, ‘It's your world babe I'm just living in it.’” It was followed by a few blank lines so that readers could soak it in before the Twitter user wrote, “Ok need.” It got 85,000 retweets.
College is a time for exploration and self-discovery. Hardly any of us will leave UF as the same person we were when we got here. Letting the experiences you have in college lead to change and growth is a normal and healthy thing to do during this time. What isn’t healthy or normal, however, is letting the people around you dictate how you change and how you grow.
Solutions by The State News
