Tomorrow's weather
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
Warm tomorrow; it will be mostly cloudy.
Kansan
Tuesday
April 27, 1999
Section:
Sports today
Check out the web site of the day. It describes how everyday items and machines work including guitars, telephones, smoke detectors and radars. http://www.howstuffworks.com
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Online today
Vol.109·No.139
Two-sport, All-American Ray Evans died last weekend.
SEE PAGE 1B
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THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
(USPS 650-640)
Letting go of the Dream
Every year,1,500 students apply to the University of Kansas School of Medicine but only about 200 are accepted. Those who are rejected must rethink their life goals.
by EZRA SYKES
illustration by JASON WJLLJAMS • photo by MAGNUS ANDERSSON
It was 9:30 that winter morning, way too early for the mail. Ryan Durley went to check anyway.
Pursley went to check any way. To his surprise, the letter had arrived. He pulled it out of his mailbox, confident it was The One. It was thick. It was heavy. That reassured him.
Pursley tore open the envelope. Fear crept up his throat as he failed to find a "congratulations." He skimmed the page and finally came to the number 52, a number that changed his life. It was clear now. He had failed.
"I set it down, sat back and was just kind of numb," Pursley said. Pursley was 52nd on the University.
Puwas was 52nd on the University of Kansas School of Medicine waiting list for Fall 1999. His dreams of attending medical school had been shattered. The med school usually only made it down to alternates No. 25 or 30.
Call it heartache or call it a reality check. When the rejection letter to medical school arrives, the interest on those years of emotional investment comes due.
Those who are accepted to med school will become what some call the last of the American heroes. Their futures hold money, prestige, and the
chance to hold human lives in their hands.
Those who are rejected are left to wonder along with their families and friends why the process seems so arbitrary. They are left to try to answer the question that nobody seems to be able to answer: Why not me?
That question struck Pursley hard after the news of his rejection set in.
The Letdown
Since Pursley's high school days, attending medical school was an integral part of his plan for life.
"When something like that happens, you want to know so badly why it happened," he said. "I was so sad that I had not succeeded in exactly what I'd been trying to do for so long."
For most, med school rejection is the first taste of real failure they have encountered. Out of the thousands who apply to med school, only about half will get in. But those who don't make it are still good students, students with GPAs that the average student would envy.
Hilary Heffey remembers going straight to her bedroom and bawling after receiving her rejection letter from KU medical school.
"I had gone through my whole life and never really had a hard time succeeding
in anything I'd done," she said. "I always thought that if I just worked hard I would be successful. The rejection letter said to me: 'Not necessarily.'"
Students applying to med school invest huge amounts of time, money and emotion in a process that begins as early as 6 or 7 years old, when they first dream of being doctors, said Sandra McCurdy, assistant dean of admissions for the University of Kansas School of Medicine.
From the two semesters of organic chemistry most premed students suffer through, to the application fees they must pay, to the hours they spend saturating themselves with admissions-test material, these students become slaves to their high aspirations.
The letdown when these aspirations are dashed is severe. Tears and depression are common.
City, KU officials debate joint bus system efforts
After absorbing the contents of his rejection letter, Pursley called his father in Wichita to tell him what had happened. It was Rick Pursley's day off from his recently remodeled veterinary clinic. There wasn't any ranting or raving, said Pursley, his father just tried to console him.
Pursley then called his girlfriend. She told him to look on the bright side.
See MISSING on page 6A
By Nadia Mustafa
nmustafa@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Despite apparent support for a joint citywide bus system between the University of Kansas and the City of Lawrence, administrators and city officials are hesitant to establish a public transportation task force or endorse the bus system.
Although the new city commission
claimed to favor public transportation and students cast an overwhelming 3,714-340 vote to begin negotiations with the city, Tom Moore, outgoing Student Legislative Awareness Board campus director, said the outlook for the formation of a task force was not good.
He said the task force would allow for direct student input to the city but that the Lawrence City Commission would draft a baseline plan for public transportation with or without KU On Wheels.
Moore is in favor of having a task force for public transportation.
He said the task force would consist of city officials, administrators, students and other community members and would discuss issues such as costs and shared control of the system.
Moore said he would not abandon his attempts to secure support for a task force, which would be modeled after the alcohol task force.
Provost David Shulenburger said that he wasn't sure a task force would be the most productive option.
"I'm in favor of keeping the issue moving," he said. "But it's a complex issue. Sometimes a task force is not the most productive way to move."
Shulenburger said that the University would have to participate in discussions about public transportation because it would inevitably be involved either directly or indirectly, but he suggested that KU On Wheels representatives meet with the city commission and make clear their willingness to provide input.
Mike Wildden, city manager, said that he was not sure whether a task force would be the best option to examine public transportation. He said that he was
waiting for the city commission to tell him what it meant by "public transportation" before he would take any action.
"I don't know if another committee will help a lot," Wilden said. "I'm not super-excited about another big committee to try to figure out what public transportation is. I need my bosses to say, 'Here's what we want to work on.'"
Moore said that he planned to discuss the possibility of a task force with Chan-
celler Robert Hemenway soon. He said he was afraid that momentum would slow after he left office May 1.
"We're not asking the city manager to snap his fingers and have buses fall out of the sky," Moore said. "We just want to sit down and work on a system. We can't all go off in our own directions."
David Ambler, vice chancellor of student affairs, said that the alcohol task force was successful because the parties involved had mutual problems. But he said the
"The University should participate in a community-wide transportation study." Ambler said. "But I don't think the University as an institution can take part in the operation of a citywide transportation system because it's not within the University's mission."
Although individuals from the University should participate in the formation of a system, he said, the University did not possess the resources to control such a system, so the city should take primary responsibility.
issue of public transportation was more complicated because each party had different concerns and proposals.
Marty Kennedy, city commissioner,
said that a task force would help various
parties resolve differences about the
issue of public transportation. He said
that the majority, if not all, of the new
commissioners would be in favor of
forming a joint task force.
Ambler said that one option would be to retain the KU On Wheels system and allow students to take advantage of a separate, tandem city bus system.
Edited by Kelli Raybern
Hemenway, sophomore trade places as part of honor society fund-raiser
Chancellor Robert Hemenway practices some volleyball moves in an Advanced Volleyball class at Robinson Center. Hemenway swapped places with a University of Kansas student yesterday and went to all of her morning classes. Photo by Rachel Marta Orr/Kansan.
By Kristi Reimer
kreimer@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Wearing faded jeans instead of a suit and carrying a backpack instead of a briefcase, Chancellor Robert Hemenway got a taste of student life yesterday in subjects that ranged from volleyball to modern art.
The chancellor traded places with Julie McGill, Elmhurst, Ill., sophomore, as part of a "Hemenway for a Day" fund-raiser for a sophomore honor society, Lambda Sigma.
He attended a Personal and Community Health class, Advanced Volleyball and Introduction to Modern Art, while McGill went to Hemenway's meetings.
As part of the morning's activities, Hemenway suited up in T-shirt and warmup pants for a session of bump, set, spike at Robinson Center.
I haven't played volleyball for 15 years," Hemenway said. "These guys are good."
Brooke Hightower, Wayne, Ill., senior, coached Hemenway briefly on technique in a warm-up period before the class began playing.
"He's actually a pretty good seter," she said. "He probably feels a little strange in a student environment where he has to participate instead of teaching the class."
After Hemenway finished with volleyball, he drove his car to Spencer Museum of Art on the other side of campus for Introduction to Modern Art — not because he's the chancellor, he said, but because McGill had told him that's what she did.
we u see it I get a ticket," he said.
But he didn't
Sam Watson, graduate teaching assistant of the art history class, said having the chancellor in his class was not unnerving for him.
In the art class, Hemenway diligently took notes for McGill during the lecture, which covered the
When he got to Spencer, he didn't have a quarter for the meter.
"I was strangely calm." Watson said. "People said it would freak me out, but it didn't."
color-block paintings of Mondrian and the efforts of the Dada movement to escape from the horrors of World War I.
Hemenway sat behind a student whose T-shirt bore the phrase, "Because without beer, things do not seem to go as well." He chatted with another student who was a fellow Nebraskan and with the instructor after class. He said he thought some students probably didn't know who he was.
"I don't know if they were thinking some strange old man came to sit in on the lecture," he said.
An English literature scholar, Hemenway said he was familiar with the literary aspects of the Dada movement but that he enjoyed learning more about how it influenced the art world and found it interesting.
He said what had most impressed him about the experience of going to a sophomore's classes was how broad students' range of learning was.
"When we get older, we tend to focus on our own world, our own job," Hemenway said. "But students are bombarded with information on everything from how to choose a health care organization to how to understand 20th century art."
- Edited by Amanda Hay
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More information
A student spends her day acting as the chancellor.
See page 3A
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