WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2012
PAGE 5
opinion
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I drink my coffee black. You take the venom out of a cobra, all you've got is a snake.
Camping at AFH is like waiting at an airport for a flight that's been delayed so long that the passengers have set up their own rudimentary government system
You wanna hear a joke? The Mizzou lottery.
Bill Self controls fakejeffwithev.
Apparently computer science wasn't the right major to choose to meet lots of hot girls. Damn.
Someday, everyone is going to quit looking around for someone to blame and realize that the true problem lies within themselves.
I wish you could major in crocheting
No more hashtags in the FFA?
Finally. For a few weeks I thought I was
reading a printed Twitter feed.
Editor's note: You have no idea.
My marketing teacher says it breaks his heart when a student reads the Kansan rather than the WSJ. He sure as hell hasn't heard about the FFA.
A dragon in the library, a whale in the lake, do I actually go to Hogwarts?
New idea for Saturday. When Conner Teahan is on the bench, he's allowed to sit there shirtless.
I like to respond to people's texts with pictures of seals instead of actually answering their questions.
The KU parking meters steal more quarters than a Chuck e' Cheese.
If a hipster says he hates you, does that mean everyone else loves you?
Does anyone else get minorly creeped out by the random grunts coming from the weight room at the Rec?
While proofreading my paper, I real-ized I had accidentally written "arouse" instead of "arose"... that could have gotten awkward.
Point, counterpoint: moving in with significant other while still in college
For a while, I thought Mizzou's mascot looked like a method-out Hobbes. It still does.
RELATIONSHIPS
Things may be serious in a relationship, but moving in together may or may not be the answer.
Relationships in college can, to say the least, be a bit difficult. If you're actually looking for a relationship, first you have to find someone interested in something more meaningful than exaggerated friction in the Boom Boom Room.
Then, you have to find vaguely common interests, enjoying the other's company, considering the other to be attractive, all before outside factors interfere: classes, studying, activities and organizations, working, meetings, relationships with family and friends, deadlines. It's a balancing act.
Along with this lack of foresight, what if you realize the relationship isn't working even while you live together, with six months to go in your lease? If that relationship fails, then home will become not a place to relax and catch up on "Dr. Who," but one filled with tension, awkwardness, or even hurt. (Not to mention what if you lived together, broke up, and then you start to date someone new—no sleepovers at your place.)
I fully believe that healthy, caring and loving relationships are possible, even while college stereotypes equate a long-term relationship with anything past the morning after. However, living with someone you're dating in college will most likely tip the scales.
To start off, there's the simple fact that most college students lack emotional maturity to live with someone with whom they are romantically involved. Physiologically, we do not finish maturing until the end of a typical college career. This explains why that person who lives down the hall from you has signed a lease with his or her boyfriend or girlfriend of a few months for next year. During college, the mass majority have simply not developed fully the ability to foresee the future.
Some couples show that they can, indeed, make living together during college work for them. But these are the exception, the rarity, and couples considering living together in college have to ask themselves—if they were to weigh the strength of their relationship, would they find it perfectly balanced?
RESPONSES:
(MICHAEL'S ARGUMENTS ARE IN
ITALICS. KATHERINE'S RE-
SPONSES ARE BELOW.)
Living with a significant other drastically accelerates your maturation process as an independent adult through better understanding your own personal weaknesses and areas you need to improve on. You realize personal problem areas of your own that when addressed allow you to live a more fulfilling life in the future with or without your significant other.
Moving in with your boyfriend or girlfriend simulates post-graduation realities and also helps build your interpersonal skills outside of romantic relationships, such as work or family relationships. You may not have your post-graduation life planned out yet, but that shouldn't motivate you to avoid being with someone you care about.
While living with other people can certainly speed up the maturity process by making people examine their behavior better, I don't see how living with a significant other helps one become independent. If anything, it encourages co-dependency; I've known couples who I literally can't conjure memories of being physically apart. While this is the extreme, living with someone you date can easily cause you to lose your sense of independence.
Emotional involvement in a significant relationship of any sort can help develop interpersonal skills in other interactions. Yet, the true reality of post-graduation is that you and your significant other may move to opposite sides of the country—why add having to divvy up the furniture to an already emotionally rife situation?
There are assumptions that living with your significant other is more challenging and usually a negative circumstance. In the "Journal of Marriage and Family," researchers sampled more than 230 college couples. They found that men and women who lived together both reported significantly higher levels of satisfaction for both their overall relationship and sexual relationship than couples not living together.
In the "Journal of Marriage and Family," they claim to have found higher satisfaction levels. Yet, looking at the context of the situation, this is as the couples surveyed feel how the relationship stood at present—but what about the future? Dynamics in a relationship can easily and quickly change.
Sometimes, I like to wrap my blankets around me and pretend I'm a sushi.
W When we often think of an ideal romantic situation, it involves
Gwynn is a freshman in English from Olathe.
of an ideal romantic situation, it involves scenes from the latest popular romantic comedy. Unfortunately, love in today's world isn't simply an emotion. Love is a mix of emotions that manifests in consistent, loving behavior towards another. I know that line isn't a scene from "The Notebook," but it's the reality of the complicated environments we live in.
While some of the chivalrous romantic gestures are great for men to engage in, it is dangerous to think that such gestures be the foundation of a relationship. Besides the fact that women shouldn't compare their dating lives to fictional romantic comedies, relationships don't flourish or fail based on a bouquet of flowers or opening an extra door. Love is a consistent behavior. It is the consistent support, attention and care of one person to another.
Because of this, if someone is in a long-term relationship and it progresses to moving in together, then why stop it? Marriage skills in our culture are usually developed during marriage, not beforehand, as they should be.
Just because someone moves in with another doesn't mean the couple needs to marry. That's the point of moving in with someone. The smallest things will be annoying, but each person will grow significantly and as a couple. If a couple breaks up after moving in, than at least it didn't wait until after school and get married. Additionally, both partners have gained valuable relationship experience and knowledge of their own individual behavior in such circumstances.
At the end of the day, it is college and no one should be looking for someone to move in with. If students don't feel comfortable
moving in with their significant other, then that is OK. At the same time, students shouldn't let what is "cool" dictate their romantic lives. All I'm asking is just be open to the idea because isn't that what the frame of mind should be for a college student?
RESPONSES:
(KATHERINE'S ARGUMENTS ARE IN ITALICS. MICHAEL'S RESPONSES ARE BELOW.)
College is supposed to be a time of exploring who you are and growing within your identity, and while being in a romantic relationship can either help or hinder this growth, living together is a serious commitment.
Living together is a serious commitment. But so is growing within your identity. If you find yourself in a progressing romantic relationship and you are consciously avoiding taking the next step (i.e. moving in with your significant other), then you are more likely hindering the growth of your own identity by not being open to change.
Most college students are not ready for this emotional commitment as according to the Juvenile Justice Center, "The evidence now is strong that the brain does not cease to mature until the early 20s in those relevant parts that govern impulsivity, judgment, planning for the future, foresight of consequences... Indeed, age 21 or 22 would
be closer to the 'biological' age of maturity."
I think it is difficult to make overarching statements about college students that are wholly subjective in nature. While many college students might not be emotionally ready for such a situation, many others might be. If a student has a good support network (i.e. has open support from family and friends), and has developed a long-standing and communication-based relationship, then they are fine.
Living together puts you in a domestic situation with your significant other, without the actual strength of commitment marriage instills, or some other committed co-habitation relationship outside of the college bubble. College itself is a place of transition, from high school and childhood, to the workplace and adulthood.
Does it mean you think I'm stupid when you come up behind me and hit the crosswalk button after I've been standing here for five minutes?
American divorce rates have been high since the 1970s. Skills to maintain marriage is a rarity in our culture. What most likely maintains marriage commitment the most in our nation are the unpleasant consequences of getting a divorce versus just putting up with your current situation. By allowing couples in college who have positive support networks to go through some of the growing pains, it allows couples to actually develop those skills before they are married, not after.
Additionally, for many individuals, college ends up being less about transition, growth and development, and more about having a good time. You don't need to live with someone in college to grow, but in the right circumstances, it can be appropriate.
The FFA is hash tag free and the "Rock Chalk Chant" is "woo" free. Life is good.
Sofis is a senior in applied behavioral science from Pittsburgh, Pa.
Oh no no no fratties. You are totally "West Side Story" not "Gangs of New York." Don't kid yourself.
"There's just something about the KU catering pickles..."
Two girls in front of me are discussing why "freckle" is their favorite word. Someone punch me in the face.
Illustration by Ryan Benedick
This week, I've spent more time sleeping on the Fieldhouse floor than in my own bed.
We should replace our football team with our Guidditch team.
SOCIETY
Films and movies are more than entertainment
My two closest friends told me I was Holden Caulfield. Holden is the narrating protagonist of J.D. Salinger's novel "Catcher in the Rye." I was a high school junior at the time and had never read the book, but I did have a vague notion of its plot, which seemed noneventful to say the least. I'd gathered that my alleged fictional doppelganger was possibly crazy, definitely annoying and ended his journey in an insane asylum.
It was unsettling to have a fictional character be such a direct
In a moment of very defensive curiosity, I found myself reading this apparent manifesto of my character during some downtime at a bookstore. I read a few chapters, bought the book, finished it the next day and re怠ed with less shame than I'd expected that I was absolutely Holden Caulfield.
reflection of myself even in ways unobserved by my two friends. The line between fact and fiction became distorted. I was unable to consider Holden a fictional character anymore.
This is the root of why I'm angered by the idea that "Catcher" is a bad novel, which many students believe. I know for a fact, as I hope I've illustrated, that the book has truth and I have to wonder
I knew him, and whenever I attempted to disassociate myself from him, it seemed as dishonest as positing that I myself was a fictional character. "The Catcher in the Rye" became an invaluable and uncommon document of my young personhood from an objective viewpoint, allowing me to finally grow out of being Holden Caulfield, which I needed to do and may never have done otherwise.
what its haters were looking for in the first place. I don't care if people dislike Holden, but to transfer disdain for a character into a disdain for the book he inhabits signals that some don't know the difference, but more to the point, that some don't know why good novels exist in the first place.
Good authors like J.D. Salinger wrote their stories because they had a desire for exploration. What they were looking for and how was their own business, but that
Reflections of reality don't usually have that kind of flesh and blood, but Salinger found a way to give it to them and sometimes, as with "Rye," managed to remove his own voice from the narrative entirely. That is empathy, which neither fiction nor documentary can survive without from their audiences. If you can't relate to stories told by human beings about human beings on that basic level, then to whom outside yourself do your criticisms matter?
If your desires are limited to a need for "entertainment," then they reside in a very shallow place. Why don't you want to "laugh"? Why don't you want to "give a crap" or "discover" or "fall in love"? Those sound like desires worth pursuing. Life provides those things and if good stories are reflections of life, then they'll give those things. You won't know that's happening until you give back.
Coy is a sophomore in film and media studies from Lenexa.
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LETTER GUIDELINES
Salinger, for instance, explored people through action and dialogue as few have done since. In each of his stories, he manages to create characters so vivid that readers become as uncomfortable as my friend became when she read his second novel, "Franny and Zooey."
Too many people feel that all books and movies are made expressly for the purpose of pleasing them. Why, for any reason other than commerce, would people with integrity devote their lives to entertaining you?
appetite is the only reason any story exists.
Ian Cummings, editor
864-4810 or editor @kanasan.com
Lisa Curran, managing editor
864-4810 or lucana@kanasan.com
Alexis Knutsen, opinion editor
864-4924 or akutaena@kanasan.com
Garret Lent, business manager
843-6588 or email@gilan.com
Korab Eland, sales manager
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CONTACT US
Malcolm blisson, general manager and multi-
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864-7667 or mgblisson.kansan.com
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THE EDITORIAL BOARD
THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Members of the Kansan Editorial Board are Ian Cummings
Lisa Curran, Alexis Knutsen, Angela Hawkins and Ryan Schlesen.