MONDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2012
PAGE 5
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAS
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The life span of a camping group leader is significantly shorter than average humans.
A bird just few inches from my face.
What is it with the animals at KU?
Sometimes I like to go into labs, hand out broken equipment to students and act like I can help. Whether I'm just pretending to be a TA or not is debatable.
Is KJHK operated by monkeys?
The hopes and dreams of every chem 188 student are fading as we stop cramming and accept our fate. We will all fail.
You haven't lived life until you've done hardcore parkour on campus while you're drunk.
My boyfriend left me because I loved my Xbox more than him. I guess we didn't kinect.
To the guy who wants to break into the sororities for their bacon: our house doesn't have any. #jewishhouseproblems
If you pull up your pants I'm guessing you might be able to walk faster and not waddle.
Your boyfriend isn't the only one with a burning desire to own a sloth...it's becoming an epidemic.
My dream is to be cool enough to have classics GTAs come to my party.
Whenever I see two frat packs walking towards each other, I can't help but wish it would turn into a rumble like in "West Side Story."
That awkward moment when you ask your roommate to stop watching you sleep and he replies "ok."
I hate how backpacks awkwardly pull your shirt up in the back.
Tell your boyfriend he can keep the sloth under your bed, but you want to buy a kangaroo and keep it under his bad.
Saw a girl on a campus visit today who was holding hands with her mom. She's not going to make it through college.
Waiting for a doctor is like waiting for Ryan Gosling to find me and admit his love for me. He's never gonna come!
Sometimes I wonder if the way I talk is purely a mashup of the ways my friends talk.
Dear Noah, we could have sworn you said the ark didn't leave until 5 and now we are screwed. #theunicoms
Damn, one thing we're bad at is clapping the school song at basketball games.
My boyfriend and one of our friends exchanged an excited high five over my head when the band played the Pokemon theme song...I'm surrounded by nerds.
Obama's new budget will hurt economy
If Charlie Sheen was a Jayhawk bball player how many championships would we win? *bwinning* # bwinning
POLITICS
President Obama laid out his budget for the 2013 fiscal year on February 13, and it is fair to say that he shouldn't expect many Valentines from many of the Americans that employ a large percentage of U.S. workers.
In his budget, the president set out plans to enact the "Buffett Rule" which plans to ensure that Americans making over a million dollars a year will pay a minimum effective tax rate of at least 30 percent. The budget is nothing more than a campaign document; the president is planning to pit himself against Mitt Romney, who increasingly looks like the Republican nominee-to-be. But if looked at with a close eye, it is clear that this President's fiscal record is historically poor.
Within his $3.8 trillion budget, President Obama proposed generating $1.7 trillion in revenue over the next 10 years largely by ending Bush tax cuts for families making more than $250,000, restoring the estate tax to its 2009 level, 45 percent, and limiting
subsidies for oil and gas companies. The president has set the scene for a campaign year piece of political class warfare that he hopes to ride to victory in November. But let's look at the facts and figures that aren't outlined by the White House.
Why do people complain about government spending? Could it be that this administration has
"Giving money to our government hasn't proven to make much sense."
raised spending to historically high levels? The federal government has spent more than 24 percent of GDP for the past four years. That is the highest since World War II. On top of that, the president predicts spending will grow even higher, to around 24.3 percent of GDP.
The European debt crisis has been built on fiscal planning of a similar nature. According to the Wall Street Journal, this budget will also run a deficit of $1.3 trillion in 2012, if that is true, the United States will have had a deficit of at least $1.29 trillion four years in a row for the first time ever. This accounts to a $5 trillion debt during this presidential term, an astounding figure.
However, the only debt that must be paid back, national debt held by the public, is a much more tangible indication of our nation's debt as a percentage of the GDP. That will reach 74.2 percent this year and rise to 77.4 percent next year.
ers into reelection as long as he blames former President Bush, Republicans and the wealthy.
It should have been painfully obvious that the president didn't care about fiscal responsibility when he decided to push Obama care during one of the worst recessions this country has ever seen.
But our president claims that this bleak picture will change
if he is given another mandate by the voting public come next November. He believes that the sudden 17.8 percent rise in revenues, which is a fancy method of saying additional taxes in a way that won't upset most voters, won't hurt growth. Giving money to our government hasn't proven to make much sense. It simply takes money away from potential private employers and consumers so that the national government can do things like pay contractors in Afghanistan billions of dollars to build half-completed gravel roads.
This administration can't face the facts. We will hear the same sort of excuses for this horrible fiscal record. We'll hear about how Bush gave this to us and how we should blame Republicans etc. If that were true, then how was it that federal outlays were never above 20 percent of GDP under President Bush and national debt held by the public was never above 39 percent? The facts are that President Obama believes that he can fool vot-
His supporters will point to some of his accomplishments as we get closer to November, most importantly his end to the war in Iraq. They'll claim that ending the war will save the fiscal well-being of this nation. These people will fail to realize that the amount of money this nation spends on defense pales in comparison to what we spend on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Perhaps the president should focus on reforming a dying system of elderly pension instead of cutting our nuclear arsenal by 80 percent.
McCroy is a senior in economics from Des Moines, Iowa.
SOCIETY
Enter class with a good attitude for the professor
Every semester I have a professor that I do not like. A myriad of reasons exist for this; they show up late for class, I can hear their spit as they talk, or they organize the material in a way that is impossible for me to grasp. I could go on, but I know this is an unspoken thought of many students; otherwise websites like ratemyprofessors.com would not exist.
When it comes down to it, I wish someone had talked to me
I once took an English class that filled me with hatred and spite. Although this hate was unjust, I was filled to the brim with it. My professor was always late and talked to us like we were children. In a situation like this, there are two options: (1) I could talk to the professor about it, like a civil, mature student or (2) I could try to undermine everything she did. Of course, I chose the latter.
In class I would not take notes, but instead draw masterpieces filling the whole page to make it obvious that I would rather be doodling than to pay attention to what I thought was useless information.
In addition, I researched heavily into certain subjects for the sole purpose of asking my professor a question that would make her stumble to admit that she did not know the answer. These schemes made me feel powerful. Every class was a competition to see if I could beat my professor at her own game.
In classes this semester, I complain endlessly in my head about other students who make too many comments and are continuously trying to undermine the professor with outside information. If I hear one more person bring up creationism while learning about evolution in a science class, I might burst.
In retrospect, I realize that I was "that guy": the one who everyone wished would stop talking and should have stayed home if he disliked the subject that much.
about it. I never realized I was being so annoying and facetious. I was blinded by my own frustrations enough to miss out on learning something valuable from a professor that knows a lot more than I do or listening to another student's thoughts.
Toward the end of the semester I began to realize that I would never treat anyone else like this. Whether it is my friends, family, or even a stranger, it is downright rude to try to trip people up for the sole purpose of breaking their stride.
There is no faster way to drive someone away from you than to talk to them like they are a bad person. Yes, people do bad things, but that does not make us bad people. Everybody has two sides, a person that they are afraid they might be and a person that they hope to be.
If you want the best from someone, you must talk to them like the person they wish they were. That is not hard to understand, and it is not hard to understand why I struggled the whole semester in that English class.
In the end, I talked to my professor like a mature person would do and found that she was one of the better professors I have ever had. If there are annoying people in your classes, just talk to them. They probably do not understand how they are bringing the whole class down. As for your most despised professors, at least give them a chance by going to their office hours or talking to them like a mature person. You might surprise yourself.
Samp is a senior in human biology from Lawrence.
CULTURE
When busy with classes remember the reward
I don't usually get so Mr. Rogers-y in February; blame it on the post-Valentine's hangover. But today I'm going to subject you all to the musings of a potential caffeine overdose.
When you're drowning in papers and exams and projects, it's hard to be appreciative of your life. Combine academics with a job, sport, club, leadership position, friends, family, or all of the above and life can be overwhelming at times. And that's when people get irritable, gloomy, dramatic, hysterical, or g bearable. But let's have perspective, people.
You attend the University of Kansas, which the Princeton Review calls a Best Value College and which boasts not only premier college basketball but incredible academics. You're not working in a labor camp, you're not serving on the front lines; you're attending an accredited university with a rich legacy of tradition, history, and impact.
Your classes should challenge you, which justifies a fair amount of effort and time and stress. It does not, however, justify pity parties, whiny social media updates, or public meltdowns. Remember, you signed up for this. And two or four or ten semesters later, you're still here, despite the rising costs of a college degree.
What I'm encouraging is easy to say, harder to do. I am just as guilty as anyone of getting bogged down in deadlines, requirements, and procrastination. I've spent the last few years trying to cram as much onto my resume as possible and bit off much more than I could chew.
I accepted responsibility that I didn't really want because I thought it would make me look like a more qualified candidate, a safer bet, a better person, to some faceless judge of fill-in-the-blank. And those were important experiences because in doing things you don't like you get closer to finding
the path you do want.
But college is about more than the projection of yourself on paper. Education involves experience of all kinds, especially the kind that challenges you and brings you closer to a passion or career.
ILLUSTRATION BY RYAN BENEDICK
"Education involves experience of all kinds, especially the kind that challenges you and brings you closer to a passion or career."
So take advantage of opportunities that arise and create ones that don't. Don't be afraid to ask questions and get creative, don't be afraid to bust your ass. Get connected on campus. Meet people; professors, advisors, peers and that cute guy two rows back. Make
friends, both the kind you party with and the kind you keep around after graduation. Get off campus as well, whether that means a semester abroad or an internship or just a road trip.
And while I'm at it, learn something about the world outside Lawrence, Kan. The best interview tip I was ever told was to pick up a newspaper and read. I understand that's a lot to ask from someone suffering from a grueling work/play schedule, but if you can't quite handle that at least get a Twitter and follow someone besides People magazine. Headlines are better than nothing, and you'd be surprised at how close to home some global news stories hit. At the very least, reading about other people's problems might make that midterm seem less tragic.
Onions is a junior in political science and women, gender, and sexuality studies from Shawne.
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