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This sore throat makes me have an even deeper, sexier voice.
YES! Grow little trees and shade us at the Snow Hall bus stop!
Counted 6 gingers in my current class. Send help.
UPDATE: I'm pretty sure this ginger sitting close to me is eating cat food.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2013
Cashier asks me if I found everything alright. I responded with "I'm buying sushi, cough syrup, and nothing else. Do you THINK I found everything alright?"
obviously Marco Rubio is sexiest, but he's also sexist. So I'll cut my losses and go with Harry Reid.
When you just get food and you're mid bite right as your bus pulls up... only thing to do is clearly hide behind a newspaper and eat at the back of the bus.
Engineering career fair day is a great day to have a suit fetish.
Some of the Nasmith easy mac fires were cover ups for heavy reefer consumption.
After many, many failed attempts, you would think the dude "BMXing" on Wescoe would just give it up already.
Is going to class reeking of bacon a great or the best way to make new friends?
Going to the football games is really kind of an ordeal.
I wish every restaurant in Lawrence delivered.
I'm an adult, which means no one can tell me not to eat cookies for breakfast.
The Chiefs' success is making football a little more pleasant around these parts.
So I found a possum in the middle of the road, I stopped to take a picture of it, and someone ran over it in front of me. poor possum.
My professor just defended Dr Oz. I have no words.
To the person who brought up the mountain lion: how long have you been here? And do you know what happened to Alex Galindo and the dancing nachos?
To my professors: sorry I was so distracted during class, I had to check the iOS 7 update every 2 minutes.
Jamari Traylor just yelled to the bus driver to hurry because he wanted to get to class on time.
This is your reminder that it's not Friday.
OBAMACARE
Health care: lives are worth more than tax dollars
I'm well aware at this point that the fiscally responsible thing for me to do is die.
And I know now that when I was denied coverage by every health insurance company in the nation, it was for the benefit of the American taxpayers. I get sick a lot and it's really expensive to keep me alive.
My name is Will and I was born with an immune deficiency. That means my body doesn't protect me from diseases. I was in and out of the hospital all through infancy, and my mom almost didn't graduate because she was taking care of me 24/7. Looking back, I'm really lucky just to be here. I could've died in the womb when my umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck, or possibly from any of my five bouts with pneumonia. But I'm here now and I can say with certainty that I would've been just another dead baby if I were born in a different decade. Nineteen years is a lot to be thankful for.
I think all any of us ever wants
is to go to bed each night with the knowledge that we'll wake up the next morning and everything will still be there. We want to look into our loved ones' eyes and be confident that they'll always feel the same way. We want to know that we'll be taken care of when everything collapses. That's all insurance is.
And I had it, briefly. I had a treatment that worked for me. I didn't worry about going to the hospital again. I woke up in the morning and felt a little bit of control over my life, like I could get out of bed and take on the day.
It's not like that now, since I lost my coverage. I set my alarm 30 minutes ahead of when I actually need to get out of bed so I have time to convince myself that it's worth it. It's not always an easy argument when the insurance companies send the message that I'm not worth keeping alive.
They wouldn't cover me. And then they wouldn't cover my family if they were in any way linked to me. The only thing I'm allowed
is student insurance, and even then, they refused to cover the weekly blood infusions that keep me functioning. I'm getting treated now, but it's on their terms.
ed now, but it's on my terms.
I honestly don't know what medicine is coursing through my IV from one week to the next. I don't know where I'll get it either – they can send me to a clinic or a hospital across town, regardless of where I am. They don't care when I get it – sometimes even a day's delay can shut my entire body down. I remember when the hospital was closed on the 4th of July, and I just sat on my blanket, praying for the fireworks to end so I could go home and pass out.
I've lived the past year at the
mercy of the insurance companies. They can do whatever they want with me, and I'll suffer the consequences, the bill and the side effects. I don't have control over any of it. I try to pretend I do, but I have constant reminders that I only wake up each morning because of modern medicine and the people who ration it. One of my lowest moments ended with me covered in tears and Cheerios - my limbs were trembling so severely that I couldn't grip my cereal bowl. That's not control.
I wish just one time that my doctor would sitate before telling me that I'll be like this forever. I wish that my parents never had to worry about outliving me. I wish I could talk about my future with my girlfriend without her voice wavering a little. I wish people would stop doing that little sympathetic double-nod when I tell them I'm gonna live to be 100, the same nid they give me when I say I want to be an anchor for CNN someday. But above all else, I wish people would stop thinking
that an inconsequential amount of their tax dollars is in anyway more important than my life, or any other.
I could die tomorrow and you might save a little bit on your premium. The taxes on your paycheck might round down a cent. But I don't plan on dying. I've made it this far largely because I'm 19 and my body is strong enough to take daily abuse, but mostly because I have the best support system in the world and my parents can spare thousands of dollars in medical expenses, time-consuming phone calls and arguments with insurance companies.
LIFE
The economy is in a bad place right now, but I think I'd rather be morally responsible instead.
But other people do the fiscally responsible thing and just die.
Will Webber is a sophomore majoring in journalism from Prairie Village. Follow him at wwwwebber.
'Best years of your life continue after graduation
My friends know that I'm one independent son-of-a-gun, and I don't like to be told what to do, so this bothers me more than most people. Still, I hear the "best years of your life" mantra a lot, and it always rubs me the wrong way.
Even if you don't mention the fact that not everyone goes to college, even if you don't consider that everyone has different plans for their "best" years, even if you don't accept that this is a generalized cliché no better than "Live, laugh, love," this is still a ridiculous statement.
Sometimes when I tell people what I'm doing in school - working, interning, double minoring, being in campus orgs, generally getting no sleep - I hear the same advice. "College is the best four years of your life
I, for example, spent much of my freshman year in my dorm room watching seasons of "The Office," sitting by myself at lunch and generally feeling very out of place in my new environment. Was I wasting one of the FOUR BEST YEARS EVER? No, I wasn't. That's just how it played out. Freshman year wasn't one of the best years of my life, and it's the same for a lot of people, sometimes for their entire college career.
No part of your life is the "absolute best" or the "absolute worst." There are positives and negatives to each stage of our lives, and each stage comes at exactly the right time.
- live a little!" Like I should be out streaking through Memorial Stadium or something.
Furthermore, it's unhealthy to spend too much time trying to eke every bit of enjoyment out of college, or mourning its end after we enter "the real world."
No, I refuse to believe that my life is over once I pass through the Campanile in May, and I'm not even going to put you through that "commencement means beginning" lecture. I know that I've got a lot more to look forward to, even after these four years are over.
Want to know some non-college times that I'm really looking excited about? Being that jaded old woman who gets to say anything she wants because she stopped caring about 15 years ago. Seriously, how cool are old people? They just move to Florida, play a lot of golf and run their mouths, and no one can say anything to them because it's their prerogative.
Or how about when I'm able to make my first major purchase with my own paycheck? For me, signing a lease on my own apartment or being able to support myself in a city I love will be a pretty kick-ass time, not to mention when all my hard work pays off and I land a really cool TV-producer job.
Anyone who knows me knows that I'm pretty unsure about tiny humans, but how about those of you who do want to have children someday? The first time you see your baby's face, that first year with him or her at home, their first words, their first steps? You can't tell me those won't be some of the best times in your lives, just don't call me to babysit.
The point is, college certainly may be your favorite time in your whole life. Or not. We should get everything we can out of college, especially since not everyone has the privilege of a higher education, but we have to give ourselves the freedom to enjoy life without setting a deadline of four years to do more amazing things than we will in the next 50.
Because how depressing does that make it when we graduate? I have faith in you, Jayhawks. You're going to be doing some truly amazing things with your lives. Don't restrict yourself to the idea that you'll never do anything greater than getting to sleep in every day or hitting Mass Street with your friends - even though those things are awesome.
I hope these years are as happy carefree and personally fulfilling as they possibly can be. I hope you find work that inspires you, friends to withstand the test of time and the confidence to see all your plans through. But there's so much more to come, believe me.
Lindsey Mayfield is a senior studying journalism, public policy and leadership from Overland Park.
CAMPUS
out.
For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to attend the University of Kansas. I can remember watching KU basketball games as early as 2000. I always idolized Nick Bradford and Jeff Boschee, Nick Collison and Kirk Hinrich. My love for the school itself grew when my family got season tickets for football in 2005. From then on, my fall Saturdays consisted of walking through campus and downtown Lawrence on our way to the game.
Environment changes one's concept of home
I walked into my room, and it just didn't seem to be home. I didn't feel as comfortable as I had a week prior. This was the room I grew up in, the room where I played with Legos and had sleepovers with friends. I had never lived anywhere else. How could things change so quickly? How could my dorm room make me feel me more at home than my house of 18 years?
Though they are both gone now, some of my favorite times in Lawrence, other than sitting in the bowl of Memorial Stadium, were spent at Yello Sub and Joe's Donuts -- Yello Sub was always an early dinner or lunch right before we headed to the stadium and Joe's Donuts was always an after-game treat if the 'Hawks pulled off the victory that day.
Now when I'm eating Yello Sub, I'm not with them. I eat Planet Sub with them, in Kansas City. But my Creamy Club just doesn't taste the same.
never really thought about what it would be like when I returned home after moving
And when I'm wandering the campus, or looking for something to do after a football game, I'm not with my family. I'm not
As I jammed my key into the door and then took one step in my house, it didn't seem much different. Nothing had been moved, nothing was out of place. But there was something -- something that I couldn't pinpoint. I realized that my mindset had changed. I wasn't quite the same kid that grew up in this house.
I realized that things hadn't changed so quickly. It was a long process, and it turns out that I'm much more prepared to live on my own then I had originally thought. Sure I miss my old home, but Lawrence is where I'll be for awhile.
Though it's not the same process by any means, I've found that I've had to grow up a great deal in the short time I have spent here in Lawrence. And that "growing up" will only continue each day in college. I will make new memories and have new experiences here, much like the ones I had as a kid. Those past experiences made me who I am today, as surely as the experiences I have in Lawrence will make me who I will be in the future.
G. J. Melia is a freshman majoring in Journalism from Prairie Village
playing follow-the-leader to my parents. It's weird. Really weird. Everyone said it would be, but it never fully hit me until now.
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