THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2013
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAS
PAGE 4A
opinion
TEXT
FREE FOR ALL
I just heard a frat pack talk about the fact they were one. I didn't realize they were that self-aware, but congrats to them for knowing!
The School of Ed. basically requires the use Comic Sans...sans irony.
To the guy who said Mrs. E's has the same old bacon, it's probably time to move out of the dorms.
Text your FFA submissions to 785-289-8351 or at kansan.com
Just ate sidewalk on my bike. I'm beat up, but you should see the sidewalk.
You know you have a small car when you can scoot it over with just a bump of your hip.
I love when my stomach growls and then the loudspeaker in Anschutz tells me there's free pizza on the third floor.
Welcome to senior year of college.
workout shorts, stained and wrinkled
T-shirts, and not a care in the world.
When it comes to long food lines there are three types of people. The creative line cutter, the impatient, and the patient.
Why can't we have a common book with dragons in it?
MENTAL HEALTH
Does anyone else love making eye contact with dogs while they poop?
People have been pirating textbooks as recently as last year? Try 6 years ago when I was a freshman.
EDITOR'S NOTE: OLD PEOPLE ARE TEXTING ME.
Is it wrong that I include Jamari in every mass snapchat I send? If so, I don't want to be right.
Just saw a Chinese person sneeze New experience.
keany bro, you think you need to pull the Request Stop string on a bus full of people when we're pulling up to the Union? We were obviously stopping anyways.
If I could push a button and five people in the world would die, but I'd get an on-campus goat cart. I'd do it.
KU has the chance to lead K-State in the Big 12 rankings for once!
I think I've eaten pizza every day this week.
Have you guys ever seen Andrew Wiggins and the FFA editor in the same room? Think about it.
Started from the bottom now I'm here.
Battling depression requires support and openness
always wanted to die, but that wouldn't do.
How could I simply do that to everyone that might care about me? I secretly fear that I'm too much of a coward to do anything myself. No. What I wanted was to go out in a blaze of glory. I wanted to die saving a kitten from a gorilla in hand-to-hand combat, or rescuing a child from a burning building. I would stumble out of the inferno with the unharmed kid in my arms. I would pass him back to his parents, who would be crying tears of joy. That would be all the thanks I needed. Without another word I would drop to the ground and that would be it.
I wouldn't be remembered as being selfish. All my faults would be forgotten and all that would remain in memory of me would be the last heroic deed. I would die leaving behind an echo of the good that I'd left in the world and all the bad would disappear as suddenly and completely as I had. But until that happens, here I sit, writing about it instead of doing anything remarkable. Instead of
being heroic I'm being whiny. My only hope is that in explicitly talking about my depression, it will make it easier for others. I don't know if I should be sharing so much with complete strangers, but depression has a taboo on it that needs to end.
For those who have dealt with it, you will appreciate how hard it is to feel strongly about anything, good or bad. Those who haven't ever dealt with it have certainly gone through a difficult day. A dog died, failed a test, got cheated on. Depression is feeling all of those feelings at the same time, but the feelings don't go away. Time doesn't heal. It becomes frustrating, because everyone quietly believes that you should be better by now. You believe it yourself, but you just can't. What would it be like to feel that way all the time? Could you fight it? Or would it do to you what it did to me?
See, to me, it started by slowly weighing on my shoulders. Contrary to popular belief, depression attacks physically as well as emotionally. The weight presses you down into the ground. It becomes harder to breathe, more difficult to think. It takes a herculean effort just to walk, talk, smile, drink, kiss, even to just get out of bed. Nothing is physically as easy or enjoyable to do. It doesn't stop there though.
By Nick Jackson njackson@kansan.com
It might be a slow process. Depression is a sneaky bitch. It slowly nibbles on your consciousness. It's hardly even noticeable at first, but it doesn't stop there. It gnaws on your mind and forces you lower. Depression is a parasite. A tick. The larger it grows the tighter the hold becomes. You don't even notice that the heat is being turned up until it's too late. It gnaws on your mind till it begins to devour and consume all of that which is your humanity. It rips you apart and it leaves you as nothing more than a husk of a person.
For so long I tried to fight it. I grew up in a family setting where
showing emotion or asking for help made you a "faggot." I'm not sure if that's an ideal situation. The stretches of abuse have me wondering, even today, what and who exactly I'm supposed to be. Each time I think I'm going in the right direction or come up with a plan, a voice in my head tells me "that's gay," or "You? Yeah right, ha."
Needless to say, what miniscule amounts of self-esteem I have are wrapped up in some remarkably superficial ideas that are as fragile as a glass house. One tiny pebble can bring it all tumbling down.
I want people to be able to discuss these things openly, because it might actually help to talk about your depression. It certainly can't hurt. With the flu, or a plethora of other illnesses, people can't rest until they've posted on Facebook about how awful they feel, whereas depression is kept relatively silent. I'm almost certain that I've only spoken with three people in life about our shared illness. The one that really stuck out was the most well-rounded, incredible and brilliant girl I've ever known. But
one day, she mentioned that for all the work she put in to appear like everything was perfect, when she was alone, she was in agony. Nobody is immune to feeling this way. Nobody.
you don't have to struggle by yourself. There are support groups on campus that will be by your side regardless of the complexity of your needs. Whether it's just someone to lean on while you pick yourself up by your bootstraps, or a doctor to refer you to a good shock therapist, no problem is impossible. Check out CAPS in Watkins (785) 864-2277, or the Psychological Clinic (785) 864-4121, which is starting group therapy sessions on Sept. 4 for a fee even I can afford. Hell, get hold of me, but just don't shut down. The greatest power depression has is to make us not want to fight back. Let's kick its ass.
Nick Jackson is a junior majoring in chemical engineering from Lawrence.
SOJOURN
Exotic travels increase appreciation for hometown
I made a terrible mistake recently. I attended the Aug. 16 Chief's preseason game against the San Francisco 49ers. Arrowhead was lively with old fans, Alex Smith played for a full half to help ease away the memory of Matt Cassel and with some alcohol running through my blood, I was able to loosen up a bit and ignore the potentially offensive references to Native American culture attached to our team. I'll admit, it was great. But in the end, it was nothing more than a small reminder of what I will be missing; a single cracker to excite my hunger further. Oh! The folly of showing the self what it craves but can't have!
My pains are not limited to the Chiefs - friends and family, Facebook and the Church of Lazlo—all will be gone from my life. As of yesterday, I have begun a year of study at Nanjing University in the Glorious People's Republic of China.
& By Scott Rainen
srainen@kansan.com
This will not be my first tour.
From July of 2012 to December
of that same year, I studied
in Shanghai and Hong Kong,
respectively. It was a great time.
For three weeks in between
cities I lived in a state of limbo,
couch-surfing around that giant
cluster of skyscrapers and people
known as Shanghai. Now I
return; less naive, but more fully
appreciative of what I will be missing out on.
the last six months have reminded me just how much I love my home state. I surmise that people here live a slower life and are more sincere and polite than anyone else in the country. When abroad, I absolutely refuse to hear the name of my home state spoken in vain, and whenever any criticism of my country is brought up, I simply deflect it to some other region of the U.S. "Upset about drones? Well that was probably started by those Washington D.C. folks - Kansas surely had nothing to do with that!"
I still recall staying up for the first football game of the season last year against the Atlanta Falcons with a friend of my mine from Turkey. Like almost every other person residing in Hong Kong, he had never seen a game
But building up my hometown and actually being there are two different things. To be in China for the football season will be absolutely miserable. First, I have to watch the games at some ungodly hour in the morning. Second, nobody has any idea what is going on.
of football before. I quickly explained the basics and then eagerly proceeded to explain the importance of a good running game, the concept of the pocket and eventually, my nostalgia yearned for the traditions of Arrowhead Stadium itself.
Halfway through my slightly drunken explanation of the Chief's Tomahawk Chop, my friend interjected, "doesn't this seem a little offensive to the Indians?"
"Oh, certainly not!" I said as I leaned closer to him to explain the simple misunderstanding. My head remained glued to the television screen. "You see-s the blame for that ought to lie on the founders of the team, who were certainly-s not Kansans." There was a brief pause as he tried to process this inebriated bit of information before I turned to face him with a look of pure earnestness in my eyes.
"The team originally came from a very backwards place south of our little strip of Eden, a place known as Texas."
Such are the ramblings of a willingly displaced man.
Scott Rainen is a senior from Prairie Village.
CAMPUS CHIRPS BACK
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POLITICS
Education reform begins with students
Eliminate summer break. Fire bad teachers. Venerate the teaching profession. Increase parental involvement. Throw money at the problem. These are the sound bites of education reform debate. Reduced to just a few words per blip, politicians and pundits alike tout panaceas for America's education crisis. Unfortunately, for these sound bites, the bark is bigger than the bite, as they are rooted in several mischaracterizations of American education and non sequitur conclusions. For the sake of brevity, I will be addressing the most prominent argument mentioned above - the issue with American teachers, followed by my own solution to the issue at hand.
Many people believe that the problem of American education lies with its teachers. Our teachers are underpaid, undertrained and uninspiring. The solution is simple: fire bad teachers, and increase the status of the teaching profession. Scholars point to South Korea and Finland, both of which are at the top of the education totem pole, as an example of how teachers ought to be viewed. These nations equate teachers to doctors, lawyers and other highly trained members of society. They also pay their teachers far better than we do. These countries, however, are also quite a bit smaller than the United States. It would be impossible to mandate all teachers have a Master's degree (such as in Finland) and pay them $80,000 a year. Public schools are already terminally under-staffed - some teachers even get hired without teaching degrees, let alone a Master's. It is also worth noting that much of South Korea's success in education lies in after-school private tutoring. Parents force their kids to enroll in hours of after school practice that has become a multi-million dollar industry in South Korea.
This just shows how dynamic the issue is - it can't be reduced to one small problem. The multiplicity of factors that play into a child's educational success makes simply firing teachers a well-intentioned, but ultimately idealistic
By Will Ashley washley@kansan.com
solution. To drive one more nail into the coffin for this argument, I would like to point out that firing teachers isn't nearly as easy as it sounds. Teachers' unions have formed an impregnable colossus making it very difficult to oust a bad teacher. Instead, many just get shuffled around the district, and the problem goes unsolved.
All of these supposed solutions merely quibble over the external factors – the teachers, the parents, the district, but what about the students themselves? What I believe is a bigger culprit for failure in school is self-image. The reason many students "just don't want to learn" is because we've treated them like and labeled them as permanent failures. The reason some students don't try is because they don't believe they can succeed. This conclusion was verified by Angela Lee Duckworth, who said that if we teach our students that failure is not a permanent condition, they will improve in the classroom. Her study showed that tenacity - not IQ – was the deciding factor in whether or not kids were successful in learning math. Students are more likely to succeed when they believe they can. This is where it gets personal. I went to a very, very underfunded high school in Topeka, Kansas. I had good teachers and bad teachers, and neither were 100 percent responsible for my success or failure. What was responsible for whether or not I succeeded was indisputably, incontrovertibly and irrefutably - me. At times, I felt like I couldn't succeed, but what kept me going was being reminded that any mistakes I had made were not permanent, that my 'condition' was curable. If we teach our students that mistakes are not fatal, that failure is not a permanent condition, I believe we can reshape our education system from the inside - where it really counts.
Will Ashley is a sophomore majoring in Global and International Studies and Chinese from Topeka.
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