WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2013
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAS
PAGE 4
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This is a disclaimer to all of the ignorant football fan girls before Saturday's game. Jake Heaps is married.
Sometimes I ride the bus from the schol halls to the rec just to laugh at the irony
Is North Dakota State gonna make "Kansas State Champs" shirts now since they've beat us and KSU in football?
New Mrs. E's, still the same old floppy bacon.
Its a very unsettling feeling when a grown man standing next to you at the urinals decides to pee without using his hands because he's too busy texting.
Every time I see people get on a bus from the back the urge to buy myself a cattle prod increases.
Tues. & Thurs. 75 min lectures are cruel.
I may as well be one big middle finger crossing the street.
I finally saw Perry Ellis in the Underground! Dreams do come true! .D
I want a mustache so bad, but I don't know if I'm ready for that kind of commitment.
That Tuesday felt an awful lot like a Monday.
if the US is really committed to beating the obesity epidemic, then I'll have to wait even longer for machines at the gym.
Apparently Wiggins was named a preseason "All-American." Think about that for a second.
Living off campus basically means that there is never food in my body until 7m.
Every door should be an automatic door.
Hot jogger girls will be the death of my car one day.
I think probably everyone on campus has seen me picking my nose by now.
Senator McCain and I don't see eye-to-eye on political matters, but we both love playing VIP Poker during lectures.
Eating fruit snacks on a bus while everyone kinda watches you is actually really awkward.
"Let's have assigned seating in Budig." Means "You have to sit next to that smelly guy for the rest of the semester." Awesome...
INTERNATIONAL
Sensationalist media desensitizes viewers to reality
I was eating homemade Oreo balls on the couch when I realized how America felt about Syria. There's something very disturbing in living so far from global problems that they feel like well-produced TV shows that just happen to play on CNN. It's a sign of overexposure to a violent world and a dangerous attitude of good, old-fashioned American arrogance.
They were glued together by a thick layer of sludge - the Oreo balls, I mean - and each one took some jimmying to work free. A series of tweets buzzed on my phone mid-bite, reports that nearly guaranteed American intervention in the Syrian conflict, and I didn't even flinch.
I was using a copy of the New
York Times with the same dire headlines as a coaster. I'd nonchalantly scroll past images of shelled-out neighborhoods and hospitals bloated with sarin gas victims. I was more interested in eating horrible junk food than giving five seconds to one of the worst humanitarian crises of the past decade.
And I call myself informed.
And I call myself informed.
We live in America with two gargantuan saltwater moats protecting us. From dead-center-of-the-map Kansas, even Washington, D.C., seems to be a world away.
In an age where I can Skype with someone from Denmark with a click, I feel strangely isolated from most of the world.
It's the fault of my coddled upbringing and a news corps that
frames world events like spectator sports. Reports on riots and warzones are flashy, violent, and bite-sized. They're cut to look like action-movie scenes mixed with football games. Death toll infographics and SportsCenter-like analysis add spice to the crumbling of nations. I'm left entertained but unmoved.
When I wake up each morning, it's a flood of apocalyptic informa
tion: fires ravaging the west, Syria imploding, the NSA harvesting my information, Miley Cyrus's racial appropriation. It becomes, at best, brainless entertainment and, at worst, white noise.
We're all plugged in but tuned out.
As young as I am, I've already been numbed to the horrors of natural disasters and war. My most prominent childhood memory was 9/11. My connectivity has overloaded me with tragedy. Global conflicts have become a cruel and disgusting background to daily life that I acknowledge but ignore to spend more time micro-managing Twitter and finishing homework.
The solution to this haze of security is the worst kind. The Boston
Marathon bombings were a wake-up call, just one in a long string of them. It worked for a few weeks, a month or two maximum, before falling back into the already saturated timeline of tragedies.
Even worse is that I can't think of a better method of kick-starting the collective psyche. It becomes a race to the bottom, a contest to shock the American public into getting off of their couches. In the downward spiral, the worst is always yet to come.
And here I am, still eating my Oreo ball, wondering when I can get another one and if I can get a Reese's version, disturbingly ignorant of what the real world is like.
Wil Kenney is a sophomore majoring in journalism from Leawood.
LIFESTYLE
Students eliminating negative influences to acheive goals
To the chagrin of several of my friends and family members, I'm pretty vocal about the fact that I'm a feminist. I'm constantly reading and sharing articles about body image, self-confidence, emphasis on brains instead of boobs, all that good stuff. I am very open about it, and I like to think I live my life according to that interest.
Recently, however, I was browsing Twitter and saw a post that was totally demeaning to women. Then I scanned my feed and saw several other tweets that, while not outright offensive, still made me runch my nose a little.
They came from humor accounts like @MensHumor, @ SororityProblems, @Womens-Humor, @CommonWhiteGirl, @ OhHeWantsTheP - really? - @ totalfratmove, the list goes on and on.
Believe me, I'm not thrilled about publicizing that I follow any of these. When you're 18 and have your first Twitter account, you see 300,000 followers and one witty remark and you're sold. But now that I'm nearly 22 and use my Twitter for things like networking and sharing ideas, do the same rules really apply? Here's the funny thing, though. When I went to unfollow all
those accounts, I was actually hesitant. Why? Because they are HILARIOUS. Most of them are damn funny, and for every tweet that makes me cringe, there's another that makes me laugh because I too, have walked out of Target with $150 worth of useless workout gear, chapstick and Red Bull.
This is true for other aspects of life, as well. How many of us have friends who are detrimental to our life goals, but whom we keep around just because they make us laugh? How many of us vow to read or study or work more, but instead spend our time watching reality television because it's a guilty pleasure?
The beginning of a new school year is a time to make changes in our lives. But all the list-making inspiration boards and good intentions in the world won't work effectively if we continue to let negative aspects of our lives
linger. As an avid organizer and goal-setter, it pains me to say that. But it's true. If you're trying to make a positive change, why not surround yourself with media that is positive, uplifting and true to what you believe? Eventually, I unfollowed all the accounts and I will continue to eliminate others when I see a pattern of messages with which I disagree. By following those users, I was essentially saying, "I support this," no matter how they filled their 140-character limit. I was publicly following, favoring and retweeting individuals who, just as often as not, were wildly contradicting the things I believe, even in the name of humor.
It's not about whether people will ever take the time to look up whom I follow and judge me for it. It's not about whether you believe Twitter should be a place for entertainment, social issues or advertising. It's about surrounding yourself with ideas that are uplifting and meaningful. And I need that a whole lot more than I need a joke about impulse buys at Target.
Lindsey Mayfield is a senior from Overland Park studying journalism, public policy and leadership. Follow her @lindsmavf.
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HEALTH
Rehabilitation process demands care, time
I've taken this same concussion test six times before. I don't want to take it a seventh. But I take it, because I know I have to. I just want this appointment to be over.
After playing soccer for 15 years, I can't say that I'm surprised that so much is wrong with my body. Whether it's the frequent headaches, the way my joints and bones pop whenever I walk around or even just a deep ache in my shoulders or knees, it all adds up quickly and takes a toll on my body.
In 15 years of playing soccer, I suffered four concussions. I broke more than ten bones and had countless sprains and strains. Like I said, they add up. I may not have been able to prevent the injuries themselves, but I definitely made them worse by not taking the rehabilitation process as seriously as I should have. There were so many times where I should have been sidelined longer, but I returned earlier rather than fully healing.
This past high school season,
I separated my shoulder with four weeks left in the season.
I went to the doctor and he said it would be a one-to-two month injury if I wanted it to fully heal.
I remember straight up lying to my trainer, and lying to my coach that it was only a two-week injury so that I could return sooner.
Crazy right?
Now that's just one example, but it shows how insensitive I was to my own body. With my all concussions — with the exception of the last one — I am almost positive that I came back too early. My frequent headaches come and go, but they are usually consistent from day-to-day and differ in severity, depending on how much I do that day.
The doctor walks in, along with my parents. He says that I scored well on my concussion test. I don't really care though; it doesn't make my head hurt any less, it
Now, I sit in this doctor's office, being told what I can and cannot do. I'm being told when we need to make another appointment and where I need to pick up my new prescription headache pills. I don't want to be here, I just want to play soccer.
doesn't dismiss the fact that I have headaches constantly.
My last conclusion came last February and effectively ended my soccer career.
But my last concussion wasn't all bad — it made me realize that I needed to stop putting myself in position to get hurt. I needed to begin taking more precautions. And I needed to begin dealing with my temporary pains, so that I wouldn't end up in a lifetime of pain.
When I think back to my concussions, I really wish I would have taken more time off. But it really is difficult to take time off when you feel as though you're letting down your teammates. Whenever I got hurt, I never thought about the future. I thought about getting healthy as soon as possible, because I didn't want to miss an opportunity to play.
I finally began to realize what the doctors had been preaching to me throughout my many emergency room visits. I started to see that my body wasn't going to last long if I continued to play sports at my previous level of competition.
THE
GJ Melia is a freshman majoring in journalism from Praire Village. Follow him @gimella.
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