THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 15.2011
PAGE 3
PARKING FROM PAGE 1
game, too.
"I don't know the psychology of it, but I guess people have their patterns in what they look for," Bennett said.
Two of her customers, Jeff Coburn and his mother, Debbie, of Beloit, said they paid $10 to park at Bennett's house by chance after passing several other locations advertising for $10 or more.
"To be honest with you, I think the economy's jacked," he said. "You do the math on buying gas to drive here from Baylor."
Spaces sold for $15 and $20 along Ninth Street between Illinois and Missouri streets, and for $20 in the parking lots of Cork & Barrel and Papa John's Pizza on Mississippi Street. At the end of that block on 10th Street, Scott Werly, a junior from Chicago, was still trying to sell his six parking spaces less than
"We were a little indecisive and sort of rolled the dice and see if we can get a little closer and not have to walk," he said. "We sort of just pulled in when we got antsy," Jeff said.
The streets on both ends of campus this time of year are an unregulated and volatile marketplace. Students were charging more for parking near the north end of campus on Saturday for the football game against Baylor. Parking fees were down there, too, but for other reasons, according to Paul Finch, a maintenance supervisor at the Berkeley Flats apartment complex, 1123 Indiana Street. He was helping the owner sell parking for $20, but has seen prices as high as $50.
"Just don't tow my car," Debbie said.
an hour before kickoff. One can drove away after a brief negotiation for $15, $5 less than his asking price of $20.
"Aw, you cheap bastard." Werly shouted after the driver.
Werly said sales were down and Kansas football's losing record was not helping. He didn't think many Baylor fans were coming in from Waco, Texas.
Jami Deghang, a third-grade teacher from Topeka, held a sign advertising "Park and Potty, $15" on the 900 block of Illinois Street.
"It's a double bonus," she said. Deghang had 35 spots for sale at two houses owned by her brother. The students, she said, were not involved in the sales and were simply enjoying the day by partying and playing beer pong.
Patrick Carter, a senior from Lenexa, was one of those students and rents one of those houses, where cars were packed on the lawn from the sidewalk to the front steps.
"We really don't like it," he said.
"We could sell it. Instead, they sell it and get the money. It's just implied. We get nothing out of the deal. She complains and the customers complain that we're too close to the cars. We still have fun, though."
People parking cars on lawns, as many were on both ends of campus last week, can be cited by the police for violating a city ordinance, according to a notice distributed among houses south of campus at the beginning of the basketball season. The notice said police will ticket cars on lawns or blocking sidewalks with fines ranging from $30 to $100 dollars, even when visitors have permission from residents.
— Edited by Lindsey Deiter
are actually needed to prevent a skin rash associated with it. Farnsworth said while not everyone has a reaction to the fruit, he learned quickly that he does.
FRUIT FROM PAGE 1
SHOULD PEOPLE WASH FRUITS?
A GROWING TREND
Kindscher said despite the provisions involved with foraging he still encouraged people to go out and pick from the wild. Though he gets most of his produce from his garden, Kindscher said he continues to forage for wild fruit.
While an undergraduate at Kansas, Boog Highberger ate from the campus landscape. In 1989, a few years after graduating, Highberger created a guide to the campus food, titled "Eatting KU"
Highberger's interest in edible landscapes, like Skylier Adamson's, has continued to grow over the years. Highberger now serves on Douglas County's Local Food Policy Council. He said local organic food was gaining interest.
"There seems to be a movement," Highberger said. "It's different than anything I've seen since I've been interested."
Kindscher said he had also noticed a bigger push toward local organic food over the past few years. He said he thought the greater interest might have come from concerns for the environment, self-sufficiency, and quality of food.
Skyler Adamson has become
a large part of the movement in Lawrence because of his efforts in establishing the Lawrence Fruit Tree project. He said his interest in self-sustainability began with foraging fruit trees, like those on Campus.
"I liked eating fruit and I didn't like paying for it." Adams said.
Adamson said the goal of the Lawrence Fruit Tree project was to create a multipurpose landscape, from which people could gain shade as well as esthetic and nutritional value. He, with the help of other members of the Lawrence Fruit Tree project, has planted grafted fruit trees in several locations around town, including New York Elementary school and the Ecumenical Christian Ministries building.
CHRIS BRONSON/KANSAN
Jason Hering, a recent graduate of the University, said his interest in local food began with the gleaning of Campus pear trees and had continued to thrive through his participation with the Lawrence Fruit Tree project and the KU Student Farm.
Students occasionally eat from the persimmon tree that grows in front of Strong Hall. The fruit, when ripe, has a spicy-sweet flavor.
Hering helped found the KU Student Farm, a plot of land near the Lawrence Municipal Airport available for KU students, faculty and staff to grow their own food. He said he has continued to see an increase in participation. The farm
began in the summer of 2010 with a single plot and by July of this year had 23 plots, according to its blog.
Highberger said he wasn't sure whether the increase in interest in local food had created more Campus fororgers or not. The persimmon tree in front of Strong Hall continues to be well known for its
large, sweet fruit, though, he said he was amazed there was enough fruit to go around. Highberger said he no longer foraged on Campus.
"I won't be competing against you for those," Highberger said.
EDUCATION
- Edited by Ben Chipman
The challenges of being a grad student
KELSEY CIPOLLA
kcipolla@kansan.com
This fall, graduate students accounted for almost 10 percent of those enrolled at the University of Kansas. But outside of taking a class taught by a graduate teaching assistant, undergraduates have little contact with graduate students. Two graduate students discuss what motivated them to continue their education, how it has affected their lives and what they want to do with their newly accumulated knowledge beyond academia.
Jordan Wade, a second year graduate student in American Studies from Charlotte, N.C., took a two-year break between completing her degree at the University of Richmond and coming to the University of Kansas. In those two years, she worked for non-profits in California and Texas, an experience that fueled her desire to go back to school.
"While I was very emotionally fulfilled, I wasn't intellectually fulfilled in what I was doing," Wade said. "I decided to come back to school for me, because I really love to learn and I'm curious about a lot of things."
But she quickly discovered that learning in graduate school was very different from her experiences as an undergraduate.
"You're learning more about less and less," she said. "You're
getting really deep into random stuff not a lot of people know about."
Her research focuses on yoga culture in the United States, including how yoga is viewed as a liberal, hippie practice when the people actually practicing yoga are primarily upper class. Wade found that the history of how yoga was introduced to America also needed to be explored in greater detail.
Diving into a subject with little guidance is another crucial difference between undergraduate and graduate work.
"You don't get hand-holding." Wade said. "You don't get someone to guide you through it."
Being self-motivated and aware of what you need to do to advance in your chosen field is essential, Wade said.
But the most challenging part of her experience has been balancing her own classes with research, being a GTA and having a social life.
Teaching and preparing for two American Studies 100 courses twice a week adds up to 40 hours per week of work. Wade said. Still, she finds teaching rewarding and feels that she learns things from her students that she might not have had a chance to stumble upon without them.
"I like the rapport that I can have with students," she said. "I think a lot of times the material
I'm teaching doesn't seem that far removed from their lives. I teach race, class, gender and sexuality in modern America. Those are things that everybody encounters every day."
In addition to the time she spends teaching, her own course load often requires her to read 600 to 700 pages a week. Research is also very time-consuming, leaving her little time for a life outside of work.
Leading what she describes as a monastic existence is a problem that played a large role in Wade's decision to take a break and work for several years before returning to school to earn her Ph.D.
"I'm not ready to commit another five years right now," she said. "I'm a very social person, so it's a personal thing in a lot of ways. I still believe 100 percent in the value of learning and teaching and academics, and I love the teaching part so much. But the being alone so much, I'm less interested in that right now."
Daniel McCarville, a second year graduate student in political science from McCook, Neb., has had a very different experience as a graduate student. McCarville's research focuses on computer simulations.
"Basically, what I do is build computer programs that work like governments and politics do, so we can understand the inner workings we don't get to see," he
said. "You can't see what goes on behind closed doors, but you can create a program that creates the same results."
After studying engineering as an undergraduate at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, he became interested in how society, like a machine, might work within certain parameters.
Like Wade, McCarville feels students in graduate school have to be very independent.
He is also familiar with the pressure associated with being in graduate school, where the expectation is that your research will bring some new information or understanding to the table.
McCarville's research topic is largely based on computer simulations and does not require as much time-consuming research. He also does not work as a Graduate Teaching Assistant, but McCarville does have to juggle his course work and research with his child, who has given him perspective about his academic experience.
"It definitely takes a lot of time out of my day and makes you reorganize your priorities," he
A PROFESSOR SPEAKS:
LIFE AFTER GRADUATE SCHOOL
Rob Schwaller, an assistant professor of history, earned his Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University in 2010 and is now in his first year of teaching at the University. He said the transition from graduate student to professor was smooth, in part because of their similarities.
Professors and graduate students both apply for grants and spend time researching. As a teaching assistant, he also accrued teaching experience that allowed him to feel comfortable as a professor. But there are some differences.
"It's a lot of the same with more pressure and more responsibility in certain areas," he said. "The pressure in graduate school is, 'Can I finish my dissertation?' The pressure for a new faculty member is, 'Can I continue to produce so I can get tenure?'"
The skills he acquired in graduate school have helped in his transformation from student to teacher.
"Academics has this odd diffused pressure," Schwaller said. "If in grad school you were able to develop a good sense of time management, that will help you through being a new faculty member."
McCarville will be exploring the world outside of academia next year when he expects to have completed his master's. He is interested in pursuing a career in academic development, but still appreciates the personal
benefits attending grad school has given him.
"In political science, you talk so much about politics that you really understand what you think about things," McCarville said. "But even beyond that, the greatest benefit is getting to work with other people that are really interested in the same subject. Sometimes you feel like you're the only person in the world that cares about what you do. But then you're surrounded by a group of people that are all interested in the same subject and you get to hear their ideas."
— Edited by Laura Nightengale
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