opinion
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KANSAN.COM/OPINION | THURSDAY, DEC. 8, 2016
We didn't get handed the title "greatest home court advantage", we earned it! Be loud & proud & don't sit down in the student section!
Chew with your mouths closed! #FFA
So next year having a gun will be fine, but you'll get in trouble if you have a beer? Okay then.
"To be honest, I love watching videos of dolphins"- a dude in my class, completely unprompted
wanna buy some yams
Someone just walked into my class 38 minutes late. It is a 50 minute class.
MAKE THE STUDENT
SECTION GREAT
AGAIN!!!
If my professor handed out the course evaluation after he handed back the last assignment, I would have responded completely different.
But seriously... wtf 2016.
WHY WOULD YOU USE THE SIDEWALK WHEN YOU COULD WALK DOWN THE ROAD WHERE I'M TRYING TO DRIVE MY CAR HA HA!
CAR HA HA H
Thomas Jefferson was such a b*tch
So far, I am very disappointed in the enthusiasm and effort of the student section at the MBB games. Do the cheers, lose your voice, and make the building shake like it should... And for the love of God do the Rock Chalk Chant when there is 1 minute remaining in the game! Thanks!
Eyebrows are the doors to the face
i was gonna be 5 min late to class so i skipped it instead
why are the bathrooms in the debruce center nicer than my apartment
READ MORE AT KANSAN.COM
Being alone with your thoughts is the literal worst. Remember your headphones, people.
Knife-throwing is a valuable and impressive life skill.
@KANSANNEWS
remaining in the game!! Thanks!
Illustration by Jacob Benson
@UNIVERSITY
DAILYKANSAN
/THEKANSAN
KANSAN.NEWS
Bertels: Do life your own way
▶ ELLEN BERTELS
@ellenbertels
last week, award-winning author Zadie Smith visited the University. I attended a lecture she gave in the Union on Thursday, although I did not have time to do so. Two years ago, I took one of the only classes on this campus to teach Smith's amazing works in the context of other contemporary British literature. I made the time.
She was a wonder, of course. Among other things, Smith talked about what it means to be a writer. Being a writer, she said, (I am paraphrasing), is not an identity, but an action. I like that. The more I thought about it, the truer it became: To be steeped in the writerly aesthetic, to declare it as a lifestyle and a culture, and then turn around and not to do the work seemed not only hypocritical, but counterproductive.
Similarly, in another interview I really enjoyed, Margaret Verble, an author whose debut novel was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize this year, said that writing is "like woodcarving. You have to, you know, carve."
The statement is simple and clean: You have to do the work.
Sometimes hard work fosters doubt and requires support. I know this better than anyone. Much like in this article, in real life, I rely a lot on other peoples' words for support. The advice I seek out is instrumental in helping me make decisions, in understanding the world, in parsing
out my own positions on various ideas - I have excellent friends, family and advisors who support this.
Others, however, seem less invested in supporting my needs and visions and more interested in spouting their specific and streamlined view of how things need to be done. I don't know if you know this, but there are thousands — literally thousands — of people on the internet just waiting to tell you what you are doing wrong with your life. And if those people believe they are academics, who think their experiences are invaluable to your and your future? All the worse yet.
This year, I began the hard work of applying to law schools. After a long time ignoring it, I looked in in the face. I did the work.
But I also had to do some of that work alone. While some expert advice is helpful, I realized,
much of it is subjective, unnecessary, just gray noise that kept me from doing things the way that worked best for me. I took an extraordinary amount of time to realize that I could just not listen to some of the advice that strangers on the internet or professional acquaintances gave to me. I realized that sometimes, in order to get the work done, you have to shut your phone off, log off the internet and listen only to your own instinct.
This year, this finals week, whatever immense and unspeakable task is awaiting you - just do the work. The urge to evade and disappear will be overwhelming, I am sure. Some things seem insurmountable until we have looked them in the face and made them happen. Writing a book? Representing one's life work in a two-page statement? Something about hard math problems to appease the STEM readers out there? Impossible until we do them, until we deny our instinct to submit and concede doubt.
I write, so I am a writer. I listen to the audio files of Supreme Court cases from the 1990s online in my spare time, so I am a pre-law student. Whatever these things are, we must do them, and we must do them the way we know best. Even the effort counts.
To add just one more (hopefully not unwanted) voice to this conversation, I will end with quote from another author on the subject. As Antonio Machado wrote:
"Walker, there is no path / the path is made by walking."
Walk, carve, write,
whatever. Do it. Do it
your way.
Ellen Bertels is a senior from Overland Park studying English and Italian.
Adamson: Cheating is never worth it
LAUREN ADAMSON
@LeAdamson
As we head into hell week and finals, the number of students frantically walking around campus, sleeping in the library and calling their parents for reassurance has risen dramatically. It's a
With this seasonal panic comes a matched increase in Adderall binges, test file use and "accidentally" having your notebook open to a certain page. While these activities range from somewhat benign to blatant cheating, the question I ask is, do most people know where they draw the line? Is integrity in the classroom so easily forgotten when faced with the alternative of a
stressful time of the year, and for many students there are make-it-or-break-it assignments and tests in all of their classes.
Cheating has risen across all levels of schooling in every part of the nation. Where once it was reported that only about 20 percent of students cheated in high school, 95 percent of students now say that they have cheated in some form. At the university level this is reported as a mere 43 percent, but my experiences have me questioning the validity of this statistic.
we live in requires students to always be on their A-game in order to compete. The only way to get a job or get into grad school is to be completely well-rounded. As we all know, this is impossible.
lower GPA?
College is hard. It's hard to keep the GPA, have a social life, sleep and binge on TV all at the same time. But cutting moral corners to save yourself some time and stress is not the answer.
And, cheating at school seems quite easily justified. The competitive world that
I firmly believe that while cheating may get you the grade, it greatly reduces how well you actually learn. Frankly, we're all paying way too
much for these classes to not actually absorb the material. It's time that we re-evaluate how we approach school each semester.
We all need to learn to be better students, to procrastinate less, and to focus more. We shouldn't default to the extreme solution of cheating and swindling ourselves out of a good education.
Lauren Adamson is a senior from Leawood studying economics and political science.
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