TUESDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2012
PAGE 5
THERAPY
Text your FFA submissions to 785-289-8351 or at kansan.com
I knew my boyfriend was a robot before we started dating, and we put our differences aside for love! <3
In order to hang out with my friends I had to doodle them.
Who needs a bowl game when you have the no. 1 quidditch team in the world!?
When you erase a word, where does it go?
To the guy who asked if he would be considered a tool if he got an ear pierced. The answer is no. It's the way you act that determines if you're a tool or not.
KU IS HOGWARTS!!!!
That awkward moment when you and your brother get mistaken for a couple.
Go home Mother Nature, you're drunk.
Engineering is just physics with less math, and more random labs. Calm down
Someone please explain to me why we're getting Postscript. We already have an anonymous place we can submit our darkest secrets. It's called the FFA.
KU volleyball and soccer thanks for giving us something to cheer for this fall.
Dumbledore is dead, so no.
Editor's Note: SPOILER ALERT!
Really dude, you walked into the wrong class on the last week of school?? Someone hasn't had the best attendance!
Punched a mailbox. Broke my hand.
Mailbox 1 Me 0.
I bet the girls love your deep-cutoff/ wife-beater combo.
All I want for my birthday is some big Jimmy John's.
Editor's Note: Can't tell if this is for sandwiches, or a sexual nuendo.
Bahahahaha (unranked) Kentucky!!!
End of semester depression abounds
I've been distracted from politics lately. I won't call it depression, but I've been stuck in a happiness recession ever since I made the ill-advised decision to leave home and get a proper education.
Just played "Withey" for 45 points in Scrabble. Boo yah!
I've only slept eight hours total in the past three days and I can feel the medicine creeping out of my system. I got a D on my Bio test and I'm one slip-up away from losing my scholarship, packing up my things and riding K-10 back home. And as much as I want to go home and sleep in a bed that actually fits me, I know I couldn't look my parents in the eye if I ever failed. So I'm crying on the floor of my dorm's empty lounge, hoping that no one comes in and sees me, and kind of hoping that someone does. I'm too proud to show anyone that I'm hurting. I'm supposed to be number one.
Shhhh, no need to tell others about our $80K starting paycheck. Sincerely, a fellow engineering major.
to blame. It's my adviser, for pushing me into an 18-hour schedule of mostly honors classes. It's my parents for halting my spending and constantly reminding me how much money I owe them. And please for the love of God, let me blame this emotional instability on a chemical imbalance brought about by medicinal withdrawal or something. Just don't let me be broken.
This is way too hard and I need someone, or something.
Everyone thinks they have the quick fix to "cheer me up." Work harder, work less. Hang out with friends, spend some more time alone. Eat healthier, get drunk. But these are short-term solutions; I'm trying to get better. I'm going to a therapist now. I'm trying to do some volunteer work because God made me strong and I owe it to help others as much as I can. So I join my girlfriend in her classes where she teaches dance to kids with mental disabilities. I bond with a little
girl who has Down syndrome. She smiles and learns to clap her hands along with a beat and I learn that I can overcome my relatively small disabilities and be happy.
I'm using Whisper to make sure a friend I recently lost is doing okay and staying safe. She doesn't know that I know her screen name and look for just that
I go back to school the next day with a fresh outlook and a great attitude. And then I don't feel so great. I run to the bathroom and vomit five times. I shiver and burn my way through a 103-degree fever and wind up lying on a hospital bed, bracing myself for every syringe like a human pincushion. The doctor says with near certainty that I
got the infection from one of the kids at the dance class and strongly advises that I don't do it again. I can do no right.
I want to go back to my simple high school days at Shawnee mission East, where I could be an all-star student without even trying. But even the school has changed; they lost a beloved senior/star athlete/all-around great kid in an accident and the very next day, another student lost her father. Everyone is hurting and I just want it to be like the good old days.
I sit down at my computer before my deadline and just can't bring myself to write about cabinet appointments, General Petraeus or taxes. I've become consumed with something. And I'm not going to call it a happiness recession anymore - I have depression. But I'm in good company. My high school is in a depression. My country is in a depression. So I'll talk about poli-
ucs anyway. Just like a scared college freshman, we are struggling and want to blame our problems on a common enemy: on Obama, on China, on the rich or on the poor. We want to help Israel just like I wanted to help Sarah, but we can't even take care of ourselves. As truly as I can't go back to high school, we can't go back to the Reagan or Clinton years; we've already graduated. And just like my friends with their advice, everyone thinks they can fix the country with a quick tax code change or spending cuts. But we need to look long-term and support one another. We need a little therapy.
Webber is a freshman majoring in journalism and political science from Prairie Village. Follow him on Twitter @webbgemz.
DATING
Don't rule out open relationships
Especially in liberal Lawrence, a popular sentiment among many young adults is to "go with the flow" and do what comes naturally. And when it comes to relationships, science tells us that what comes naturally is — interestingly enough — not monogamy.
By nature, most people at least subconsciously crave some sort of stable relationship because of its emotional and social benefits. But for some of us who are considering going the opposite direction into an open relationship, or one in which people date but have sexual encounters with others outside the relationship, we need to weigh our options before we dive right into such a nontraditional framework.
I just got hit in the face by a giant leaf.
I recently had dinner and drinks with a former crush in Leawood, and the newly single Kansas alumnus made it clear that he was enjoying the single life and later suggested that even an open relationship can be a beautiful thing. Unsurprised to hear that from him, I scoffed. A week later, though, I was still wondering about open relationships and their effect on the people.
By no means am I a prude about sex and dating and feel like relationships are one-size-fits-all institutions, but I can't help but be skeptical of just how beautiful an open relationship really is. It may work for a minority group of students, but what about the rest of us?
Open relationships aren't always recipes for disaster, and if they do work for us, they can reap serious benefits. For people
who can handle them, they offer the best of both worlds: an exhilarating rush from new sexual adventure and the comfort and stability of partners we can count on. In the wake of long-term relationships that often become stale, hearing about other people who are single or are dating openly can send us spiraling into jealousy.
But speaking of which, if we enter open relationships out of jealousy but can't stand the emotional heat, the structure of them can keep us there.
Open relationships may not be totally taboo or less valid than exclusive ones, but they tend to be like making $5 bets with a slot machine: exciting because the payoff could be big, but may leave you suffering from remorse if the house wins in the end.
Open relationships that college students may experience can spawn emotional casualties if they go awry, leaving us jealous, upset and self-conscious. The reward can be high, but the risk can be ever higher.
If we hesitate to partake, we shouldn't even go there, especially if we're thinking about transforming an exclusive relationship into an open one. Doing so will likely break a heart in the process and cause
irreparable harm unless both people equally want to be open.
This phenomenon is unlikely, however, so if we're caving an open relationship but our partners aren't, we should probably have no relationship with them at all.
Open relationships may be exciting and beneficial for many of us, but meanwhile shouldn't consider monogamy to be binding and outdated. Sometimes what's traditional is good, and if we find that it is for us, we should take it and let it ride.
When I left Leawood, I couldn't stop thinking our conversations during my drive down K-10. He said that even if we tried, we probably wouldn't work out as a couple, and that didn't upset me.
But I knew it wouldn't work for me, and the potential exhalation and free attitude of open relationships shouldn't trump our ideals if they don't ultimately fit the mold because it'll leave us wishing they hadn't.
So maybe that kind of structure works for my old crush and some of his alma mater at the University now.
In the end, openness and exclusivity are up to us, and against a backdrop of hallowing the go-with-the-flow attitude of open relationships, we shouldn't have to apologize for desiring a dating life a little more traditional for the sake of being truly satisfied.
Rachel Keith is a graduate student in education from Wichita. Follow her on Twitter @Rachel .UKeith.
CAMPUS CHIRPS BACK
What's your biggest distraction during this stressful time of the school year? Follow us on Twitter @UDK_Opinion. Tweet us your opinions, and we just might publish them.
POLITICS
Fiscal cliff gridlock not to take effect until 2013
The fiscal cliff poses a multitude of well-documented problems. The crisis currently consuming our airwaves is a many sided issue that does not offer a straightforward answer. But if no agreement can be made our economy will get the shaft of the political gridlock. The message this would send to the American people of bickering over serving would be the most damaging facet of not reaching a deal and our democratic process would suffer those ramifications.
The reason for this self-imposed time bomb is the motivation of catastrophe to force a settlement (cage-match style) in order to confront the debt problem but it could have the opposite effect, further exacerbating the problem. The consequence of not reaching an agreement by the end of the year is the automatic end of the Bush tax cuts for all income groups as well as major spending cuts. This is worrisome because we have learned that lowering spending and raising taxes to such a degree during or shortly after a recession can be bad news for the recovery.
The Great Depression, in addition to being deep, was rather lengthy. The length was perpetuated by the recession within the Depression coming in 1937. In 1937, when economic recovery was on the horizon, there became a sudden emphasis on debt and a concern to immediately address the issue. So in the midst of the worst recession in memory, similarly "draconian" levels of spending cuts and tax hikes were imposed, successfully weighing the economy down until 1941.
If that sounds familiar that is a big reason why the "cliff" has been so villain-ized, however naysayers have a point as well. While the Congressional Budget Office has forecasted that going off the cliff would result in recession, some have been quick to note that it also said that it would take a full
year of these policies for a recession to be the result; that would put the date for resolving the cliff in December 2013. These observers have also called the cliff a mischaracterization by the media saying it only serves to dramatize the situation. Instead they call it a slope or a variety of other generally less-steep things. However the idea from these individuals that we could go over the cliff without a hiccup, because these changes would not immediately have an effect, seems flawed.
Even if a deal was struck early next year. there would likely be plenty of consequences and they could be both immediate and long-lasting.The longer it takes to reach an agreement,the more uncertainty will flood the economy and that is not an environment conducive to economic recovery That would be an unlikely antidote to our tenuous economy's stress.
Perhaps the biggest mistake in flanking the fiscal cliff may manifest itself in the message Washington D.C. sends the public. A failure to compromise on this issue, whether the cliff is only a matter of perception or not it doesn't matter, would further characterize the dysfunction of the government and negatively impact our democratic process. The best solution to this puzzle may just be any solution at all.
Cosby is a sophomore majoring in economics and political science from Overland Park. Follow him on Twitter @claycosy.
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Do crossword, get frasted, study, get
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finished (which is never)
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