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Text your FFA submissions to 785-289-8351 or at kansan.com
To the hot KU Law student on Route 43: I know you'll be unemployed, but I'm still going to make a husband out of you.
To drop or not to drop a class. That is every college student's question right now
Don't forget to vote guys
Just saw two high schoolers in Club Anschutz. This place needs someone checking IDs at the door. We tend to get a little wild here.
I want to sleep with my best friend. Help!
Hahahahahaha Chiefs.
Did I really just have hashtag sex? #yes
I could care less about the wo. We need to stop saying home of the Chiefs like it's something to be proud of.
You think seeing someone struggle in Math 101 is a little embarrassing? You really haven't met the ones struggling in Math 002.
Let's make the relationship column about advice that matters. Like when you need to tell your boyfriend that you're a robot.
Cumulative finals are the closest thing to hell on Earth.
To the chick struggling in Math 101:
Don't worry. J.K. Rowling isn't good at math either and she is doing fine.
Hey editor, I've thought about creating a playlist but I don't want to create a new one every time I use iTunes.
Editor's note: Sounds rough.
Bet the "chick" who is struggling with Math 101 possess a larger vocabulary than you do. Don't judge.
To the guy who isn't a Lakers fan: get ready for our sixth RING! #LakeShow Editor's note: You know the Lakers existed before Kobe Bryant, right?
Big ol' thanks to whoever found my wallet at the union and turned it in without taking any money out. I hope you populate the world with your offspring.
My name is Matt, and I've got a Mac. Come and find me.
Anybody else just lay in bed making mental movies of perfect scenarios in life?
To the kid I yelled at for bumping into me: I'm sorry!
Accidentally typed in "My Meth Lab" instead of "My Math Lab" on Google. Some interesting things popped up.
Do you actually know what you're talking about?
Schol Hallpocalyse 2012: With no power and no internet, residents slowly turn to cannibalism...
CULTURE
That awkward moment when your love life is nonexistent because you didn't pass that chain letter along in 8th grade.
Everyone is trying to characterize our generation. We are more ethnically diverse. More of us are getting college degrees. We grew up with the Internet. When I think of myself and my peers, none of these descriptions come to mind. Perhaps I'm suffering from some kind of post-election hangover, but I think I've finally come to a few true, defining characteristics. What defines our millennial generation includes, but is not limited to, talking about things we don't know much about, looking up something online and suddenly becoming an expert on said thing, using large generalizations, and becoming involved in frivolous, impassioned, inconsequential online debates. In essence, what defines us is not just our ability to use rhetoric, but our penchant for truly believing the rhetoric we spew out through any medium. It's endemic of our generation.
Let me give you an example
I didn't and I don't. I have some exposure, but I don't have any grand vision of what the price of gasoline will be. Right now, I don't have the skills to break down the gasoline market every single day. I can't combine geopolitical events with changes in gasoline refining technology to come to a decision on what the outlook for gasoline looks like. I still read the sentence "Western woes weigh on gasoline market" as "Whoa. Was that alliteration?" Even if I knew precisely
about myself and the way I used to buy gasoline. I used to always do this stupid thing where I wouldn't fill up my gas tank, even if the low fuel light begged me to, because I thought gas prices would be lower. Perhaps, as a student studying petroleum engineering, I would have some kind of insight into the best time to buy gasoline. Maybe, as a student studying economics, I would have some fleshed-out wisdom on the demand for gasoline in Kansas.
what the headline meant, it's not as if I could combine it with other factors and accurately forecast the price of gasoline for the next day.
Power outage? It's a month too early to be the apocalypse.
Despite all this, I thought studying petroleum engineering and economics gave me some kind of license to tell people what was "right" when it came to gasoline. All of a sudden, I was some expert. I was a lightning rod on the internet, crushing less internet-savvy opinions with my hasty Googled consumer spending data and my well-crafted box and whisker plots of gas prices.
If you're someone on whom
inadvertently vomited this, what
I'm going to call "pseudo-knowledge," I ask for your forgiveness. For everyone else, don't you all know someone who does what I did? Someone who argues only in large, hypothetical generalizations, particularly over the Internet? Someone who takes some general credibility, like his or her major area of study, and suddenly uses it as authority to spread pseudo-knowledge like a cancer? Haven't you had enough of the political science student telling you what's wrong with America, the sports management student telling you what's wrong with Kansas football, and the engineering student telling you how inefficient you are?
tion enough, the person spreading pseudo-knowledge is forced to really become knowledgeable or else risk being exposed as a fraud. This benefits everyone. Don't get caught thinking an orange falls faster than a grape. It doesn't. It falls at the same speed. Try it out.
Stop the pseudo-knowledge pandemic now. If someone really does have strong experiences and ability to cite sources, then give that person some credit then. But, if there's no real evidence of either, please, please question away. There's a chance that if you ques-
Just because a columnist in the Kansan writes something, it doesn't make it absolutely true. I'm trying to put these days behind me. I've had quite enough of my own pseudo-knowledge claims. As old fashioned as it may sound, being able to step back and say, "I'm not quite certain, but I would love to learn" is a trait I admire in others and a quality that I strive for. In the meantime, I'm filling up my tank when the low fuel light comes on.
Ouyang is a junior majoring in petroleum engineering and economics from Overland Park. Follow him on Twitter @ChrisOuyang.
HUMOR
The 'right' way to celebrate
Every day you open up to the opinion page of the Kansan, you see three new columns. Sometimes, one of us will give you advice on how to overcome obstacles within student life, or maybe one of us will give you advice on how you should view a particular political or social issue.
No matter how you slice it, it's advice - good and bad.
Even though I write weekly columns (which usually offers tongue-in-cheek advice that's rarely serious) and read my colleagues' columns, sometimes the advice we make available isn't quite what the doctor ordered. Occasionally, what's widely considered as good advice isn't the kind of advice you're looking for. If no one ever followed bad advice, good advice wouldn't exist.
I turned 21 last week and thought it would be interesting to see what kind of advice our columnists had to offer on celebrating such an occasion. During the last few years, several have penned pieces on turning 21. For the most part, they usually steered toward condemning heavy drinking and urged readers to avoid it - which is rational, good advice.
But as I mentioned, people don't always want to follow good advice. Sometimes people are comfortable with taking a gamble and braving any negative consequences. I knew
I'd have friends and family by my side, so I felt comfortable heading to the bar that night to take both a gamble and a generous share of shots.
No one had written a column for that - for someone who opts against having a quiet, calm 21st. There wasn't any good advice on how to best follow generally bad advice.
So I'll go ahead and do it. Here's what got me through a drunken 21st and here's what I wish I'd heard in advance.
DRINK WITH A GAME PLAN.
START HYDRATING AT LEAST A DAY IN ADVANCE.
If you drink like the Chiefs have played this season, don't try 21 shots. If you're "experienced," go for it if you want, but don't wait until your fourth drink to try and start your shots. I did and it was a god-awful call. As you can imagine, hangovers get exponentially worse when you're speed-walking home to un-tag overly embarrassing Facebook pictures.
This probably would have saved me from the worst hangover of my life. Eat a solid dinner and make sure your pee color is as clear as glass before you even start walking (you're not driving because you're not a childish, selfish monon) to the bar. Continue to down water liberally throughout the night. It's key.
MAKE SURE YOU REALLY TRUST YOUR BUDDIES.
Find two or three who will agree to stick with you the entire night.
Sometimes that's hard, because as people drink, they can wander off to other parts of the bar and forget to keep track of their newly of-age and drunk friend. Luckily, mine partied by my side all night and fetched a sober friend to get us home. I'd have been screwed without them.
RUN INTO SOMEONE YOU KNOW? MENTION THAT IT'S YOUR 21ST.
Both were in my pocket when I awoke (thank God), but my wallet was empty and my phone apparently broke at some point. Money's tight in college and buying a new phone is brutal – especially when you're not due for an upgrade and you have to pay full price.
HAND OVER YOUR PHONE AND WALLET EARLY.
Not only will they probably buy you a shot, which is always a plus, they'll be made aware that you're drinking more than usual tonight. No one wants to see their friend's big night end badly, so they probably won't hesitate to get your buddies and cut you off if you start looking a little too rough.
If that's how you want to do it,
know that it's possible to have a
crazy, ridiculous night without
putting yourself in a bad situation.
Just play it safe, and above all else,
play it smart.
And don't get McDonald's breakfast the next morning. Thank me later.
Barbosa is a junior majoring in journalism from Leawood. For more hilarity, follow him on Twitter @AJIBRBOSA.
LIFESTYLE
Great experiences happen by chance
By Arnobio Morelix amorelix@kansan.com
What are the best moments you have had in your life? The coolest things you have done? The memories you like the most, and the people you met that you like the best?
Have you thought about how they happen? Were they something you planned out, or did they happen more or less by chance? Were they part of your plan, your daily routine? Or were they a bit daring, when you tried something you weren't quite sure of?
When I reflect about my own "best moments," I find they happen largely by chance. Not only on the professional side, like going to India to study business and landing an internship in Europe, but also on the personal side, such as when I met my girlfriend. All these things involved not quite following my previous plans, and going a lot off what I was "supposed to do." In fact, if I had only minded my own business and followed my own plan, I would never have ended up in Kansas for some of the best years of my life.
I would love to believe that my own awesomeomeness and foresight were the sole drivers of the cool stuff I have experienced in life.
But that is not really the truth. In fact, on a broader perspective, if we are sincere to ourselves, the most remarkable experiences we have tend to come from events we had little control of.
On my current job at the Kauffman Foundation (a job I landed because I had a good deal of luck on my side), one of my tasks is to interview successful entrepreneurs, mainly CEOs and founders of the fastest growing companies in the U.S. Not surprisingly, many mention serendipity as a critical success factor. They were at the right place at the right time. They couldn't really predict what would happen, but they went off their routines and tried something new. And there is the key: although they could not really know what would happen, they knew they had to do something different from their daily routine. They gave chance a chance.
Too often we try to design complex plans ahead of time, long before we know what life will really be like. How many friends we know who were sure about their dream careers, but changed majors after a couple of classes on the field? Giving chance a chance is not about giving up the control of our lives to randomness, but rather recognizing and knowing what we have no control of And, most important, make the best out of it.
Morelix is a junior majoring in business and economics from Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
CAMPUS CHIRPS BACK
@Chels_Hines
@UDK. Opinion so much for the "United" States.
@pearsonaronj
@DUK_Oplition ignorant! Just plain ignorant!
@RealDerekGood
@drew KU
@UDK_Opinion we need one to leave so that Puerto Rico keeps us at 50, not 51.
HOW TO SUBMIT A LETTER TO THE EDITOR
@UDK. Diplomat Obama should send them all a plane ticket to Mexico City. See ya. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out
LETTER GUIDELINES
Send letters to kananopdesk@gmail.com.
Write LETTER TO THE EDITOR in the e-mail subject line.
LETTER GUIDELINES
Length: 300 words
Ian Comings, editor
editor@danasan.com
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Dylan Lysen, opinion editor
dypen@danasan.com
Length: 300 words
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@apetrulis
@UK_Dominion I think people need to grow up. We are the UNITED States of America, and whoever the president is shouldn't change that.
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THE EDITORIAL BOARD
THE EDITORIAL BOARD
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