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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY GANSAN
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2012
Text your FFA submissions to 785-289-8351 or at kansan.com
Didn't Missouri learn that joining a cult in the south was a bad idea the first time around?
Anyone else pretend they are using the force when they walk up to the automatic doors? Or is that just me?
I'm a girl and I like "300." Does this score me bonus points?
Being alone in Malott at night is sketchier than any scary movie I've seen in years. Thanks physics.
basketball Boot camp begins today. Late Night is so close.
The FFA not having color? This is madness!
I don't have a problem with slow walkers unless they take up the whole walkway with their group of slow friends
To the football players: there are still some positive fans out here who support you and believe in you! Rock Chalk lavhawk
RELATIONSIHPS
Love waking up for an 8 a.m. class that was cancelled one hour before. You don't?
Just saw a kid riding his bike in the street flip off a kid riding his bike on the sidewalk. Even bikers hate bikers!
You know you're getting into a slump when your primary goal is to finish that game of solitaire.
To baseball players: if you don't want me staring, then don't have such cute buffs.
KU football has been cursed by the BasedGod.
College is hard.
I was naive enough to believe that the KU Squirrels would allow me to graduate without incident. But I was wrong... So very wrong.
Mrs. E.'s: where you go to put somewhat edible food in your stomach to at least get you through the day.
Either the area I live in has had less than three or more than 20 burglaries. Not knowing is gonna lead to no sleep.
Children of divorce not affected by situation
Aaand the one writing the pro-life letter to the editor is a man. What a surprise.
The divorce rate may be declining as couples marry later and later, but children of divorced parents are still a dime a dozen. Many children of said divorces may find their parents' splits inconsequential to their own dating lives, but research shows that they usually aren't.
Subconsciously, the feelings from the divorce may manifest, and even adult children of divorce who were once diehard believers in the power of a great love can suddenly lose faith in the idea altogether.
This past Saturday my boyfriend's mother, a Wyoming native, married her long-term live-in boyfriend in Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyo. And she wasn't the only one. My own mother married her second husband in
My boyfriend and my mothers both chose to take another plunge with second husbands, but the looming bitterness and tension I felt from my parents' divorce made me skeptical about being able to make it work with my first.
July.
And even though my boy-friends divorced when he was a young child and mine split when I was an adult, the effects those broken nuptials can have on both of us are generally the same. Here, age really is just a number.
There age really is not the same in their book "Adult Children of Divorce," psychologists Elizabeth S. Thayer and Jeffrey Zimmerman examine the effects on children, regardless of age, whose parents' relationships end in "I don't."
explain in their work that children of divorced parents tend to develop a fear of commitment, bad judgment about sex or emotional intimacy, a subconscious desire to sabotage their own relationships to retain a sense of control and more.
Thayer and Zimmerman
cessful. These lingering effects may last forever, or they just may be temporary like they were with me.
When these potential issues combine, they can create a skewed sense of sex, love and relationships that destroys faith in something genuine and suc-
But either way, it's important not to ditch a potential partner because of it. Often when people meet and one learns that the other's parents are divorced, it might send him packing in fear that that not only would that relationship have a similar fate, but that the other person in question is damaged goods as a whole.
Children of divorced parents shouldn't be treated as charity case because it can add insult to injury. But they also shouldn't be considered unsuitable because of their parents' relationship. What matters is how they personally handle their own affairs, which isn't necessarily a completely lost cause if their parents have separated.
Their parents' relationship is broken. They aren't.
Nice guys finish last. Nice girls don't exist.
But in the end dating is what we make it. It will work out, or it won't.
When my boyfriend's mother announced her decision to marry her now husband in the aftermath of my parents' divorce, it felt like a glimmer of hope for the future of my relationship with her son. Our mothers being remarried might have an influence on our relationship. Or maybe it won't.
GET OUT THERE
Either way, though, the future of a relationship depends on several factors. Our parents' nuptials is only one.
It would be a total game changer if the FFA accepted emojis. Endless Possibilities.
Rachel Keith is graduate student in education from Wichita.
Follow her on Twitter
@Rachel_UDKeith.
Don't be afraid to be your real self
If anyone remembers an old episode of "Spongebob Squarepants" where Patrick tells Spongebob to yell off the rooftop, "I'm ugly and I'm proud," just remember that same concept except yell, "I'm weird and I'm proud!" Feel free to embrace your weirdness in all of its glory.
HEALTHCARE
If you're trying to say you're normal, stop that nonsense right now. Secretly, we're all a mess of weird, wanting to defy at least one of society's "rules." You may look like a regular 19-year-old guy, but you may still be recovering from the fact that ABC stopped making "Desperate Housewives." You may be a girl who loves playing the video game "Skylim." Or you may be a guy in a fraternity who secretly loves cargo shorts. We're all secretly, or not so secretly, different from the norm in our own way.
Take me for example. I am kind of (OK, very) obsessed with cats. I spend way too much time on Reddit looking at cute cats, I oversee the cat emoji, and I have cat salt and pepper shakers. My close friends know of my weird obsession because anytime they see a cute cat picture, it's automatically sent to me. So now anyone reading this knows that I, Stephanie Bickel, love cats.
I wonder if that guy's face permanently looks like Blue Steel.
Let's back it up a bit. What is actually defined as "normal?" Merriam-Webster defines it as "conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern." One group may think they're normal while the other thinks they're just odd. I suppose there's really no normality, simply a perspective. You don't have to try to be the same, or you don't even have to try to stand out, just do whatever you please.
However, there is a difference of being weird and really weird. There are some people who just think they're the only people alive and can start making up an interpretive dance during a lecture in Budig 120. I think as long as you recognize your differences while respecting others, it's perfectly fine. It's the basic concept of being a human being, which most people should understand by now. Honestly, it is normal to be weird. As much as that sounds contradicting people should learn to accept that fact. Denying someone their right to be weird as hell is just wrong.
So go ahead. Indulge in a "Desperate Housewives" marathon, nerd out on "Skylirn," or wear your secret stash of cargo shorts with your Greek letters. If you feel like you're breaking society's rules of normality, know that there's probably someone else who's doing the same thing. By the way, if anyone finds a cute cat sweater, send it my way.
Bickel is a sophomore majoring in journalism from Harper. Follow her on Twitter @Steph_Bick.
A face behind healthcare more than just finances
I'm not a freedom-hating commie or a lazy freeloader suckling 'neath the red, white and blue teats of hardworking Americans' tax dollars - I'm just trying to survive without bankrupting my family. For a few weeks of this past summer, I joined the ranks of the nearly 50 million Americans without health insurance.
My mom quit her job as a Spanish teacher to go back to school and get her master's degree, effectively releasing our whole family from her employer's group health care. And not a single health insurance company would cover me as an individual. So I had no choice but to join a vastly inferior group health care plan for students.
You see, I have five pre-existing conditions, but most notably, Common Variable Immunodeficiency – a condition that prevents my body from fighting off communicable diseases. That means if I'm sitting within a few desks of the kid who is coughing, or sneezing, or not-so-directly wiping away snot on his sleeve, I'm likely to show up to class the next day clutching a box of Puffs Plus and shoving cough drops down my very inflamed throat.
But that's not the best part:
while the kid who first had the cold will probably be fine by
the following week - I won't. I'll sustain it for a few days and then it'll grow into bronchitis and ultimately, pneumonia. I know this because it's happened. Five
times. The good news is, I've had a way of remotely controlling my condition over the past couple years: every week, I'd infuse the healthy antibodies that my body is lacking into my stream, giving me an almost normal blood count. It's always painful pushing the needles into my stomach and sure, I'm a little groggy the next day, but this treatment had vastly improved my quality of life. I could rebuild my immune system and infuse the antibodies all by myself, from the comfort of my own home; I no longer had to worry about 104-degree fevers and terrifying, restless nights in the hospital.
But my new insurance company refused to cover these treatments. For those of you unfamiliar with purified antibodies, they cost $5,000 for each monthly shipment.
to go into withdrawal from the medicine in the days before each treatment.
My parents and doctors fought tooth and nail with the provider until they finally met a compromise. Instead of weekly home treatments, I now go to a clinic every three weeks to infuse in bulk. Because I'm not a human, I'm a business. It costs more for my family, is less effective than weekly procedures, and causes me
If you're still skeptical about health care reform, ask me how my new treatments feel. Ask me what it feels like to spend 5 hours motionlessly hooked up to an IV; or how demeaning it is to be 18 and have to ask a nurse to help every single time I have to urinate, which is really freaking often when a tube is running fluids directly into my body.
If you're still skeptical about health care reform, ask me what withdrawal feels like. It feels like total helplessness and vulnerability – I managed to get seriously sick after four days untreated. It feels like I have no control over my body; my arms and hands shake uncontrollably and my head aches perpetually. It feels like I'm 16 again, trembling in that hospital bed and the doctor's are examining my CT scan and don't have a clue how to treat me.
Some of you worry about mandates and government spending and "socialist medicine." Some of you worry about insurance premiums and damage to free enterprise. And then there's a group of us that get to sit in chairs, hooked up to bags of blood and medicine and worry if we're going to make enough money to live.
Webber is a freshman majoring in journalism and political science from Prairie Village. Follow him on Twitter @webbemzm.
CAMPUS CHIRPS BACK
@joeystallman
@UKK, Opinion Lizzie McGuire, b/c
Hillary Duff didn't end up like Amanda
Bynes or Lindsay Lohan.
@Real_MikeCleary
@UDK_Opinion All of them. All 90s
shows were so much better than
today's sorry excuse for tv shows.
Length: 300 words
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editor@kansas.com
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vukershanker.com
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dypes@kansas.com
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@AMechanicalHand @UK. Opinion Wishbone! It's the basis for the majority of my literary knowledge.
@rmschlesner
@UDK. Opinion Boy Meets World!
Taught me so much about life! Always loved it being on when I got home from school. Gasp, #Topanga.
@errkaerrka
@UDK_Opinion Boy Meets World because obviously my relationships have nothing on Cory and Topanga.
@AmandaKelsie
@UDK_Opinion Dinosaurs!
Unfortunately for my GPA, it was just added to Netflix ... Not the mama!
Ross Newton, business manager
newton@kansasan.com
Elise Farrington, sales manager
earnington@kansasan.com
CONTACT US
Malcolm Gibson, general manager and news adviser mgibson@aansan.com
Jon Schiltt, sales and marketing adviser jschilt@aansan.com
THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Members of the Kansai Editor Board are Ian Cummings
Vikas Shaner, Dylan Lyons, Ross Newton and Elise
Farrington.