GRADUATION GUIDE / THURSDAY, MAY 12, 2011 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / KANSAN.COM
Wide range of options available for new graduates
BY CLAIRE MCINERNY editor@kansan.com
As some seniors are preparing for jobs and planning their lives after school,some students are experiencing a different scenario: the end of college crisis.
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er. One opportunity that enables students to make that happen is through Teach for America. Teach For America is a program that allows recent college graduates to teach in public schools in low-income communities. The assignment lasts for two years.
Four vea
a way to prolong having to find a job, but rather look at it as a way to find new opportunities and new ways for students to use their passions. She said a lot of politicians who now work in Congress were in the program and are now fighting for education rights.
Wiechman spent his two years in Saint Lucia doing community development. He helped a farmers' cooperative develop a grant proposal to get funding for a composting project from the United Nations and also taught reading and music at a school.
--and music at a seminary The Peace Corps was an attractive option for Wiechman because
WEDNESDAY, JULY 13, 2011
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
PAGE 12
FOUR-PART SERIES
The Poet
Last week
Local writer finds performance inspiration in hip-hop
In-depth writer Calvin McConnell profiled James Baker, a senior in Spanish and Latin American Studies. From concert-goer to independent promoter, the article looked at Baker's unexpected entrance into the area hip-hop community. Catch up with the series online at Kansan.com.
This week
Bryan O'Brien throws his lanky arms in the air, cocks his head toward the ceiling and releases a rhythmic cadence from his chest. Standing behind the microphone at the Mirth Café downtown on a Friday night, he couldn't have imagined those Vanilla Ice verses he memorized in elementary school in North Dakota would lead to this.
then the sounds of Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer reached Bryan O'Brien's childhood home in Eastern North Dakota in the early 1990s, he discovered a style of music different from the others played on his parents' television set.
It was called hip-hop. And at that point, the now global phenomenon born in the 1970s South Bronx, was going through some growing pains. The art had emerged from a forgot-
cacy with which they were placed in rhyme, the staccato schemes, the alliteration. But most of all, he enjoyed learning every word of a new song and performing it, on imaginary beats and completely from memory to his friends.
brought in world-renowned slam poetry performer Saul Williams. O'Brien tapped in.
It's a challenge he's kept with him throughout the years. After his family moved to Kansas and O'Brien was attending high school in Topeka, his interest in what he dubs "verbal mastery" easily translated into a passion for forensics competitions. He read in a poetry and prose competition
heilt supersed in.
He found it a suitable convergence. Performance poetry brought the competition he enjoyed from his forensics days, the wordplay of hip hop and a soothing outlet for self-expression during rocky times.
Pasión during rocky times.
He began performing, not just for his friends, via "who-can-remember every-line-to-the-song" challenges, but for live audiences and with his own writing. It was shaky, at first. O'Brien would get really nervous but
Wednesday of the month poetry reading at the Jazzhaus, 926 1/2 Massachusetts St. said, "He is loud, obnoxious and beautiful all at the same time. You want to listen to him. He is an incredible freestyler—he can go for miles off the top of his head. It's really very strategic to do poetry well."
He attends most readings at Mirth Cafe, 745 New Hampshire St., and performs at other spots when he has the time between waiting tables downtown at Mirth Cafe — you'll hardly see him write down an order
"Every rapper that goes out there and says, 'I'm the best, I'm the greatest,' they are empowering themselves."
ten urban culture with a simple yet radical litany: recognize, represent, come correct, build, maintain, respect. But Ice and Hammer ushered in a new era—one detached from the 1980s heydays of KRS One and other hip-hop popular culture pioneers and focused more on targeting new commercial markets, even rural North Dakota.
"There was no other way I would have found out about hip-hop. I wouldn't have known about it for years and years, unless that had happened," O'Brien said, accepting that many hip-hop critics scoff at that particular era in the music's history, but gratefully accepting its role in his life.
He liked the words, the intri-
and the thrill of trying to read intricate works on-point opened him up to the idea of writing his own lyrics, he said.
he said.
During his first year of college, separation anxiety from his family, an "unbalanced feeling," and a knack for writing poems instead of taking notes in class, led him to leave school after just one year. Yet those very issues that came up for him in his college experience, O'Brien said, were formative in shaping his course as a writer.
"A lot of what got me into writing was trying to fix that, trying to reform things," he said.
At that same time, in the early 2000s, the University was hosting numerous poetry slams and even
after a couple years, he said, he found confidence on stage. And, in turn, he now looks at it as a challenge that he encourages local poets to take on. He said that's part of what hip-hop and poetry is all about.
"A lot of people will trash hip hop and say, 'It's really exploitational. It's all about me, me, me and the ego and all that.' I see it different," O'Brien said. "Every rapper that goes out there and says, 'I'm the best, I'm the greatest'; they are empowering themselves."
selves.
Today, he's a regular at poetry readings in downtown Lawrence, where he's known for a different but refreshing flair.
refreshing hair.
Sara Glass, friend of O'Brien's and area poet who started the first
and taking classes at Devry University in electrical engineering.
in a split second.
"It's a direct possibility that verbal agility enhances neural ability, so the words work willingly, describing you diligently, I hope this illustrated it brilliantly."
Empowerment is seen in his performance, like the reforming he set out to do after he left KU has come to fruition. His gift of recollection is apparent, too, as his poems almost invariably will pack twice as many words in less time than other readers' works at local gatherings. His poem titled "How to Talk Fast," performed in a head-spinning 30 seconds, is a good example. The lines here are spit in a split second: