I hate to admit this in such a public forum, but usually in my "American Society and Popular Culture" class, the only time I take really good notes is when my professor references the show "Friends" to highlight his point.
In the beginning, there was food. At the start of the school year, as my roommates and I moved into our new apartment, we each brought along the fruits of a Kroger shopping trip.
It's a familiar scene: In the post-class hubbub of everyone getting up and putting their bags together and streaming toward the door, the cell phones emerge from the cool shelter of pockets and purses and migrate upward until they are inches away from a face.
How long have you been working at the University? This is my second year. Which classes do you teach? I teach "Rise and Fall of the Slave South," which covers the colonial era through the late 19th century, "American Intellectual & Cultural History," from the Revolution to World War I, and a research seminar on gender and the American Civil War. Tell me about your childhood. I grew up in Fairfax, Va.
Along with seemingly the entire first-year class, I travel to O-Hill every Monday and Wednesday. As I stand in the line, which pretty much backs all the way to Alderman Road, I focus on two things - avoiding eye contact with tablers and eavesdropping on first-year conversations. Last Wednesday, while I listened to the latest dormcest updates from the first-year roommates in front of me, I contemplated my feelings toward their entire class.
"Step on a crack, break your mother's back." I think I first heard this one sometime around first or second grade and not wanting to be responsible for fracturing my mother's spine, I avoided cracks wherever I walked for about two weeks.
Biases and preconceived notions generally harm our own critical decision-making. It is often easier, especially when it comes to complex issues, to buy into someone else's opinion rather than formulate your own beliefs and convictions.
Date: Friday, 0ctober 14 Time: 7 p.m. Location: Lemongrass
Stacking up vodka bottles is not usually an indicator of good lifestyle choices. That is until last summer, when a group of University students traveled to the Mongolian countryside to build a greenhouse out of the discarded glassware. The project began during the 2010 fall semester in "Development on the Ground," a class tought by Robert Swap, environmental sciences research associate professor. Students in the class create project proposals during the semester and then submit them to the Jefferson Public Citizens program to apply for funding if they wish to go through with their proposal, Swap said. Fourth-year College student Sarah Culver said the group formed out of a shared interest in rural development and quickly became focused on waste management and Central Asia when Tashi Dekyid, a Tibetan exchange student in the group, brought it to their attention.
I used to avoid coming home. I didn't want to be the kind of person that needed to come home. I didn't want to want home either.
Once upon a time, in a place called the Fine Arts Library, there sat a young woman trying to be scholarly.
You know that kid who begs his parents to stay up and watch scary movies on television? He is fascinated by the frightening and prefers ghost stories to tales of knights and dragons?
For students at the University, Family Weekend is the chance to update families about their lives, justify thousands of dollars worth of tuition just by walking parents around the Lawn, catch a much-needed break from schoolwork and clean the assortment of alcohol and dirty laundry scattered in every crevice of any room.
Every year since I moved out of dorms and got my own kitchen - so about two years total - I have started the school year off by planning to win at life, as I am sure most of us do.
The nature of a column is inherently self-centered. A columnist writes about herself because that's what she knows best.
Often the idea of university research studies brings to mind white rats hunting through a maze for cheese or beakers filled with mysterious bubbling liquids.
Date: Friday, October 14 Time: 7 p.m. Location: Lemongrass
At age 18, fourth-year Engineering student Imran Khan was diagnosed with Friedreich's Ataxia, a degenerative neuro-muscular disorder.
On Saturday, Aug. 27, Hurricane Irene was planking the Eastern Seaboard and I was cuddled up in my bed, procrastinating the copious amount of reading I acquired during the first week of school.
I think Stephanie Meyer might be a genius. There, I said it. I hate to marginalize some male readers, but Stephanie Meyer's "Twilight" series is, first and foremost, about a girl.
