Compliments hold more power than speakers realize →

As I folded my leg underneath me on the chair I had pulled up to my friend’s kitchen table, she surprised me by complimenting my smile, saying she thinks it’s most beautiful when I’m laughing.

I can’t remember what I had been laughing at, but it was late — almost midnight — and her compliments were flying freely to me and to her roommate who was putting a pizza in the oven.

After a couple minutes of the three of us exchanging compliments, she paused. “Isn’t it sad that girls’ friendships are just based on complimenting each other?” she said, disguising her statement as a question. “It just seems so shallow.”

At the time, I didn’t think much of her comment. I could see the validity of her point, but I also countered it in my head with memories of all the countless deep and rich conversations and experiences I’ve shared with my friends.

I know she has had the same experiences, so I was surprised at how quickly she disregarded all of that to make a point about how compliments tend to be a foundation of female friendships.

I began to think about my guy friends. I thought about how they interact. I know men encourage each other often enough, but the frequency of that encouragement pales in comparison to the example we see women set.

In fact, sometimes when I compliment a female friend with one of my guy friends nearby he’ll even poke fun at the solicitousness of my affirmation.

Now, I couldn’t tell you conclusively why women appear to love complimenting everything from their friend’s new shoes to her toned butt, but I can offer my perspective.

To begin, I think there are four reasons why we do this.

One reason could be is we are trying to compete with another woman, as back-handed compliments and two-faced pettiness are unfortunately present in female friendships.

I remember being in the ninth grade and having a girl on my track team — a girl who I had squabbled with through elementary school — tell me that I was “stupidly nice.”

Now, at the time, I had no idea how to even respond to a comment like that. Later on, however, I realized that she had ever so cleverly slapped me with an insult disguised (rather poorly) as a compliment of sorts.

Honestly, it wasn’t even sort of a compliment, but because of the way she said it and because the second half of it contained the word “nice,” not one of the girls around us seemed to notice her boldly insulting me.

I still find it so interesting that compliments are versatile enough to be used in such creative ways.

Even more so, it’s interesting because I’m positive I’m not the only woman who has had a fun encounter like that, so that back-handed approach has to be a common use of compliments.

Moving on — another reason women compliment each other so frequently could be that we are trying to send out a sort of “cease-fire” and halt any sense of competition. It’s funny how a compliment could either start or stop an unseen competition.

If we think about it, a great strategy for diffusing tension or establishing allies is complimenting someone or something.

For example, if a girl is meeting her boyfriend’s sisters or mother, the sisters might immediately compliment the girlfriend which shows that they like her and are for her. I know that sounds silly, but it works quite well.

Instead of the girlfriend feeling like she’s being scrutinized, she knows she has allies in her boyfriend’s sisters. They like her and they’re eager to find more things to love about her.

This ability for a compliment to change the tone of a situation or the thoughts of a person so completely is almost miraculous. Most words are spoken without any sort of power or purpose, and that’s exactly how they end up — powerless and purposeless.

But, compliments seem to have the power to shift the entire dynamic of an interaction because they can alter everything, even the very thoughts and feelings of the interaction’s participants, whether for good or for bad.

On a similar note, a third reason we compliment could be that we understand certain insecurities, thought processes, or desires and want to alleviate, address or fulfill those things, respectively. In that way, complimenting is almost merciful.

Have you ever gone into a situation full of trepidation and insecurity and then, with a few simple words, found your anxiousness quelled? I have.

Oftentimes, the encouraging words of a compliment help me feel more confident in what I’m doing, wearing or saying. That’s a big deal. If our compliments have the power to ease hearts, settle minds and even make secret wishes come true, shouldn’t we give them out abundantly?

I think so.

Finally, the last reason I want to offer is that we might give a compliment because we actually really do like those new shoes or think someone’s smile is particularly beautiful.

A compliment could be given for no other reason than because we admire something — physical or character-based — in or of or on someone else and we want to acknowledge and encourage them.

This reason for complimenting would make the subtext of a comment like, “Hey, these throw pillows are so cute,” an encouragement to buy more of those kinds of pillows, and so on.

I think this reason is simplest and perhaps what men assume we’re doing when we issue compliments, but I believe, as I’m sure you’ve gathered, that the power of compliments is much greater than initially perceived.

So, maybe girls are not shallow for complimenting each other so often, but instead we’re embracing the power of the compliment and using it for much deeper, more significant reasons than one might have realized.

I don’t know, but I do know that what gets commented on this article once I post it on Facebook will either make me want to take it down or leave it up. My actions will literally be determined by compliments. Makes them seem pretty darn powerful, right?

Entertainment media glorifies broken relationships →

In a desperate attempt to sweep up the messy lives of the characters in the book I was reading, I spent most of my Saturday morning rushing to finish the final hundred pages of Kate Eberlen’s “Miss You.”

Perhaps I got too emotionally invested in the main characters, Tess and Gus — who don’t meet until the end of the novel — because, by page 400, I realized how I had internalized all of their poor decisions and tragic turning points. I think my stress eating of chocolate chips as I sped through each page should have been an indicator, but I was too immersed in Tess and Gus’s drama to notice.

As I read, I was made utterly despondent by the unrelenting stream of failed relationships both characters suffered through before finally marrying each other at the very end. Sorry… Spoiler alert. Maybe I should have led with that?

Regardless, these characters cheated and were cheated on; they were bored by simple relationships and broken by the passionate ones; they watched their parents fail to love each other successfully and then failed when it was their turn; they felt hopeless when they tried to date while in their thirties; and then they were jaded when they finally met each other.

Thankfully, Eberlen spared our hearts the misery of watching another one of their relationships fail and she gave them the happily ever after we all pray for. But, my goodness. I was their misery’s company up until those final, resolution-bringing pages.

And so now I’m left fearful that this is a reality I haven’t prepared for. Are all relationships doomed, at least in some way?

Marry the passionate man and he’ll become disinterested. Marry the sweet, simple man and you’ll be the disinterested one. Marry the one working long hours and he will probably cheat. Marry whoever you can find once you’re thirty because, gosh, you don’t want to be an old maid. Marry someone, anyone because y’all will be unhappy regardless; Why put so much thought into it when it will suck in the end no matter what?

See? I definitely internalized Tess and Gus’ experiences way too much. But this isn’t the only place I have noticed this same hopeless message being communicated.

Nowadays, it’s pretty common for love songs to be about toxic, heartbreaking, unhealthy relationships — think of Lorde, Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, Halsey, Camila Cabello, Justin Bieber, Demi Lovato or any of those pals from 1D.

On top of that, it’s common for movies to feature two characters who do nothing but rip each other to pieces but their chemistry keeps bringing them together, like flies to a light. A lot of the examples that come to my mind are based on books — The Great Gatsby, Anna Karenina, and even Twilight.

Now what about TV show relationships? I am a big fan of shows like New Girl and Friends, but if I focus in on the emotional sagas of Nick and Jess, Schmidt and CeCe, Ross and Rachel and even that whole Richard, Chandler, Monica situation, I can’t help but believe that it’s not right unless it’s hard.

However, there’s this part of me that can’t accept that as truth. I refuse to believe that the right relationship is the one that hurts.

In fact, from the real-life examples I see, the relationships that actually last tend to be the ones that glow with love and patience. My friends are getting engaged to men that treat them well and care for them kindly. My cousins are marrying people who make them smile and laugh. My coworkers are telling me stories of their significant others’ thoughtfulness or compassion.

So, I’m starting to think, despite the fact that the high drama, high-caliber heartbreak of entertainment media definitely sells more seats at a concert, movie tickets and Netflix subscriptions, that is not actually love at all.

These examples we see of shame-filled stories and broken hope is not the standard to strive for. We do not need to imitate the struggle for “true love” that we see in pop-culture.

Instead, we need to look closer at those around us. We need to ask our grandparents how they stayed married for so long. We need to talk to our engaged friends about dating and, in turn, make sure they’re talking to someone who’s married about the next step.

We need to take notes from those who are actually getting A’s in class, not from those who spend a two-hour feature presentation breaking someone else’s heart.

I suppose my whole point seems rather obvious, but I fear it might not be something anyone consciously recognizes while listening to Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do” or while watching Rachel write out her 18-page letter.

These over-dramatizations only serve to entertain. And that’s fine, as long as we don’t forget that real life should almost always look different than entertainment. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s quite a good thing.

MLK’s mission, vision of hope must not be forgotten →

To make my two-hour layover in the George Bush Intercontinental airport a little less two-hours-longish, I picked up a bag of pretzel M&Ms and a copy of The Atlantic’s Martin Luther King Jr. special edition issue.

Having been an editor at a newspaper for nearly two years now, I couldn’t help but flip through the pages of The Atlantic’s “King Issue” (as they took to calling it) without thinking about how much thought and deliberation must have gone into every decision they made. From the fonts and theme colors they chose to the words which prefaced this special edition in the Editor’s Note, their choices beautifully communicated reverence and recognition without being passive or patronizing.

Devoting an entire magazine issue to a man whose name is so deeply tied to our understanding of America’s relationship with race is a risky move as is. When you add the fact that this magazine was published in the thick of such a contentious season of conversations about race, it makes their decision to publish even bolder.

As I read that issue, I realized very early on that King’s mission was not only to achieve equal status for black men, women and children in America. Don’t get me wrong, that was his primary goal. But his mission stretched further than that.

His mission was to elevate our entire country to a state of equality; the kind of equality that looks past race, past gender, past socioeconomic status, past one’s roots, past one’s education and past our own stereotypes. He was an advocate of human rights and he believed that the human rights issue which needed to be addressed most immediately was racial discrimination against African Americans.

Historically, I believe he was absolutely right to focus on that. He came into adulthood during a time when discriminatory practices left him standing at the back of the bus for hours on end; a time when young men were kept from certain universities because of the color of their skin; a time when there were two separate lines, two separate bathrooms, two separate benches — one for white men and one for those labeled as “colored.”

So, as he began to get involved in protests — peaceful protests, that is — he started to see how effective and how necessary such protests were. From there, his presence in the erupting Civil Rights Movement absolutely exploded. King became the movement’s go-to man, a position he excitedly and conscientiously embraced.

Let me interject, the majority of my assertions in this column are based on the vivid picture I had of King after reading The Atlantic’s special edition issue.

Returning to my point, however, I was surprised to discover that King’s mission was not solely focused on racism, but instead focused on three main intersecting points. As Jeffery Goldberg outlines in his Editor’s Note, those three points are racism, militarism and poverty — points which King himself called the “three major evils.”

Now, interestingly, these points really do seem to exist in a tangle of importance. Much like how bell hooks’ term “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” displays the interconnectedness of those four concepts, King’s “three evils” cannot be isolated from each other because they are incredibly intertwined.

He reminds us that poverty is greatened by the way our government pours money into defense spending. We can even note that the term “defense spending” is essentially a euphemism which weakly disguises our devotion to militarism. Militarism, being a part of those three evils, relates to racism by suggesting — sometimes, not always — that it’s the answer to racial differences. And racism relates to poverty and to militarism by perpetuating the former and being perpetuated by the latter.

All of that said, I think it is important to see how those three evils stretch farther into our society than what we see when we look at issue of white verses black. King was not just advocating for equal treatment of black individuals, but advocating for serious societal reform. He saw the way our culture’s fractured state was destabilizing countless other institutions and he refused to sit back and watch that happen.

On behalf of his wife, Coretta Scott King, he spoke out against the Vietnam War, thus combating militarism. He encouraged us to address poverty by caring for others — perhaps this was because his Christian faith commissioned him to care for those in need. And finally, he loudly, powerfully and eloquently challenged America to rise above our racist roots. He saw hope in our nation and painted that hopeful picture of peace and equality with every word he spoke.

So, I suppose the reason I felt the need to write this was because I feel like the civil rights movement is still alive. In some ways, it has lost its vision and kind of abandoned it’s hope. Therefore, we need to remember that the heart of this movement was the belief that people deserve more. Soldiers deserve better. The impoverished deserve better. And the men and women who still suffer through undue and unacceptable oppression deserve better.

We should not continue to modernize the mission of King, but instead revert back to his tenacious and faithful pursuit of equality. This is the hope he dreamt of and it is the same hope which moved the very mountains we want to push even further.

Women continue to be systematically silenced in US →

Recently, I was told a story about a professor who said that in her life she has been sexually harassed the most by her students. I haven’t quite been able to forget about that… How am I supposed to forget the fact that some punks in their 20s decided they could, without deterring repercussions, harass a grown woman who has significant authority over them.

I furrowed my eyebrows with frustration as I was told about two different instances in which male students made comments about her appearance or insinuated that they had romantic thoughts about her.

Let me back up, though. The reason I was told this story was because we were discussing Cheris Kramarae’s Muted Group theory. (I know, here I go talking about theories again… Bear with me.)

This theory suggests that certain groups have a diminished ability to speak and be heard. The group this theory focuses on is — as you may have guessed — women.

Now, of course, the extent to which women are heard varies from country to country, from culture to culture. There is no universal standard and there is no way to collectively change the way women’s thoughts and words are valued.

However, we can focus in on our fruit cake of a country and try (or pretend) that all women in the United States can be lifted out of our muted existence. While there is absolutely a difference in how an African American woman’s words are received verses a blue-eyed, blonde-haired woman’s words, let’s just hypothetically average it — just for about 500 more words.

Okay, now that we’ve done that, let’s address this averaged reality for women in the U.S.

For the most part, women are not considered the breadwinner in their household. Women are expected to change their last name when they get married. Women are asked if they will return to work after having a baby, often because companies assume they will stay home to raise their child. Women are labeled as someone searching for an MRS degree if they verbalize their hope to find a spouse in college.

All of this assumed, it seems rather evident that women have certain stereotypes which keep us contained within the domestic realm. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing bad about a woman who can make a mean chocolate chip cookie before picking her children up from elementary school. However, there is a problem with the fact that this expected domesticity leads to a societal dynamic which places men in positions of social authority and women in positions of limited influence.

While women who choose to stay home with their children have the honor of raising up the next generation of humans, there is a serious deficit of women in positions of powerful social influence.

For example, women’s decisions are being voted on by a majority male Congress (right now, only about 20% of Congress is female). Another example is the fact that, as of 2017, only 6.4% of Fortune 500’s CEO roles were held by women.

Take that number in for a minute.

These statistics might be representative of greater gender issues in the U.S., but right now, I am focusing on the fact that these statistics show how some of our nation’s most influential positions are filled with men. That’s a big deal.

Throwing back to the idea of a work environment being exclusively viewed as a sort of “boys club,” we can reminisce on the idea of women — who served as secretaries or positions of the like — were intentionally kept out of certain clubs and meeting so that the men could “talk business.”

Pardon me for using such an anecdotal example, but we do see this modeled in shows like Mad Men, Downton Abbey and even Parks and Rec which mockingly includes examples of this phenomenon. Women were actively kept from conversations of significance because we— oh, wait. There actually weren’t any real reasons.

Perhaps there were arguments as to why women were not included, but if I had more page space, I’d poke holes in the validity of those supposed reasons a hundred different ways.

Ultimately, my point is this: We are still living in a world where women are being silenced, systematically.

I am able to speak loudly and clearly through this column within the pages of this newspaper, but shouldn’t we be pushing for more than this? Shouldn’t we be asking women what they plan on doing with their degree, not who they’re dating or how many kids they want to have?

I think so.

Regardless, let me give even one more example. The Time’s Up movement that tore through our nation’s entertainment industry was catalyzed by a letter written by 700,000 female farm workers. These women decided to write this letter of solidarity because of their own experiences as women trying to hold their own in a male-dominated industry.

The catastrophe we saw bold women shine a light on last autumn was the result of a culture which tells us women shouldn’t speak up else there will be significant consequences. The #MeToo and Time’s Up movements exposed just how significantly silenced women are, especially when it comes to issues of sexual assault.

So, I encourage each of us to perhaps read up on the Muted Group theory and then take a critical look at the way nearly half of our population seems to have a gag tied around our heads, keeping us quiet out of fear or unheard through isolation.

This, of course, isn’t always the case, but it Is the case far too often.

Society controlled by strategic use of communication →

Just the other day, over a plate of sub-par Asian food, a good friend of mine started to recount his experience as a student. He and I have both been communications students for a while now, and somehow we wandered into a conversation about the alarmingly significant ways the very theories we study apply to our world.

However, we weren’t talking about how these theories help us understand interpersonal interactions or the ways what we learn might help us better convey a message. Instead, we were talking about how communication research exposes the extent to which our view of the world can be intentionally manipulated.

Whether it be by news media, politicians, television, businessmen, movies, or educators — there is no difference. We are subject to the messages of those around us and, at all times, we are at risk of absorbing the ideological projections of those around us. So, what happens when a select group of newscasters, politicians, directors and professors conspire to present an alternate reality which lends itself to a narrative which might be more in line with their own agendas?

In order to control the way Americans operate, we are being presented with intentionally manipulated narratives by those who produce and deliver media and information.

In many ways, we are living in a highly propagandized society. We tend to think of propaganda as an explicitly pro-government form of intellectual force-feeding. However, Oxford Dictionaries define it as “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.” Simply put, it is the controlled presentation of ideas in order to produce a specific result.

With that said, there are two different communication theories which have helped me reach the conclusion I present you with now.

The first is Richard Petty and John Cacioppo’s Elaboration Likelihood Model. This theory explains the way we process a message, argument or even just new information. It suggests that people are either motivated to intentionally process something or we simply allow our instinct to sort it out for us. Accordingly, there are two routes through which we might process information: the central route and the peripheral route.

The central route tends to be the more convicting and judicious way to process information of greater sensitivity and/or importance. Things like what to buy, where to vacation or when to propose are almost always processed through the central route. This route requires high levels of motivation to process and time to focus on that effort of processing. It also tends to be safer from external manipulation.

The peripheral route, on the other hand, handles the role of processing in a much more automatic way. Because we cannot process every decision or piece of data thoroughly without going completely mad, the peripheral route helps us quickly make simpler decisions. For example, it might help us decide how many napkins to get out of the napkin dispenser, whether or not to change the TV channel or if we want to read that new book.

But here’s the thing about the peripheral route that makes it easy to weaponize: the seemingly instinctual decisions characteristic of this route are influenced by trivial things like how credible we believe the deliverer of the information to be and how we feel when presented with that information.

Now, this plays into my aforementioned argument by outlining the way that our minds can be manipulated by those who are seeking to advance a particular agenda or to produce a specific result. The friend I was eating teriyaki chicken with elaborated on this by explaining why we often see popular, well-loved actors and actresses at political gatherings.

For example, who cares if Hillary Clinton is endorsed by half of Congress? Not too many of us. If she’s endorsed by Katy Perry, however, that’s a whole different story.

We are more likely to receive and trust Katy Perry’s political message — even though she hasn’t explicitly served the U.S. government a day in her life — than we are a trained politician because we are endeared towards Perry. We trust her. And so we trust what she says.

Let me move on to the other theory I promised to talk about, though. The Cognitive Dissonance Theory provides another interesting piece of insight into how we are being quietly controlled by the media we consume.

Created by Leon Festinger, this theory explains the way we alter our behavior or ideas to decrease the feeling of dissonance, or discomfort produced by contradiction. This means that we tend to seek out information or ideas which directly compliment the ones we already possess so that we do not have to sort out the uneasy feeling which could be produced otherwise.

Playing into this theory is the Selective Exposure Hypothesis. This hypothesis explains why your grandmother might only watch Fox News. At 80 years old, the last thing she wants to do is have to reconcile the fact that there might be some validity in what MSNBC is arguing.

News stations, TV shows, politicians and so on know that we like to hear what we already like. We want someone to carefully and quietly help us reach a conclusion and then we want them to confirm our unfailing wisdom in deciding what we’ve decided. Even more, we do not want to consume media that differs from our believes.

And so we don’t.

Therefore, Congress is able to beat the “Russia is evil” horse long past its expiration date, because it’s a narrative we bought into and one we want confirmed.

They know we won’t notice because we’re too busy drinking their perfectly positioned Kool-Aid.

I think we are being far too cavalier about our consumption of media. We are letting everyone else think for us and by the time we figure out all the ways we are being mentally taken advantage of, the damage is already done.

So, I encourage anyone and everyone to take a moment to disconnect from the buckets of strategically developed and delivered information around them and evaluate their own beliefs, values, interests and questions. Take some time to dust off that trust central processing route and allow yourself the freedom to think freely.

Housing Guide Spring 2018: Owning pets in college means accepting serious responsibility →

For many students, the chance to adopt or purchase a pet is exciting. However, students sometimes can get overwhelmed once they realize how expensive and time consuming pet ownership is.

Logan Welch, a senior human development and family studies major from Hamilton, said she contemplated getting a dog for a year before finally making the decision. She understood what a serious responsibility it is.

“It is basically like taking care of a toddler,” she said. “They whine, they cry. You can’t just leave him in the bathroom with no food and no water because you don’t want to deal with him using the bathroom in the house. You have to get him kennel training and you have to get him the kennel, which is also a lot of money.”

She spends at least $500 on her dog, Scamp, each year, she said. Vaccinations, grooming, toys and dog food are all expenses that drive up this bill.

When Welch first got Scamp, she said she had to spend a substantial amount of money and time getting rid of his fleas. Now, she recommends students adopt pets from the animal shelter because it ends up being less expensive.

“If people ever want animals I tell them to go to shelters because they have all ages from puppies to seniors and their first round of shots are all up-to-date,” she said. “So, if you go to a shelter and you pay that $120 or $160. They have all their shots, they’re neutered or spayed. And so, you’re basically getting a puppy for free compared to how much I had to pay over the past few years.”

However, after the holidays, the South Plains Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals usually sees a high rise in animal returns, Madison Luscombe, a Lubbock SPCA worker and recent Tech graduate, said.

In fact, anytime students travel — as they often do during the holiday season — animal care can become the second priority because students do not work their schedules around caring for their pets, Luscombe said.

Welch, on the other hand, said she makes sure to plan her schedule around caring for Scamp.

“I revolve my day around him,” she said. “So, if I work eight-hour shifts, I have to go home during my lunch break because I’m not going to make him stay inside for eight, nine hours. I also don’t have long school days because first thing I do when I wake up is take him out and the first thing I do when I get home is take him out. So, if you like to go out a lot, you’re not going to want a dog.”

If adoption is too much of a commitment, students can choose to foster instead. Kim Funk, a senior media strategies major from Austin, said she fostered two dogs for a while. However, she ended up adopting the dogs she fostered.

Funk said she did not plan financially when she got her first two dogs, but knew she wanted a dog while in college as early as her sophomore year.

“I am lucky enough that my parents support me financially,” she said, “with the exception that I am responsible for my animals and have two different jobs to take care of them properly.”

Welch said because her dog is a registered emotional support animal she does not have to pay a fee for him to live with her in her apartment complex, which decreases the price of owning a dog. However, other students might have to pay an initial deposit and a monthly fee.

“The Ranch is pretty cheap compared to most places,” she said. “You have to do an initial $200 down payment and then an extra $25 is added to your rent.”

According to University Student Housing’s website, the only animals allowed to live on campus are registered guide dogs or similar disability animals approved through the University Student Housing staff.

However, before adopting a dog, Luscombe said college students should be cognizant of several things. They need to make sure they can afford the pet, make sure they have a plan for vacation or dog sitters and make sure they are ready for the responsibility of owning a pet.

“Go to a shelter,” Welch said. “Go to the Humane Society. Do your research. Before you do anything, do your research.”

Kailin George contributed to this story.

Housing Guide Spring 2018: Budget an important factor in choosing best housing option →

While the idea of moving into an apartment can be exciting, once that initial thrill fades there are several factors to consider before signing a lease agreement.

Texas Tech helps students think through these factors by encouraging them to talk with Red to Black Peer Financial Coaching.

Lauren Winkelman, president of Red to Black and a student in the personal financial planning master’s program, said these free coaching sessions are often one-on-one.

“We have a spreadsheet where we break down some of the costs and the amenities,” she said. “You take it and say, ‘OK, I have Apartment A and I’m going list those costs for Apartment A. It’s going to cost me X amount for rent.’ Then you do the same for Apartment B and then you compare the two.”

She said it is important to keep in mind that one apartment complex might charge $500 for rent while another complex only charges $425, but there could be additional fees at the lower-priced complex which might ultimately defeat the point of choosing the lower rent cost.

For example, complexes sometimes charge an application fee, a security deposit or even a cleaning fee, which would be due when the renters exit their contract, Winkelman said. However, these are not the only kinds of bills to consider.

“If you’re moving from home and you’re going into apartment living with new roommates, you might not think, ‘OK, well, do they offer washer and dryer? Are the bills all-inclusive? Is it close to campus so I can walk or am I going to have to pay for parking?’,” she said. “And so all of these things you may not think of until you get down the road and you’re thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, if I had just gotten closer to campus this would have cost me less.’ Or vice versa.”

Several apartment complexes near Tech’s campus tend to take these extraneous factors into consideration and help students choose the living situation that best meets their financial and environmental needs.

The Holly apartment complex’s general manager, Jere Mitchell, said the staff works to accommodate the needs of students who come to their apartment complex searching for a place to live.

“A lot of people are scared because they think they can’t afford to live off campus because they think it’s so expensive,” she said. “So, if they are scared about pricing, I would definitely go with one of the cheaper options.”

At apartment complexes like The Holly, Mitchell said four-bedroom apartments tend to have less expensive rental rates when compared to one- or two-bedroom apartments.

Another way to minimize a housing bill is to monitor things like electricity use and the thermostat’s temperature, she said.

“Especially in the winter and the summer, your electricity bill is gonna get higher because, for example, you’re putting the heat on when it’s colder out,” Mitchell said. “And for the summer you use your AC a little more, but I would say keep it at like 72 or 75 (degrees Fahrenheit) during the summer.”

However, even with the guidance of thoughtful advice, Winkelman said choosing the right apartment complex and managing the expenses that come along with that new apartment can still be tricky.

Often times, this financial process proves to be a transition period for some students as they go from paying rent with the help of their parents or a scholarship to trying to afford it independently.

“When (students are) in that transition phase, that’s where (Red to Black) can ask, ‘Are you willing to work off campus or on campus?’ And if they’re in a position where they can move off campus and maybe save more money, they need to consider what the moving cost is,” she said.

Jon Thornton, an assistant manager at the ULofts apartment complex, said the majority of their residents are Tech students who need to ask themselves these kinds of questions.

The students who rent at ULofts either are receiving financial assistance from their parents or — as ULofts’ many graduate students often do — paying for their apartment independently because they want to live alone or with one roommate, he said.

“Typically speaking, we have people coming in that are looking for a one bedroom, so they already know what their price range is,” he said. “Because you know you’re going to pay a little more to live by yourself.”

Ultimately, though, Winkelman said one of the most important things to remember is that for every student, a different arrangement will be appropriate for their current situation.

Some students might be able to manage all of these decisions themselves, but others are entering financial contracts like a rental agreement for the first time. So, she said Red to Black tries to sort out all the numbers in order to give Tech students the freedom to choose what they feel most comfortable with.

“We want every student at Texas Tech University to have the option to take control over their own finances,” she said.

The danger of ‘just kidding’ →

When I was in middle school, my mother warned me about the duplicity of a “just kidding.”

From the kitchen, my father chimed in, loudly adding that I can’t say whatever I want and then expect the consequences of those statements to be counteracted by a “just kidding.”

It made a lot of sense to me. I thought of all the times I had heard a “JK” thrown on the end of a truly unkind statement.

“You’re such a loser. Just kidding.”

“Wow, do you even have a brain? JK.”

“Cool story. Just kidding.”

How hadn’t I realized sooner that one’s unkindness cannot be revoked by two little words still blows me away. From that day on, I decided I wouldn’t say any statement that needed a “just kidding” on the end.

This has been a strange effort, though. As the world around me became funnier — at the expense of itself, I would argue — I became starkly sincere.

If I complimented someone, that person would assume it was a joke. If I encouraged someone, that person would assume I was being facetious. If I appreciated anything, those around me figured I was being disingenuous.

My insistence upon biting my tongue largely kept me from unintentionally offending someone around me in an attempt to conjure a laugh.

But, why did everyone think I was odd or unusually positive?

I still wonder this, but now, I see a little more clearly that perhaps I have been isolating myself from those around me. Perhaps, I have failed to embrace our modern relationship with humor: hit home and hit hard.

Our jokes are attached so deeply to real life, real mistakes and real embarrassment that I think we all might be holding our breaths for that awful moment when we become the joke.

We make memes out of a real face or a real person doing real things. We laugh. They become the joke. They become our joke. “Watch her fall,” we say. “Look at him dance,” we demand.

Make the anti-Semitic joke, because obviously it’s fine when you’re “just kidding.” Wear blackface for the Instagram picture — yeah, I’m looking at you Low Hoop girl — because everyone will think that’s hilarious. And who cares if we circulate memes that compare our president to dictators. It’s just to get retweets, right?

Everything is one big “JK.” We’ll laugh at you, but we all know it’s all in good fun. No harm done because we’re “just kidding.”

Well, this has gone too far. What do we take seriously, now? We have an entertainer sitting in the Oval Office. We look to “Saturday Night Live” for our news report. And, we don’t even mind the fact that our reality is starting to look a heck of a lot like a sitcom.

Don’t get me wrong. I support Trump. I just am a little surprised that enough other people did to get him into office.

I think we have watched one too many shows like “Veep," “House of Cards,” “Parks and Recreation” and so on. TV shows and movies that sensationalize and trivialize our government have conditioned us to expect entertainment from our leaders.

I can forget how well our country is being governed as long as my computer has an interesting news update popping up on my screen.

Once again, I love half of those shows I just listed. I have nothing against them. And I think that’s the problem.

I love this highly dramatized political state we’ve found ourselves in. It is absolutely enthralling.

Tweets about federal policy and foreign relations; press conferences that always leave me with a ridiculous sound byte to share; elected officials tearing each other down on a national stage: All of this makes for a fascinating scroll through The New York Times website.

My classes are chalked full of fantastic examples of media missteps and federal faux pas. If you’re in a political science class, I’m jealous. This is the prime time to talk about our government. Sitting through a class on our officials’ rhetoric would be a blast.

We are, as Neil Postman predicted, amusing ourselves to death. A part of me wonders if we’re already a little bit dead. Can you feel your fingers? Have your toes turned blue?

Don’t panic. We’re definitely still breathing. But what happens when our demand for pageantry and pomp places us in the grave? I don’t think it’s worth it. I like laughing, but I like living a whole lot more.

The stories she tells herself →

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that sentence: “And wasn’t that the ultimate feminine achievement,” thought the character Cat in Julie Buntin’s “Marlena,” “to be too gorgeous, too f----- up, too talented and sad and vulnerable to survive?”

I found this quoted in an article on The Atlantic. It’s true, isn’t it?

For as far back as I can search, women are depicted as emotionally broken, bleeding and bruised.

The narrative a woman is told of her existence depicts some crippling internal conflict. Cry more, it says, but not around people. Laugh more, but only because it’s charming. Smile often, but only because it covers your heartbreak.

Be that girl who suffers in silence. Be the light-catching, heart-breaking, life-changing heroine who overdoses on heroin. Be the pretty face who hates her reflection. Be the beauty queen who props herself up on smiles and sedatives.

Our stories are told for us. Depictions of women are filled with anguish and anxiety. They show us as half alive and then destroyed by the heavy hand of impulse.

In novels, in songs, in movies, our lives burn fast and bright, as if we can barely contain the spark that illuminates our femininity. We are both the most enchanting side of a story and the very reason why it is a tragedy.

John Green’s “Looking for Alaska” comes rushing to mind. Alaska Young, full of life and stunning in the strangest way, throws her life around with abandon. The supernova Green writes her to be bursts with emotion and zeal. She lures those around her into the melodramatic void that Green placed at the center of her character.

Instead of working to be healthy and happy and whole, Alaska weaves whatever self-destruction she can find into her life. She works to make sure her life is artistically antithetical by poking holes in her heart and scratching scars into her sanity.

Smoking heavily and drinking carelessly, she embodies the idea that the most beautiful girls are the ones who defiantly dance on the edge of disaster.

And goodness, what a disaster she leaves behind. With devastating pomp, she ends her life in a spectacle starved of concern for those she conditioned to love her.

Novels like this one, like “Anna Karenina,” like “Marlena,” like “The Great Gatsby,” like “Paper Towns,” suggest perpetual struggle of women is to crawl along in our own misery.

We are apparently doomed to be either the supporting character to a destructively radiant best friend or the actual one being destructive.

Why must women be forced into the highly volatile and deeply distressed character trope we’re perpetuating through TV shows like “13 Reasons Why?”

Is this what I should be? Should I be caught in some sort of existential crisis of character? I’m not. Should I weep like Whitney Houston or ache like Adele or feel lovesick like Lana Del Rey? I don’t.

Too much popular music decides for us that we are insecure, inadequate and involuntarily inconsolable. I love a dramatic ballad just as much as the next person, but I hate how they present women.

We think about more things than romance and social lives. We are resilient and brave and confident. We don’t need constant affirmation, and we do not need someone else to tell us we are loved.

Perhaps, I have an advantage when talking about this point. When I feel my life starts to tip out of balance — that is, whatever slipshod balance I manage — I realize where my worth is.

My worth is found in the identity Christ gives me. That and that alone must be what tethers me to reality and keeps me from being yanked into the whirlwind of my emotions.

Yes, every now and then, it might seem rather romantic to be caught up in the rose-colored drama Lana sings about or the unrequited love poets muse about.

However, I think that lingering in this space of wistfulness can leave us disconnected and disoriented. If we perceive the world to be such an ache-filled space, that’s what it becomes. Therefore, it is no surprise that we see these aforementioned characters end their time in this world.

So, I suppose the conclusion I’d like to offer is this: Let us live. Let us live full lives. Let us live lives of joy and excitement, and health and happiness. Let us be loved and feel love, but not always the romantic kind.

Women are so much more than victims of heartbreak and hurt feelings. We are more than the characters we are written to be.

When loneliness strikes →

As I walked along the grey path adjacent to Urbanovsky Park, my mind couldn’t help but remind me that I was completely unknown. It was my first semester at Texas Tech, my first week on campus. No one was vying for my time. No one was asking to meet me for dinner or what my schedule looked like. No one wanted to show me a cool coffee shop or carpool to yet another student event.

I had no obligations — which is a distant dream, right now — but I also had no connections. There wasn’t a web weaving me into campus or tying me to our community. I didn’t care if I stayed at Tech or transferred to a school closer to home. I didn’t care if I socialized or studied. I was entirely disengaged, and I didn’t know how to escape that.

After spending four years embracing my high school’s opportunities, the idea of starting that over again seemed daunting. Did I even care to?

Well, yes, of course I did. Here I am, now, engaged and enjoying my every minute at Tech. But the reason I bring all of this up is because that transition period I went through was the loneliest semester of my life. I haven’t been able to top it, thank God.

Recently, when I began researching for my next class project, I found there are numerous studies being conducted on the prevalence of loneliness in Americans.

As I had expected, I found that my semester was merely a stage of loneliness, as to be anticipated with any significant life change, like going to college, getting a divorce, moving cities, the loss of a loved one, etc.

But, I also found that there are countless people in the United States and around the world who haven’t experienced loneliness as a phase but as their unrelenting reality.

According to an article from The Atlantic, which features an interview with John Cacioppo, a psychologist at the University of Chicago, loneliness is as significant of a health threat as obesity and drug abuse.

Cacioppo explains that, in order to understand the source of this chronic loneliness, we must distinguish between “objective isolation” and “perceived isolation.”

One might choose to live alone, therefore, experiencing objective isolation. Another who lives with a family of seven, but feels ignored or alienated, experiences perceived isolation. Clinical loneliness is able to fester in the internal environment that perceived isolation creates.

When we feel actively ignored, disregarded or alienated, loneliness overwhelms us. The opportunity for connection but failure to make a connection is what emphasizes this loneliness.

I have been mulling over these statements in my head and believe that while I’m sure this is not a new phenomenon, it is more prevalent in our world of heavily mediated communication.

I’m sure you could’ve guessed, but I believe social media, texting, face-timing and so on could be heavily contributing to our culture’s epidemic of disconnection.

How can we feel known when our only source of identity is entirely fabricated? How can we feel engaged when our only means of engagement can run out of battery? How can we feel connected when our only opportunity to connect requires a Wi-Fi connection?

We are so quick to cure our temporary loneliness with a scroll through Facebook. But, what if that supposed panacea actually just scratches salt in the wound?

Perhaps, this diagnosable loneliness has always been a side         effect of the human condition, but I believe we can alleviate it by reaching out to our community and seeking real, in-person, meaningful interaction with others instead of reaching for our iPhones.

Let them go digital →

Is the paper you’re holding right now soaked in formaldehyde?

Because I’ve heard that newspapers are dead, so I’m worried that we might be in need of some post-mortem preservation. However, here I am writing for a newspaper, and here you are reading one, so perhaps we are not quite flatlined.

Since the inception of the internet, the fear that journalism will die has crept its way into every newsroom. Journalism majors have sat at dinner tables explaining the necessity of their career choice to hesitant degree-funders. Fearful followers of traditional newspapers have scoffed at the papers that switched completely from printing to uploading without a wink of trepidation. Skeptic social scientists have predicted that we will all soon be a society of citizen journalists, where everyone and anyone is “reporting” the news.

I, personally, see our world responding to these concerns by pressing on news sources with the hope of seeing where these news sources crack. Where are they weakest? What is fact, and what is editorialized? What do we really know? Because these loaded questions already float around in our heads, it is easy for a news source’s audience to be swayed into abandoning the smudged ink of a traditional newspaper and turn to bolder online sources.

The radical truth always seems more engaging than a sensational report. We want our news to be ground-shaking, and we want to hear the ground shake almost immediately. The faster we can know about something, the faster we can take to our soap boxes, log in to our Twitters and rise in a rally.

This brings us to our present situation.

Print newspapers are becoming too slow and too ordinary. News, 24 hours after it has occurred, is no longer news: it’s history. And with that truth, enters the online newspaper.

Serving as a constantly updated and technology-friendly way to know what’s going on around the world, we have found online news sources as the only reasonable step forward. With that, we’ve darn near abandoned print sources.

And that’s OK.

I said it. I work here, and I said it and that might seem strange, but that’s what’s happening. Online newspapers are OK. In fact, they’re brilliant. We no longer need to regard the printing press as our greatest invention.

Leading to a shift in the way we communicate, this invention revolutionized our world, but now, we have MacBooks and PCs, and iPhones and tablets. We have smart watches and Google Glass and Alexa. We have Amazon shipping us paper towels on demand and vending machines that distribute cupcakes. We have TVs that talk to us and headphones that need no cords. We are advancing at a ridiculously rapid rate, and we should expect news sources to evolve along with these advancements.

This is especially important because news sources are often the ones reporting on a new invention or receiving guest columns about a new idea. We are aware of what is cutting edge, so shouldn’t we be?

The death of a newspaper will come when news stops being needed. So, our responsibility is secure and our jobs are, as well, because the news will always be needed. People are inherently desperate to orient themselves. We must know. This is why we explore oceans and search through space.

We want to know everything we can, and we want to know how we fit into what we discover.

In fact, as our world is provided with more information, we will see an increased need for organizations that help us be effective consumers of information.

We need news sources. We need reliability. We need translations and explanations. We need watchdogs. We need no-spin zones. We need the truth to be told, and we need someone to do it. And if that job just so happens to be done on a page that can only be turned with the click of a mouse or the swipe of a screen, even better.

Everything else is digital. Why shouldn’t the entity that knows about everything be digital, as well?

The land of the free and the home of the weary →

Our country is the poster child for individualism. As a society, we are geared toward equipping and uplifting individuals. We are focused on excelling independently and succeeding personally. We are dead-set on climbing the ladder, racing to the finish line and achieving our dreams.

This is one of the characteristics that makes the United States so unique. Constantly, we are encouraged to shoot for the stars and be the best we can be. Sometimes, however, I wonder if this is an internally flawed goal. To be considered the best we can be, do we actually need to be any of the positive traits we are told to cherish?

You see, we are told to value honesty, integrity, kindness, sincerity, diligence, patience and peacefulness. Yet, we are taught to cling to cunningness, flexibility, ambition, haste, sharp-tongued vocabularies, quick thinking and confrontational attitudes. We are told to be first in our class but then forced to wade through waves of cheating, dishonesty and desperation to do so. We are told to be kind to everyone but then find ourselves in a puddle of shallow approval. We are told to work diligently and be patient but then are reminded that “the early bird gets the worm.”

How can all of these qualities exist simultaneously? How can a human possibly navigate the ever-conflicting demands of a bipolar society? I’m not sure we can.

We often find that the United States has the highest frequency of diagnosed cases of depression and anxiety, second only to India and China, according to U.S. News. What does this tell us about our culture?

Now, considering I was born and raised stateside, I can only evaluate India and China from the perspective of an educated outsider. Within the broad culture of these separate countries, exceptional performance-based results are demanded, and society is largely driven by the fickle force that declares or destroys one’s honor.

Therefore, it makes sense that the elevated expectation for near perfection in these two countries would emphasize the inevitable imperfection that results from one’s humanity, leaving the citizens of these countries in a compromised mindset.

Essentially, while someone is being told he must be the best he can be, the pressure of this demand essentially counteracts his effort to succeed.

We see this in America, too. I’m going to join the crowd of analysts who are studying this matter by citing a rather trite example: the college student.

What might most of us give or hear as a reasoning for why college students are often found drunk on a Friday night? I would venture to guess it is because students believe, after a long and taxing week of work, such a finale seems only reasonable.

So, what this situation essentially exemplifies is how our perilous and unrelenting drive can push us to a point of mental anguish. Some may “recover” from such a state by drinking. Some may try to “recover” by antisocially staying in bed all weekend. Some may try to “recover” by resigning to the temptation of cheating.

Regardless, I believe that our society’s damaging insistence on excellence is destroying the very greatness it strives to produce. And, while this might appear to simply be a struggle that is randomly scattered throughout our population, I believe it afflicts each and every one of us to varying degrees.

Do we know how affected we are by our environment, by our culture? Do we understand that the social anxiety that seizes our hearts or the depression that numbs our minds is a symptom of being in a success-obsessed, individualistic, over-stimulated society? I don’t think we do. I think we are blindly drudging along in this ambitious culture, waiting for the day when a nap doesn’t mean we’re lazy and doing something recreational isn’t seen as a waste of time.

I promise, I am hardly the United States’ largest critic. In fact, I am often caught singing our great country’s praises. However, I feel burdened by the reality that we are all deeply engrossed in a cycle of structurally perpetuated inadequacy.

The poverty we ignore →

When I was in elementary school, I remember being told by my mom that the very child sitting next to me in class could have a home life much different from mine. As a little girl, that reality didn’t seem quite as significant as it strikes me now.

In my first class last semester, who’s to say I didn’t sit next to a student struggling to pay for tuition? Or for housing? Or for food?

Who’s to say on my walk to J&B, I don’t often stroll past a sad-eyed mother knocking around in her home, trying to figure out how to feed her children.

Who’s to say my apprehension to buy a bottle of $15 vitamins is anywhere near the struggle of scraping together enough for a discounted loaf of stale bread?

So easily, we make the joke of being “broke college students.” However, I’m not sure we understand the gravity of being without a drop of money. How many of us take our paychecks straight to the bank and pray that will cover our tuition? And even then, that seems far from the poverty line’s threshold.

Interestingly, Lubbock has a pretty darn significant impoverished population. If you drive a little ways west, you’ll find it. If you stay out too late at night, you’ll see it. If you take a stroll down University Avenue, you can talk to it.

According to City-Data, in 2013, about 25 percent of Lubbock’s population fell below the poverty line. This placed poverty rate in Lubbock above the poverty rate in Texas as a whole.

Nearly 9 percent of Lubbock’s population falls in the bottom half of the poverty range, once again leaving Lubbock worse off than all of Texas.

So, why aren’t we doing more? There is not some heartwarming abundance of clothing drives and soup kitchens.

The thrift stores in Lubbock are frequented by giggly party-goers — ready to recreate the 1990s — or college students who are stylish enough to take a grandma’s sweater and pair it with ripped-up jeans.

That’s no problem. In fact, it’s pretty cool that we’re stretching our dollars farther. More power to the crafty Millennial and all that jazz. Right? However, I’ve looked around Savers on occasion — yes, here I am calling the kettle “black” — and seen families scrounging together whatever wardrobe some old T-shirts and a couple of ill-fitting jeans can produce.

I’ve waited for a fitting room — cheerily chatting with my bargain-hunting accomplices about the retro feel of the flannel draped over my forearm — right behind a weary father helping his son pick out a pair of school jeans. I’ve helped a friend find an outfit for a camp skit at a Goodwill that probably didn’t need its supply being diminished by two well-supported students.

I feel strange pointing this out because I really love thrift shopping. I do. In all honesty, I might go this weekend to find a 1980s-esque sweater.

However, my point is not so much that I think we’re terrible for ridding resale shops of that which they sell, but more that I want to encourage us all to pause and remember why such stores exist. They exist to serve and support those in need of our service and support.

Right now, deeply impoverished men, women and children are tightly woven into our community. Therefore, we mustn’t keep separating our insulated university experience from the difficult day-to-day lives of those around us.

The bottom line is there is such extensive poverty in Lubbock. We can’t let this be ignored.

We mustn’t let our time at Texas Tech be spent sucking up Lubbock’s resources, only to abandon the city without much more than a sappy farewell Facebook post. We owe more to this city.

Passion Conference — a Christian conference based out of Passion City Church in Atlanta — does an incredible job of providing an example of how to serve the city that serves the conference’s attendees.

Every year, Passion orchestrates the collection of countless — actually, I suppose they do count it all — towels, blankets or clothing to send back to whatever city involuntarily hosted them.

Through this, Passion helps return some focus to that city’s population. They’re recognizing it’s very easy to think of all the ways we need Lubbock to provide for us: cool shops, hip events, cozy little houses, affordable apartments, diverse food options, extensive medical facilities, well-maintained roads and freeways.

Yet, we are not thinking of what Lubbock needs from us.

Lubbock needs our too-tight jeans — darn you, freshman 15 — and old sweaters. Instead of prying 30 bucks from Plato’s Closet or $50 for a pair of never-worn sneakers from a girl on Facebook, we could pour those resources back into Lubbock.

Instead of driving across town for a couple of over-priced chicken tenders, we could spend that half hour helping at Lubbock’s soup kitchen. Instead of getting frustrated at Varsity because the line’s so long, we could bring a book we just finished reading to give to the homeless guy resting near Broadway Street.

The reality of poverty is that it is not just a state of financial crisis. Poverty can be an absence of emotional support or a lack of personal security or a chronic self-esteem deficiency.

Poverty is not something we need to just throw money at or place a pair of fresh socks on. Poverty should be looked at through a much broader lens. Poverty can be absolved through compassion and care for those around us, but the first step in that mission is stepping outside of our social nucleus to acknowledge the poverty surrounding us.

There are so many ways to serve Lubbock and so many ways in which Lubbock needs our service. So, this semester, remember the poverty that aches and spreads around us.

Don’t let there be such an abundance of need when we have a way to alleviate it. Serve our struggling neighbor, for their struggle is close-by.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Where one man is left in his need, we risk establishing the precedent of ignoring injustice. This is the reality of perpetuating the poverty we ignore.

Abortion frustrates those who care about health →

For this issue of The Daily Toreador, we compiled stories about the Health Sciences Center. With that, I found myself inclined to write the column my persuasion and social movements class inspired earlier this week.

As our class began to discuss how the right to privacy came about, we paralleled that conversation with one about abortion. For many who know the true meaning of Roe v. Wade, this pair makes sense. When Roe v. Wade was decided, the ruling made it clear that we have a right to decide what goes on in our homes and in our relationships, privately.

No one needs to dictate the intimate details of my private relationships. That makes sense, right?

However, with this ruling, Roe v. Wade also became the champion for a woman’s right to use abortifacients. Now, I personally am vehemently opposed to abortion. In all cases, in every circumstance, I believe it is absolutely not OK. That’s my opinion, and I will be upfront about it with you.

If you try to argue sometimes abortion is OK, if the woman’s baby has a health risk or the woman herself has a health risk, I will respond with the fact that statistics show those two reasons are the least cited motivations for abortion.

Furthermore, if you try to argue it is not fair to make a woman raise the child she conceived through rape, I would argue adoption is a perfectly viable option. Why respond to one injustice with another?

Returning to my point, however, I struggled through this class conversation about abortion.

Not because I found it upsetting — I’m used to this debate being a graphic one —  but because I felt frustrated with the casual way women in my class talked about destroying their bodies.

We used words like “stabbed” and “prohibited.” We mentioned the use of prongs and discussed infections from inserted metal contraceptives.

We nonchalantly talked about the altering of our bodies, our hormones, our vaginas, our uterine linings, our reproductive systems, our blood streams, our mental health and so on.

It was as if we were discussing the negative effects of smoking tobacco.

Smoking tobacco could give you cancer and having sex could give you a baby. That’s the mentality, right? Get rid of those side effects.

Let’s just smoke and have sex and be frustrated at the result. Let’s fight to eliminate that undesired consequence, right?

So, we can abuse our bodies in the name of protecting women’s health. We can kill our babies so that we can freely do the very thing which makes more of them. And I think one of the most frustrating parts of this whole 50-minute class was how clueless the men in my class were.

They hardly even knew what menstruation meant, let alone what preventing pregnancy entails for a woman.

However, they’re the ones — in many cases — who expect a child will not be made during the casual hook-up they secured at a bar or with their girlfriends or with that one friend who sometimes gets lonely.

They chuckled uncomfortably as we discussed how an intrauterine device works and how it is even able to work. They tried to suggest birth control is kind of a good deal because it also gives us clear skin.

That’s great because then birth control makes us not only hook-up ready, but also more attractive, right?

Now, I’m not sure when it became healthy for a woman to insert an instrument which consistently irritates her uterine wall in order to prevent pregnancy. And I’m not sure when it started mattering whether or not a baby was technically conceived in order to decide whether or not to kill it. But I think all of this is beside the point.

Let’s stop worrying about whether the baby is a baby and worry about why we’re actively working to prevent the creation of life.

I mean, doesn’t countering reproduction just seem counterproductive?

Maybe these opinions are only my own, but I’ve already been born, so my life is not really the one on the line.

Faith proves inevitable →

It’s a strange thing, being told to trust in the invisible.

Every breath I take, I assume air will fill my lungs, propelling my life along. Every time I jump, I assume gravity will pull me back to Earth.

I never see evidence of these things happening.

I don’t watch as glowing blue waves radiate from the base and walls of my microwave toward my little ceramic mug to warm its contents.

When driving, I trust I won’t continue to accelerate toward the car in front of me when I push down on that one lever near my feet.

But, truly, there is no reason to assume this.

The relationship between some little black wedge and the stopping of a vehicle is completely arbitrary. As is the connection between a metal box and the conducting of heat.

Yet, I trust. However, once this trust — this faith — is demanded in a greater capacity, I falter.

Try to tell me the world magically exploded into existence; I won’t believe you. Tell me some huge man perched in the clouds knit the world together; that doesn’t seem too probable either.

How am I supposed to comprehend these ideas? How am I supposed to trust in them?

Both would imply the wildly unimaginable took place, willing us to life.

Either the statistically improbable occurred, not just once, but countless times. Over and over again we fortuitously became closer to existence through absurdly circumstantial molecular collisions.

Or — not to say these are the only two explanations the world offers — there is a guiding force behind these miraculous constructions which continues to twirl its hand in the functions of day-to-day life. Much like the abstractly explained concept of, say, quantum entanglement, we are watching as an incomprehensible force instructs our lives.

So, with that, I suggest it seems equally strange to declare faith in science as it does to declare faith in God.

We were inherently created desiring something greater than ourselves to be deemed responsible for everything.

We want to be free from the responsibility of life and death and all that comes in between.

Some of us trust in the idea of reincarnation, declaring all things which afflict or uplift someone are consequentially related to a past life and, therefore, free from our control.

Some lean into the idea that this life must be sacrificed in order for us to assume our intended role, which is a relinquish to the promise of a righteous death.

Some study the explanations which man works to provide, elaborating on, fantasizing about and investigating this world until his life evaporates. I am heartbroken by the inevitability of overriding discoveries that unfailingly cause the living to abandon the ideology of a dead man for the glimmer of innovation.

Some, like myself, hoist the blame and grief and confusion — along with the good and glorious — this world promises onto the shoulders of an almighty creator.

I don’t want to have to figure out this world so that I may peacefully exist in it. I don’t want to spend my waning years thinking a vast darkness will be its capstone.

So, I must — I absolutely must — believe in God. I must believe that Peter walked on water and Paul was blinded — but only for a little while — and Lazarus was raised from the dead. I must believe a fish fed 5,000 people and a different fish swallowed a man whole and spit him up three days later.

I know it’s crazy. It makes no sense. But neither does anything else.

So, if I have to choose something to believe — if I will inevitably put my faith somewhere — I will place it in the very thing that has acknowledged the gross absence of my understanding and offered me eternity despite it.

And, at the end of the day, I remind myself that regardless of my confusion, my mind still longs for an explanation.

Man created religion to explain our desire to belong to a greater force. Therefore, it makes sense to believe there is a reason we, internally, desire some reason.

In “Mere Christianity,” C.S. Lewis — who was an atheist for most of his life — wrote, “If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe — no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house.”

“The only way in which we could expect it to show itself would be inside ourselves as an influence or a command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. And that is just what we do find inside ourselves,” Lewis continued.

So, I may not have much more than a drop of understanding, but I have found myself frantic to understand the purpose I seek.

That, for me, is enough to prove that a greater God placed it there. And I believe He would have to exist for that to happen.

First-year student recounts difficulties →

OK, no one is going to tell you this. They are going to say that college is going to be the time of your life and ask if you’re so excited.

However, everyone fails to mention it will also be the first time in your life that you feel depression’s nag.

That for the first time in  your life, you could go a whole day without a single person noticing you haven’t left your room. That you could walk around a town full of people with cool things to do, but still feel entirely lonely and unenthused.

No one ever tells you that all you will want that first week is a person to eat lunch with or even just someone to talk to for longer than a half second when they ring up your Vitamin Water and turkey sandwich.

No one ever tells you that the full heart and bright spirit you were known for will be dampened by your empty dorm room (your temporary home) silently greeting you after a long day of classes.

I am not trying to freak you out, I promise. But I am trying to make sure you know that college hits hard.

Being away from your friends and your family, even if they weren’t the best, will break your heart in a long and uncomfortable stretch — slowly tearing it in half.

They find new friends, you do too, your family adjusts your house so it can function without you, and all of the sudden, your life is centered on a town you can’t even navigate without Siri’s help.

The name and life you built for yourself before college almost evaporates, and with that comes a terrifying lack of belonging. It’s like the ground has been Photoshopped out from underneath you along with the pimples in your senior photos.

It is so hard to remember the person you were to your friends and your family when everything is now so far from familiar.

But with that struggle comes the opportunity to fight for who you want to be. With the struggle of feeling anchorless comes the chance to really decide where you want to be anchored. With that struggle of being lonely comes the chance to see who you really are when you’re alone.

You will learn to cherish your friends because they will become your family. You will pick them up from the airport or make them soup when they’re sick or cheer them on as they run a marathon.

You will go on road trips with them on the weekends and study for tests you’d rather not take during the week.

You will learn what makes you happy and keeps you happy and leaves you happy, and by doing that you will learn so much about yourself — infinitely more than you could have ever learned in high school.

You will learn what sets your heart on fire and you will learn what is a waste of your time. You will learn how to take care of yourself in the ways that you would expect, like how to do your laundry without forgetting it in the dryer and how to feed yourself three times a day without starving, getting fat or running out of money.

However, you will also learn to take care of yourself emotionally. You will learn how little sleep you can get without wanting to crawl under a rock and cry and how much alone time you need so that you don’t implode.

But, remember to go outside your comfort zone, even if it seems like a daunting task. Reach out to the people you meet, because a lot of the time, they will be just as afraid of the potential for rejection as you are. Seek out involvement, and through that you will begin to plant your roots and find your place.

And at the end of that first year — that hard, painful, uncomfortable freshman year — you will be OK. You will have friends, you will be with your family for the summer, you will have figured out some way to not fail your classes (you might find that once you actually started going to class they weren’t even that hard) and you will be OK.

I have talked to so many of my friends about this and almost all of them, especially the really outgoing, upbeat and enthusiastic ones, found themselves in the thick of a unexpectedly difficult freshman year. They applied to other colleges, thinking that was the problem, or they changed their majors, hoping to find something they felt excited about.

However, at the conclusion of that treacherous first year, we all realized it was our position in time, not the circumstances of it, that made everything harder than we had expected.

So brace yourself for college’s impact, but don’t lose faith that, as that year comes to a close, you will find yourself happier and at home than you had even hoped you’d be. At the end of your freshman year, you will be OK.

You will, I promise.

Students should avoid over-committing time with student organizations, clubs →

About seven minutes late, I walked into a nearly empty lecture hall. At least one-third of the room’s population was on stage, watching their club’s president click halfheartedly through a slideshow.  As they — very originally — promised their club would help us make the most of our college career, I wondered how on earth adding to our already precariously balanced workloads could lead to success. If life were a giant game of Jenga, I would admire their strategy, however, I don’t think our goal is to cause towers of time commitments to crumble.

Becoming increasingly preoccupied with shackling free time to a post of productivity, our society has eliminated the comfort in being casually committed and replaced it with a shout to “step up.” It loudly suggests that without a schedule full of club meetings, intramural tennis matches and internships, we might all end up in our parents’ basements, fingers covered in Cheetos powder.

So, in order to make sure that we aren’t headed down that path, we join clubs, train for intramurals and apply for internships. We fill every second of our schedules with whatever we can justify participating in and sigh with relief, admiring all the extracurricular activities that stand between that dreaded basement door and us.

However, while this might lead to a very involved community, it does not mean our involvement is high quality. Modern college students are spread so thin that we can’t even find time to sleep and, as a result, our participation peters out until it is nearly nonexistent and entirely useless.

Because we can’t truly invest in any one thing, we are serving as lazy leaders and subpar team members. Therefore, when the most important factor in having a successful organization is effective teamwork, the organization’s quality plummets right along with our lack of appreciation for it.

Unfortunately, our sight has been pulled away from the real purpose of clubs and sports and jobs, but we can refocus it. Instead of focusing on glorifying ourselves and boosting our resumes, we can focus on helping our organizations be something great. It is aggravating to sit through meetings that don’t matter and to do work that exists just to fill time. However, we can provide those currently pointless tasks with a purpose.

Students’ first step should be to cut down our involvement to just the things we really care about. This allows us to be wholeheartedly committed to those things. When we place one of our organs, like our whole heart (metaphorically, of course), in something, it’s hard to be unengaged. In fact, we’ll find that our dedicated commitment to one thing is more valuable than having our hands in 12 different pots, so to say.

Next, we need to make sure we are focused on the success of the team, not on our own success. That will lead to a greater emphasis of principles like cooperation, compromise and creativity. When there is a team working toward the same glorious goal of greatness, they find a way to get there, regardless of their own personal obstacles. Compromises are settled speedily and cooperation is the cornerstone.

On top of that, creativity flows more readily because of increased communication between team members and the comfort in knowing critiques will turn a brainstorm into brilliance. However, we must make sure not to foster an environment that provides platitudes freely and passes out pats on the back for participation. While encouragement and incentives are vital, empty encouragement is worse than strict scrutiny.

Conscious Magazine’s Edwin Henry reminded me the other day of this principle’s importance. This new magazine has been targeting topics they hope will set a fire in the hearts of their readers, or “Conversation Starters.” And, in Henry’s column about the detriments of empty and unconditional praise, I realized this could be the biggest stumbling block our organizations encounter.

Because we are so concerned with protecting the individual, we forgot to acknowledge how it is affecting the team’s purpose. As an organization, we need to put aside our personal pride and focus on promoting the mission of the team.

Being involved is not for our own benefit, but for whatever our involvement exists to benefit. Therefore, we must choose wisely how we spend our time. Instead of being concerned where we spend it, let’s be concerned with what we’ve accomplished, as a team, after it’s all been spent.

Barbie dolls made for dreaming, should not have to be politically correct →

Since Mattel introduced us to their new physically diversified Barbies only a few days ago, I have found myself slowly sinking back into the insecurities I had only recently escaped. With new “Tall,” “Petite” and “Curvy” dolls, I am left worrying which category I would have fallen into as a little girl.

I loved Barbies. I would spend whole days in my room mentally crafting an entire world for my Barbies to exist in. I would clear off my shelves to make them into apartment complexes or lace a pink and purple plastic town around my bedroom, praying nobody knocked any of it over when tucking me in at night. Most of the time, I would leave my Barbie games set up for days, dedicating entire weekends to Velcro dresses and fuchsia convertibles.

My friends and I would haul our favorite Barbies and their accessories from house to house and ‘play Barbies’ for hours. Sometimes, the day would end in a sleepover simply because we were right in the middle of our game. Someone’s Barbie had just gotten engaged or their fashion show hadn’t happened yet or, more often than not, we had spent so much time setting it all up and deciding what our Barbies’ names would be that we hadn’t even started playing by nightfall.

However, we never once thought our Barbies were supposed to look like us. Our American Girl dolls looked a little bit like us, but that was their whole mission. They had a doll specifically called the “Just Like Me” doll. But Barbies are Barbies. They are blonde and blue eyed and they have perfect makeup and perky breasts and long, slender legs. Barbie never tried to look like us, and we didn’t want her to.

We wanted our Barbies to be animal rescuers or secret princesses or capable moms whose husbands work a lot (because our proportion of Ken dolls to Barbies was always a wee bit uneven), but we never thought they should have freckles or blue hair or bigger rear ends.

Not one of my friends seemed to mind Barbie’s lack of resemblance to them. My friend Coleen, with her red hair and slender frame, never cared about Barbie’s bust size. My friend Kyra, whose thick, near-black hair reached her butt, never mentioned Barbie’s blondness.

In fact, I even remember one day when Coleen and I had recently gotten “Barbie Fashionista” dolls. Those were the best ones because their hands and legs bent easily, and we found ourselves laughing at how unrealistically small Barbie’s legs and knees were becoming with each new doll. As a group of tweens, we unanimously agreed it was absurd, but never took it to mean our knees should be the same width as our elbows.

So, why Mattel thought that emphasizing physical appearances was the right way to empower girls, I don’t know, but now I am wondering if I would have been the curvy Barbie. Her larger feet would have matched mine. I could have pretended she loves M&Ms as passionately as I do.

When I read about Time magazine’s Eliana Dockerman visiting Mattel’s headquarters and trying, to no avail, to stuff the new “Curvy” doll into a cute, original Barbie-sized dress, I flashed back to myself in a dimly lit dressing room trying to wiggle into an unforgiving Anthropologie dress about a month ago. “Her plump bottom gets stuck in the same spot,” Dockerman sadly conceded after trying to wedge the dress on her new Barbie a few different ways. Same, Barbie. Same.

But I don’t want my dear Barbie to have to worry about dress sizes and smoothing herself out with Spanx. I want Barbie to confidently walk her dog in heels and some outrageously glamorous outfit and live in a pastel colored mansion.

Next, are we going to abandon that stuff — the unrealistic houses and clothes and cars — in order to make her more representative of every socioeconomic situation? Wouldn’t that take all the fun away? Playing with dolls is playing pretend. It’s living out dreams and creating them all at the same time.

In real, grown-up life, we probably won’t drive pink cars and get to live in a fantastic “Dream House,” but at least we can when we’re children. And we won’t ever have a size negative two body like Barbie’s but at least we can put her in strapless gowns and not worry about how toned her arms are, because we’ll have to worry about that plenty when we’re in high school.

The beautiful thing about Barbie is, regardless of who I am, my Barbie could be anything. She could be any age, any profession, any personality. I didn’t need one with less makeup to feel like I didn’t need makeup. I didn’t wear makeup because my mom said I was beautiful without it. I didn’t need a Barbie with big feet to feel OK about my size 10 shoes. My dad always told me that I had pretty and proportional feet.

Besides, no one’s feet look like Barbie’s and no one’s body looks like Barbie’s. She’s a doll. So, let’s let Barbie be a doll and stop allowing our desperation for political correctness dictate the dimensions of a piece of plastic.

Airport security more theatrics than legitimate security →

Shivering outside of Houston’s Toyota Center, I was aggressively tapped on the shoulder by an overzealous security officer informing me I needed to take my backpack off so it could be searched at the main entrance. By that point, my friends and I had already been waiting in line for more than an hour while it rained and street preachers, equipped with bullhorns, verbally accosted us.

Now, while Passion 2016, the Christian conference we were attending, was so incredibly worth all of that, I need to point out that the majority of those safety measures we suffered through were essentially ineffective as more than just basic threat deterrents.

The reason for this is if anyone had seriously wanted to wreak havoc on our concentration of 10,000 Christians, they would not have attempted to pull that off by waiting in line and then walking through the metal detectors at the entrance. Instead, they most likely would have constructed a much more clever and conniving plan that we might not have seen coming thanks to our preoccupation with searching bags for bombs and contraband snacks.

This issue of the “security theater,” which Wikipedia defines as “the practice of investing in countermeasures intended to provide the feeling of improved security while doing little or nothing to actually achieve it,” was first introduced to me by Adam Conover on his show “Adam Ruins Everything.”

Since the beginning of our national effort to focus on enhancing security, these security theaters have become a greater problem in the U.S. as technology progresses, but our safety precautions don’t.

For instance, look at our airport security systems. Since the terrorist attacks on 9/11, we have been working to prevent another attack of the exact same nature instead of thinking of new points of vulnerability and working to boost the security in those areas. In fact, Conover goes on to quote a Good Morning America exclusive which exposed the fact that “When Homeland Security tested (the TSA), the TSA failed to find mock weapons and explosives 95 percent of the time.”

That means the organization which we are counting on to keep us safe when we travel finds about as many safety threats as your browser’s pop-up blocker. The bottom line is, we have implemented a great many security measures that really don’t do more than make us feel safe. Hence the term, “security theater.”

Conover also references an editorial in the Wall Street Journal by Kip Hawley, when he answers his own question by saying, “What has stopped terrorist attacks? All of the other safety measures we’ve added since 9/11. Like reinforced cockpit blast doors.”

Another example he gives of measures that actually prevent attacks — like mass shootings or suicide bombings — is the heightened awareness of Americans. As long as we keep one eye peeled for signs of potential threats, we’re contributing to the overall safety of ourselves and everyone around us.

But winding security lines, metal detectors, mini shampoo bottles and letting someone rifle through our personal belongings really doesn’t do a whole lot to protect us from the threats that end up making it onto our news feeds. Yes, they might prevent someone from attacking us lazily, but we can’t stop there.

Jeffrey Goldberg, an editorialist for the Atlantic, has been conducting casual studies on the realities of “security theater” for some time now and, in his article titled “The Things He Carried,” Goldberg shows the extent to which security agencies (particularly the TSA) are essentially useless. He wrote, “I’ve amassed an inspiring collection of al-Qaeda T-shirts, Islamic Jihad flags, Hezbollah videotapes, and inflatable Yasir Arafat dolls (really). All of these things I’ve carried with me through airports across the country.”

While that might seem like it doesn’t say much, Goldberg goes on to list the other frowned upon items he has toted through airport security: “pocketknives, matches from hotels in Beirut and Peshawar, dust masks, lengths of rope, cigarette lighters, nail clippers, eight-ounce tubes of toothpaste (in [his] front pocket), bottles of Fiji Water (which is foreign), and, of course, box cutters.”

Which can only lead you to ask, “Is he trying to get himself tackled by some hefty TSA officer?” Yes. Yes, he is. However, Goldberg is so confident he won’t get caught, he even flashed a bunch of “counterfeit boarding passes” in one of the most monitored airport restrooms. No, not in a stall. Right there, in the middle of the bathroom. No one even noticed.

And if you are still wondering about all of that paraphernalia he brought through security, you’ll be pleased (or horrified) to know he was only selected for secondary screening four times and “at one screening, (he) was relieved of a pair of nail clippers; during another, a can of shaving cream.”

My point with this column isn’t to generate fear. Instead, I want to make sure that, as the mildly paranoid and sufficiently concerned citizens we are, we don’t let “security theater” distract us from actual security. When lives are on the line, we don’t want to only be defended by an airport security line.

Penn-Guzmán interview contains important message, undermined by timid journalism →

"He’s got one hell of a wristwatch.” Interesting observation, Sean Penn. The he Sean Penn is referring to is Alfredo Guzmán, the son of Joaquin Guzmán — better known as El Chapo.

Having received the consent of Rolling Stone magazine, Penn pursued one of Mexico’s most powerful drug traffickers, Guzmán, with the persistence of a Nicholas Spark protagonist. And I’m sure that’s exactly the rosy perception with which he envisioned the world responding to his controversial article. Instead, we have overwhelmingly scrutinized Penn for his willingness to fraternize with a convicted drug lord. In the face of this criticism, Penn’s important message was lost: Guzmán, while criminal, is still only a man. The true problem does not lie solely with Guzmán, but is instead much larger and problematic.

However, Sean Penn did not make it hard for us to draw criticism against his article. Repeatedly throughout Penn’s report of the time he spent preparing and participating in getting close to Guzmán, he seems to slip into a sort of childlike admiration. Not admiring the blood spilled from countless executions or the gravity of Guzmán’s expansive drug empire, of course, but rather for his grace in the midst of it all — the grander of his operations and the precision of his every move.

Penn does not attempt to conceal his wide-eyed observations with forced scrutiny. Instead, he admits Guzmán “does not initially strike (him) as the big bad wolf of lore.” In fact, Penn even lays out the struggle he grappled through when trying to search Guzmán for the “soullessness” that we all crave to find in such villains.

“Soullessness ... wasn’t it soullessness that I must perceive in him for myself to be perceived here as other than a Pollyanna? An apologist? I tried hard, folks. I really did. And reminded myself over and over of the incredible life loss, the devastation existing in all corners of the narco world,”  Penn wrote in the article.

His whole article is starting to sound like an argument hoping to serve the purpose of illuminating the world’s perspective of Guzmán, to soften it and quell our fire of insatiable determination to bring Guzmán to justice. The assumption must have been made that pulling one man out of a treacherous and deeply seeded institution’s framework would somehow cause it to crumble to the ground. Or cause it to slowly rot away, taking every other supportive, corrupt soul along with it.

However, we forget to notice that without demand for the “marijuana and poppy” Guzmán built his empire on, he would have remained an impoverished man in the middle of a corrupt country. Granted, drugs do not sell themselves, but they do not buy themselves either.

And we might need to step further back on this issue and acknowledge the fact that the Mexican government has been essentially turning a blind eye as Guzmán and many others line the streets of their country with poison. “Talking about politicians, I keep my opinion to myself. They go do their thing and I do mine.” This was the response Penn recorded when Guzmán was asked about his “dynamic with the Mexican government.”

Sometime before that comment was made and before Mexican officials waived Guzmán’s men through a military checkpoint, Penn had recorded Guzmán’s son, Alfredo, assuring them of the discreteness of their meeting. He offered the explanation, “that they have an inside man who provides notifications when the military’s high-altitude surveillance plane has been deployed.”

With a government that is essentially facilitating a vicious network of domestic and international drug trade, it seems hard to believe Guzmán was ever even captured at all. Perhaps the issue even larger than that, though, is that Mexico is simultaneously destroyed and sustained by illicit drugs.

And that is, while rather unwarranted, the point Sean Penn tried to make by writing this explosive article: we cannot point all of our fingers at one man and expect his erasure to level this colossal industry. We cannot simplify something so nebulous down to being the result of a single man and his actions.

After watching the majority of the world cheer as Guzmán was captured, he found it to be, “an affirmation of the dumb-show of the demonization that has demanded such an extraordinary focus of assets towards the capture or killing of any one individual black hat.”

We are still fighting a War on Terror, long after the death of Osama Bin Laden. We will continue to fight a war on drugs long after Guzmán is good and gone. One person is not the problem, the problem is the system supporting it, which is quite a bit harder to defeat.