Link: Old and Wise
The next installment of "Cartoon of Incompetence," Jessica Link's story of life.
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The next installment of "Cartoon of Incompetence," Jessica Link's story of life.
A few weeks into winter term, I called my parents crying for the first time in my life. They were noticeably confused — I don’t cry often, but when I do, I never go to them until my tears are gone. As it was, I could not fully explain why I was so upset. My dad, a psychiatrist, immediately asked me if I had been feeling “blue.” I responded that I had. I was tired, unenthusiastic and reluctant to spend time outside of my room. I had trouble getting out of bed, not because I did not want to leave the bliss of sleep but because I did not want to face the world. Everything felt “meh;” I could hardly remember the last time I had felt anything other than malaise. My dad told me to get more sleep, see my friends more and exercise regularly. If I was still feeling this way in a week, he suggested options such as therapy or medication. I called back a few days later, happy to report that I was feeling much better. He told me that I had probably been going through a slump brought on by the winter weather or homesickness; whatever it was, he was glad for me that it had passed. He ended the phone call with a reminder that I could always talk to him about my mental state, and that was that.
Anything Can Happen During March Madness
The fourth installment of "Cartoon of Incompetence."
From their experience during exams or competitions, students are used to the pressure of the clock. Yet the U.S. national debt clock brings pressure to an entirely new level. Those who observe it are immediately drawn to the $20 trillion figure on the top left. Boston University professor Laurence Kotlikoff estimated that the U.S. government had unfunded liabilities worth close to $210 trillion. Fiscal sustainability is not a complicated concept — it is a term that describes whether or not the government is capable of maintaining its policies and programs without risking insolvency or defaulting on its promises. With programs such as Social Security and Medicare driving costs higher, change is imperative.
Despite the myriad problems and the issues I have come to see and experience over my years at Dartmouth, my academic experiences and time spent with faculty have been the highlight of my time in Hanover. The one-on-one interactions, engagement and emphasis on undergraduate teaching Dartmouth offers are features of the academic experience that I will miss. In particular, my experiences with Dartmouth’s history department and its faculty have been the most consistently eye-opening and intellectually stimulating part of my Dartmouth career. The history classes, foreign study opportunities, research and faculty engagement I have partaken in have all, in one way or another, had a significant impact on both my personal and professional development as well as the evolution of my intellectual and social concerns. A critical and subversive worldview — which revolves around a concern for inequity and emphases on complicating, contesting or interrogating existing paradigms and ways of thinking — that history professors at Dartmouth have instilled in me will continue to shape my life long after I graduate in the spring.
It was 9 a.m. on June 27, 2016 when I woke and sat up, the texture of the sidewalk pavement imprinted deeply into my cheek. I checked the time, straightened my tie and glanced toward the front of the line I had been in for four hours. I was outside the Supreme Court on the day the decision for the Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt case, which concerned a Texas law that required doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and raised the standards of abortion clinics to that of ambulatory surgical centers, was set to be announced. At the base of the court steps were two sign-wielding groups, ready to assume their role as supporter or protester depending on the holding.
“To stop a bad guy with a gun, it takes a good guy with a gun,” proclaimed Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president and chief executive officer of the National Rifle Association at the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference. In an endgame situation like the one LaPierre describes, it could be that the only way to protect people would be through the use of a firearm, especially if faced with someone that also has a firearm. But the issue with LaPierre’s logic lies in the fact that he accepts that such a situation would occur instead of doing everything in his power to stop it.
A study published by Rutgers University found that until 2008, 97 percent of scholars who published academic op-eds in The Wall Street Journal and 82 percent in The New York Times were men. A byline survey conducted by Taryn Yaeger of The OpEd Project found that between Sept. 15 and Dec. 7, 2011, “women wrote 20 percent of op-eds in the nation’s leading newspapers — The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal.” Feminist news sources were quick to publish articles berating The Journal and The Times for being sexist and discriminatory publications.
At Dartmouth, students often face a significant amount of pressure to leave this place with a finished product. This product must show your peers, professors, family and local community that your education was worth it. With that product, you can now point to something that will validate your time and investment into your schooling. Just graduating is no longer something most people believe is “good enough.” Not only do students need to graduate on time, they also have to do so with a two-year plan for afterward. The pressure to have your “next big step” outlined and secured is intensified, as that is what people use as a measure of success. The question college students hear, possibly as early as junior spring is, “So what’s next?” Not having an answer to that question can feel like you have not done enough. Often, this pressure reduces the time spent struggling and working to achieve the entity that validates one’s time at college: the diploma.
What causes people’s behavior? Why do people eat what they eat or drink what they drink? One might think, “Simple — because I want to!” But what motivates people to behave, eat or drink in the first place? What causes people to make decisions? If these choices — how to get to work, what to buy at the supermarket, where to spend money — have become subconscious, then it is time to take a trip of self-exploration.
Will this time be different? One would hope that the senseless mass shooting at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School would move America to action. But of course, this is a nation that saw 20 first-grade students gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School and did nothing. Even as the survivors of the shooting speak out in favor of gun control, the Florida House of Representatives refused to pass a ban on assault rifles. Yet this debate can be resolved without extreme measures on either side. Reasonable, widely-supported gun regulations can limit the chance of another mass shooting.
It’s getting closer people. The time of the year when families come together during college basketball’s biggest stage and say things like, “I picked the wrong upsets this year,” “Duke is overrated” and “Where in the country exactly is Creighton again?” As the selection committee prepares to pick the teams to field the NCAA Tournament, I’d like to take a look at some of the teams that are right on the edge of making the tournament and if these teams have a chance of making some noise down the stretch.
Link recounts an awkward moment when trapped between two francophiles.
I was assaulted. He may claim not to remember it, but it happened. My friend was there; she saw what he did to me and stopped him before he could do any more. These situations are gray, and I get that, I really do. He was drunk, I was drunk — but my friend wasn’t drunk. She remembers that night a lot better than him or me, but her memory didn’t matter in the end.
The ability to tell the truth and, conversely, the ability to conceal it are immensely powerful. Truth must be told earnestly; it must be told with a desire to inform without regard to the consequences. For the health of society and the welfare of the individual, it is crucial not only to tell the truth, but also to be receptive to it.
Americans can no longer deny the opioid epidemic infecting our nation. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of fatal overdoses involving opioids quadrupled from 2000 to 2016, causing the deaths of 115 Americans per day, on average. As we enter 2018, this number continues to increase, with health news website STAT News’ expert panel forecasting that opioid overdoses could potentially kill 250 Americans a day in the near future. STAT News correspondent Max Blau put the data into perspective: If this increase in fatal opioid overdoses occurs, then “opioids could kill nearly as many Americans in a decade as HIV [and] AIDS [have] killed since that epidemic began in the early 1980s.”
When thinking about where to go for college, I was drawn to America because of the much-vaunted liberal arts education. I did not know what I wanted to study, so a school like Dartmouth seemed a natural choice. Three and a half years later, I’ve learned a little about a lot of things and wish I knew more about connections between fields of knowledge.
I didn’t bother to read the details of the first reports of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida when they were released. The breaking — and heartbreaking — news failed to surprise me.
“[Taking a shower] would [minimize] the risk of contracting the disease” — such was the advice for dealing with HIV and AIDS prescribed by Jacob Zuma before his accession to the presidency of South Africa in 2009. The ignorance accompanying the comment should have been warning enough that Zuma would prove to be an incompetent leader during his presidency. However, it was not. Now, as of Feb. 14, Zuma’s almost decade-long stint as president has come to an end. Under his leadership, South Africa has been devastated, and the post-Apartheid dream of the “rainbow nation” has been severely threatened. The general unease surrounding Zuma’s accession to office in 2009 has proved to have been merited.