Last week was four days of the typical academic drudgery with a beautiful island of rest in the middle. That blessed oasis was the Celebration of Student Scholarship, or CoSS. I went to three sessions and an evening recital and enjoyed them all immensely. While they were all worth an article at least, I’d like…
On a recent trip home, as my mom gave me instructions for a round of chores, she kept accusing me of not paying attention. I was, of course, listening closely, but I was also looking at the chore in question, sizing it up. I’m a visual person – I don’t need a lot of explanation…
Spring is here already. The grass is green, the sun glows warm, and we are all – faculty and students – waiting for finals to be over. As these beautiful days melt into cold nights in front of textbooks and laptops, I find it inescapable to question why burying myself in schoolwork matters. I am…
I took Religion 100 with Dr. Mocko, and I loved it. Go out of your way to take a class of hers, if you can. The woman is a hippie in the truest sense. Throughout the year, we read short articles that pertained to a persistent theme in the class- sustainability and what it means…
Wrestling with incongruous ideas is a part of the liberal arts tradition and one of my favorite parts of college. Extraordinary learning comes from dialogue – evaluating competing claims and argumentations. History is rife with vivid intellectual disagreements, and these disagreements demonstrate engaging with dissenting opinions can be more fruitful than stomping them out. Furthermore,…
This week, let’s focus on a topic that cannot seem to leave the headlines: inequality. Introduced into the popular lexicon by the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011, inequality represents the expanding chasm between the haves and havenots. And it is a chasm. In 2010, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans controlled a third of…
Coming off choir tour, I’m tired as hell. My voice is ragged and my school work lagged (ha). It was a great two weeks, but I felt every day of it. Living out of a suitcase and sleeping on a bus with my face smeared across the window can only go on for so long,…
I think I know too much. And it feels dangerous. The realization came in my first semester at Concordia, when I took “Nonverbal Communication.” I was worried about studying for a 200-level course, but I quickly found that most of the material was common sense to me. I attribute this not only to being the…
I’ve got a couple friends who idolize a classmate’s chin. These girls share secret glances, make jokes, have entire conversations in mutual admiration of this man’s strong jawline. The guy doesn’t know, and if he did he would probably be flattered. But they don’t seem to know him very well: all they know is his…
As a Music Education Major, I’ve gotten to do clinicals in order to gain classroom experience. In my personal experience, this can mean anything from personal errands for the teachers to tutoring fractions with fifth graders. At my last clinical session, my teacher asked me for help with some prep work for a class later…