I can’t forget the Sandy Hook shooting
By Viktoria Wulff-Andersen | December 2, 2022They worried that our school would be next.
The independent news organization of Duke University
They worried that our school would be next.
There are times when I worry that my genuine interest in a language that is so inextricably intertwined with popular culture might be disdained and misconstrued as the fanatical obsession of a “Koreaboo”, so much so that I shy away from opportunities to practice it with others.
Unmet expectations are a part of life no matter how old you are.
It makes sense to make personally beneficial choices but moving through life without considering others not only harms others but will also come back to bite us in the butt when others don’t feel the need to be accountable to us.
We would all face immeasurable loss if the ivory gates of elite universities–like the one we ourselves attend–are once again distanced from students who have historically been barred from reaping their benefits.
This condition, coined by Duke researcher Peter B. Bennett, is called high pressure nervous syndrome (HPNS), and it’s a serious threat to recreational and professional divers.
Our conceptions of small towns ooze through filters percolating for idealism, signaling a place so untouched by external corruption that we always wish to return.
The change we will make in the future is too important for us to be burnt out at 21.
We commodify pre-professional experiences because we think of them as tangible, resume-able activities that you can pick and choose as easily as filling out a form or two.
What can creatures teach you about life?
But with these EXPO markers being such an effective tool for understanding and communication, should we be worried about their excessive use in schools?
I have been warned to choose between being loud and assertive or being a woman.
Duke is a constant. But just like the students who grace its paths for a few short years before moving on, administrators also make a graceful—or occasionally ungraceful—exit when their time is done.
I’m ignorantly unaware that I just made someone else’s life a little harder.
Solutions for real change take sacrifice, reorganization of priorities and hierarchies, and rethinking of our current institutions. And the next global leaders need to have the skills to garner support for these kinds of reforms and set them in motion. We will need to be bold, but not in the way Duke imagines.
Even though classical music, to some extent, seems to be dying publicly in the modern world, it still pulsates with life and remains capable of changing lives. We shouldn’t be embarrassed to embrace this belief.
I am a product of the framing of the gunsmoke by people in power.
So don’t strive for perfection, strive for mistakes, and strive to let that inner kid know how proud they are of you, because they know all the trauma and pain you’ve suffered, and how every mistake has brought you closer to what you could be.
It is not my responsibility to identify accessibility issues, the thinking goes, because unlike disabled students I am independent, capable, and ultimately complete— illusions that we so desperately cling to within the culture of thriving and overachieving.
Sophomore year is a strange, awkward and uncomfortable phase to be in, one in which the rhythm of college I settled into as a freshman has been plunged into utter chaos.