When you ask a college student how their week is going you usually hear one answer and one answer only… “stressful.”
That is not to say that this is unmerited, rather, we take it in a negative form.
There’s a well-known meme that says “Social life, enough sleep, good grades. Pick two.”
The first time I saw it I laughed for a long time at how insanely accurate it was.
After further examination, I realized… there is so much more we have on our plates.
Doing the math, I think we could possibly have negative hours left in our days.
A typical week for me includes an anatomy lab quiz, a management quiz, at least two tests, tutoring, chapter, a student government meeting, and not to mention the studying that goes along with all of those things.
Now if you want to add a social life, that’s a completely different story.
In the end, it’s about maximizing yourself in the number of hours you have.
What time will you wake up?
When will you get out of the house?
What will you do with the time that you’ve been given?
Without a doubt, I would call myself a overcommitted person.
I get overwhelmed with school, the organizations I’m in, my family and with myself.
I mean, this is true. Photo Credit: rick/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
There was a time in my life when I would say that I was genuinely not happy.
I would complain about the number of assignments I had that week.
But allow me to tell you how happy I am.
Let’s stop victimizing ourselves.
I love the stress.
How cool is it that we GET to learn the unimaginable workings of the world?
How great is it that we wake up every day and have the CHOICE to continue?
We have the opportunity to get together with the greatest student leaders to make a difference on our campus and in our community.
Read More: Why America Really Needs A New “West Wing”
How breathtaking is it that we are surrounded by intentional people who push us to be better than we previously were?
Do it all with happiness and see that we are not as crunched on time as we had thought before.
We spend so much time squandering around, explaining to other people how much we have to do that we end up not even doing it.
Make a graphic schedule for the week.
Map out your class time, your travel time, your meal times, your meeting times.
Decide when you’ll study and turn off your phone in that time.
Stay away from social media.
Call your parents.
Have 10 minutes of quiet time to yourself.
Read a few pages in your bible, or in a good book.
But most of all, enjoy it all.
These years are supposed to be the best four years of your life.
Make them be.
No matter how stressful they are.
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in the world. You can write for us.
Cover Photo Credit: Sodanie Chea/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
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Your Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free And Taste American Bureaucracy
This piece is the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Rise News.
It should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with post 9/11 American politics that curmudgeons in positions of power, including the governor of my home state of Alabama, would not miss the opportunity to bolster their popularity with a display of security theater at the expense of people in need.
It is not any less shameful, but not surprising. The most recent instance is the insistence of several governors and presidential candidates that accepting asylum seekers is a threat to the citizenry of the United States, in response to the most recent tragedy in the city of Paris. This would be a more understandable position if the attackers were from Syria, but this is not the case.
As of right now, Ahmad al-Mohammed is the only attacker who is suspected of being from Syria, thanks to the convenient discovery of his falsified passport, but French authorities are still unable to confirm the details regarding this man’s identity, according to the BBC. The other attackers, and the mastermind of the attacks, were all French and Belgian citizens.
“In order to disrupt the archaic narrative of our ISIS and al-Qaeda foes, and save a fraction of the 11 million lives made hellish by the sadistic al-Assad regime, the United States should jump at the opportunity to subject 10,000 people to our robust and slow bureaucracy.”
So let’s assume for a minute that Ahmad al-Mohammed was a Syrian terrorist who got into Europe by exploiting the overwhelmed asylum processing system, which is entirely possible, but not confirmed. Why utilize the asylum seeking process when it is much easier to radicalize disenfranchised people in the target country, as we see with most attackers in this instance, or simply utilize a temporary visa, as was the case with the 9/11 hijackers?
Refugees in the United States, after being referred to the United States by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) , asylum seekers are vetted with a Resettlement Support Center. After having biographic information taken, further screening can be done at the discretion of both the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security.
DHS’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) then conduct a one on one interview with applicants. After approval from USCIS applicants are screened for infectious disease and often matched with a resettlement agency to assist in the process of integrating. Overall this process on average takes between 18-24 months.
Bearing in mind the complexity, risk, and time associated with the asylum seeking process, it seems likely that the response we see in the West was the intention of ISIS. It feeds into the narrative of a “clash of civilizations” and disenfranchises desperate people who have been: gassed, bombed, drafted, beaten, and generally abused.
Some have suggested that refugees be accepted on the basis of their religious opinions, which seems to get closer to the real issue of a fear of Islam or people of color in general. However, this fear seems unfounded due to the lack of acts of terror committed by the over 120,000 refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan, as of 2013.
In order to disrupt the archaic narrative of our ISIS and al-Qaeda foes, and save a fraction of the 11 million lives made hellish by the sadistic al-Assad regime, the United States should jump at the opportunity to subject 10,000 people to our robust and slow bureaucracy.
Agree? Disagree? Tell us in the comments below! You can also submit your own opinion pieces to [email protected] and we may publish it.
Cover Photo Credit: Freedom House/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
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Puerto Rico Should Become The 51st State
By Chidera O. Nwosu
The conversation about whether statehood should be granted to Puerto Rico is a fraught one indeed.
It is paramount to understand that Puerto Rico is a Caribbean island that remains currently as an unincorporated territory to the United States.
Famed American linguist, Noam Chomsky, once said that American Imperialism is often traced to the takeover of Cuba, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico in 1898.
With that being said, if America is able to dictate economic, military and cultural influence in itself, other countries, and unincorporated territories such as Puerto Rico – then why isn’t Puerto Rico the 51st state?
A great place to begin, would be in conferring superlative peculiarities in which Puerto Rico is hailed for.
Puerto Rico, known for its beautiful lands and mountains, the El Yunque tropical rainforest, and cultural Spanish colonial buildings, is often regarded as a place of tourism.
On a more serious note, Puerto Rico is a populated territory, in which its populace is greater than half of the states formally incorporated into the United States.
Many people are often unaware that Puerto Rico is quite established with common languages being both Spanish and English.
For those reasons alone, Puerto Rico should be the 51st state.
Despite the fact that the Commonwealth government has its own tax laws, Puerto Ricans are already required to pay most US federal taxes.
To place this into perspective, in 2009, Puerto Rico paid $3.742 billion into the US Treasury.
With this in mind, if Puerto Rico – a U.S territory – is paying taxes to the U.S federal government, why should statehood even be a question?
Puerto Ricans have been granted U.S. citizenship since 1917. In other words, Puerto Ricans have been granted U.S citizenships for 99 years (1-year shy from a century) and admittance into the U.S has yet to occur.
In 2012, 61% of voters supported statehood.
More than half of eligible voters, voted in advocating of beginning the process in admitting Puerto Rico to the Union.
The people of Puerto Rico spoke and they want Congress to answer their demands.
Statehood now!
It is vital for Puerto Rico to become formally recognized and incorporated into the United States because it elevates the quality of life in Puerto Rico, aids in its economic salvation, and fashions innovative and integrative access to education and career opportunities.
The latter issue is quite problematic as Puerto Rico is losing doctors on a daily basis.
It is even more caustic, how Puerto Ricans pay US federal taxes but have little to no say in governmental actions.
As Chomsky states, American Imperialism has been deeply rooted in Puerto Rico – why not just harvest it?
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in the world. You can write for us.
Cover Photo Credit: Juan Cristobal Zulueta/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
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Why America Really Needs A New “West Wing”
As chaos, deceit and lies are engulfing the White house, the sanctum sanctorum of American democracy; I find myself increasingly pining for the “cartoonishly optimistic” days of the Bartlet administration on my TV screen.
I watch the reruns of West Wing with a sense of nostalgia, where the White House staffers would do the “walk and talk” with charge, meet at the Oval Office with a distinguished President, and give press briefings that were transparent and not a battle ground for the war against media.
Watching West Wing nowadays is painful.
The Trump administration has destroyed the prestige of working at the White House.
The well- beloved CJ Cregg, who was known for her astute mind and performance of “The Jackal”, has been replaced in reality with the aggressive and dull Sean Spicer, whose lexicon leaves a lot to be desired.
Leo McGarry, the man who always stood behind President Bartlet, who always viewed everything with benevolent pragmatism, has been replaced with Reince Preibus, a man who believes that defensiveness is the shield that he must carry and not necessarily political acumen or sensitivity.
It is almost like the Trump administration is trying to be the total opposite of what idealists loved about West Wing.
For almost a decade Aaron Sorkin’s West Wing mesmerized the American psyche; depicting American democracy’s morals, values and diplomatic stance in the world, albeit with a few instances of infamy, all along having a scholarly president at the helm of affairs.
With his penchant for classical music, literature and finer sensibilities in life, President Bartlet and his team exuded a sense of fairness, liberalism and intellectualism that acted as a panacea for the troubled times of the Bush administration.
The fictitious West Wing gave all Democrats a ray of hope.
Sam, we need you right now.
The President’s failure to disclose his physical ailment was tantamount to a big scandal!
It would probably hardly earn a mention when compared to the missteps of Trump and his team.
What do we do now?
The country is split along party lines.
The chaos is palpable.
Intellectualism has been relegated to a secondary place.
The disregard for traditional institutions of democracy, including its fourth pillar known as the free press, is too blatant.
We need an escape from reality.
This time, we need an even bigger flight of imagination.
At the same time however, something too idealistic might be painful to watch amidst a sense of crumbling political values and lack of accountability displayed by the current administration.
We need a show that encompasses “American values”, one that believes in intellectualism, respect and equality and yet portrays the reality with sincerity.
In the last season of West Wing, Republican nominee Arnold Vinick and Democratic nominee Matt Santos were fighting for the presidency.
Their election season was intense, their campaigns were on full throttle; but throughout the entire political discourse they remained civil.
Do you remember when we thought this was a tough debate?
They fought on the basis of substantive arguments, not through personal attacks and the spread of abhorrent lies.
In fact, both candidates found mud-slinging repulsive, and they never launched any attacks that would defame their opponent.
Granted that at the end of the day, this election wasn’t real, and these campaigns were all part of Aaron Sorkin and Lawrence O’Donnell’s imagination, but they remind us that civility is not unnatural, that it should be the norm.
Shows such as Scandal and Designated Survivor do an excellent job in commanding the attention of their audience for the allotted one hour block they are given, but they are meant to act as a source of excitement and drama.
Scandal is a somewhat dystopian depiction of the White House, where corruption, bribery and murders are rampant.
It’s a political drama in some aspects, but it doesn’t do the job of alleviating the nerves of those who are already flustered by the Trump Administration.
I personally love West Wing.
The fast paced dialogue, sharp analysis and wit of the show are all very addictive.
There are days when I watch four episodes in a row, just to soak up the intense and realistic depiction of what goes on in the White House.
West Wing is unique because it shows the camaraderie of Presidents and political leaders despite partisanship and politics.
It romanticizes the White House and its occupants.
When the reality is filled with mundanity and crudity and when there is an obvious attempt at breaking away even from the age old tradition of honoring one’s predecessor; the only escape can come from the TV screen, when we can turn off CNN and indulge in the pure extravaganza of wishful thinking!
The country deserves and needs an updated, idealistic, version of this show so we can all make it through the next four years.
So help us Aaron Sorkin, you’re our only hope.
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in the world. You can write for us.
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