The Carletonian

From the age of roughly 20 until 26, a period I will call the “twenty somethings,” one is stuck in perpetual, 6-year transition period of self-obsession; an era of modest responsibility, patchy ups and downs, frequent existential crises, blurred lines between romance and friendship, and a white future full of empty promises.

Language is deceptive. Economics hasn’t evolved the same way as etymology. There are roots—”re-” or “anti-” or “endo-”—that don’t mean the same thing intuitively as they do materially. That, I think is what’s at heart of the divestment issue, because “divest” is such a crisp, pure, upstanding word that it’s easy to get confused about what it really means.

So why would Ive, Feynman, and Foucault go into a theoretical bar?  Obviously to fulfill my need to explain the differences between methodology, field, and discipline. Ive is the designer, Feynman the Physicist, and Foucault the humanist.

Like most Carleton students—or at least the formidable section of the Carleton population who are both stress-prone and ashamed of every piece of work they miss—I start to come within sight of a crossroads around sixth week.

What atheists should look to is not the particulars of the argument on God, but rather that they are seeing it as an argument in the first place. What atheists need is not an education in religion and spirituality, but a lesson in how to view religion as a dynamic force of livelihood rather than as an outdated vehicle for violence and coercion as they so often do.

I love flying.  Adore it, actually.  Going to the airport is like walking into an amusement park for me, which I’m pretty sure is not how most people feel at the thought of spending two-plus hours of their life in an airport.  According to Orson Welles, writer of the dissenting opinion, there are only two emotions a person experiences while flying: boredom and terror. 

Since I got back on campus I’ve been feeling more and more like all I write about is the problem with the European study abroad experience. That’s not really a very deep topic, and it’s a little unhelpful to everybody who’s not studying abroad in Europe, so I’d really like to get down to the core of what bothers me about Americans studying abroad in Europe and put this whole self-image to rest.

Recently I clicked on an advertisement that appeared on my computer screen:  “Experience Morocco: The Trip that Travels Within You.”

A war cry is a rather exciting thing.  I think that as a people, Americans tend to enjoy them.  We love half-time speeches, come-from-behind rallying cries, and pretty much anything that implies that we are about to make a major comeback.

My last few weeks in Rome, I started going out to a restaurant every couple of days. It was right after my last burst of travel, when I finally realized that I was well and truly burned out on discount airlines and hostels, and that all I really wanted to do was waste the time I had left in Europe in cafés.

I can’t say I’ve ever been more disappointed in politics, America, Americans, and the media than I was after watching this video shortly before voting this fall.

Jumping on the Lincoln bandwagon is pretty easy these days with things like the book, the movie, and Daniel Day Lewis.  But I think Lincoln’s life offers many takeaways because of the way he behaved and held himself.