Our Facebook Group

We encourage everyone to visit our Facebook Group to learn about the modifications being made to Chapter 17 of the University of Wisconsin System Policy.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=38307057377

Great Expectations

I have one semester left before graduation and then it is either “Hello career,” or “Hello second degree.” Having to choose between leaving academia and continuing my education has me asking a question I have been asking for 4.5 years: Why is it expected for a young adult to choose a major/career so early in life? It’s true that some people grow up knowing what they are going to do or they figure it out somewhere along the way, but for those who don’t have the luxury of knowing, why must the world pressure then to choose?

At this point, the pressure from family and the University, through financial aid, to choose what I want to do for the rest of my life is overwhelming. I personally have not had enough exposure and experiences to make that decision. When I feel pressured to make a decision, I always say, “I’m only 22, I have the rest of my life to figure it out.” Usually the response is, “You are 22, and old enough to make the decision. Take the responsibility and make it.”

I think the journey in life is more important than the endpoint. I don’t understand how if you follow your heart and make good decisions, you can end up in a place you will not be happy. I have chosen to go into nursing because I believe it is the best fit for me with the exposure and experiences I have had. I have yet to start my nursing education, but I will have my zoology degree finished when I do begin. Finishing my zoology degree has been a nice midpoint between my family and I. As long as I have a degree in something, they seem to be happy.

Through my time in college, I have come to terms with the fact that I may never find that one career that will fit me perfectly. I have even come to understand that what I really want to do with my life is not actually something I can study, more, something that happens. I have come to realize that my time in college has been a way of connecting the dots in order to achieve my real goal. I guess my life after college will further connect the dots until I achieve my goals.

The two-faced world

The mystery of exam season, number 1: You feel like doing things you wouldn't even imagine doing when you have much time. Even a boring documentary on the discovery channel seems so interesting, and all of a sudden you feel an urge to clean up your messy room you haven't really cared to clean up for the last few days (or even weeks.) Well, this is exactly what happened to me as well. Although I had - and still have - loads and loads of work and study to be done, I suddenly couldn't resist but to agree to watch "Batman III : The Dark Knight" with my friends when they invited me over last friday night.

I'm usually not a big fan of action movies, and I just simply hate movies with unrealistic heroes with superpowers. And, ok, I'll just be straightforward and come clean with this. I hope you won't judge me based on this information and think I'm some kind of weirdo, but I haven't had seen any of the Batman, Superman, Spiderman, whatever -man series before. The past summer, when Dark Knight first started showing in the movies, my boyfriend was literally dying to go to the movies with me to watch it. Don't get me wrong, I'm usually not that bad a girlfriend, but I made excuses every time not to go to the movies or to watch a different movie. Same when my brother wanted to go, when my parents wanted to go, and when so many of my friends wanted to go. So while eveyone else was watching Dark Knight, I probably watched almost all other showing movies in the theaters during that period of time.

Well, anyways, then I decided to watch Dark Knight last friday because first of all, I didn't really feel like studying on a friday night, even though I actually had to because I had extreme work load, and second, I actually thought the movie would be quite interesting. Maybe it was just the stress and the weather that affected me in a weird way, but YES, I did agree to join my friends for Dark Knight that night. The betrayal my boyfriend has felt last weekend, I would just simply say, was simply too much to put into words :P

Now, so much for the wordy intro and into the main point. In fact, despite the dreadfully long running time, and despite the fact that I'm not a big fan of that particular genre of movie, I actually got quite absorbed into the movie throughout the whole 2 and a half hour period. Should it be weird of me to say that a super hero action movie, yes, the very genre of movie I have avoided and hated so much during my not-so-short 20 years' course of life, has depth to it, but I did find the movie quite thought-invoking.

From this point now on, this post will be very much a spoiler-esque so if you haven't watched the movie yet I recommend you stop reading. I hate spoilers too, and I feel bad that I'm about to write one as well, but I'm pretty sure I was the last one on earth to watch this movie so I'll just continue writing without feeling guilty.

Remember Freakfest (wow, that was already a month and a half ago!) and how many Jokers there were all over State Street? I was actually quite impressed how so many people decided to dress up as one, and, I must say that was another very influential reason that made me want to watch the movie a little bit more. Plus, there was the death of Heath Ledger, the actor who played Joker. In a lot of ways, Joker was an impressive and an unforgettable character. And of course, I shouldn't forget Batman, after all, he's the hero, he's the one who has his name on the title of the series, how could I possibly leave him out?

But the most interesting character of all, at least to me, was Harvey Dent, a.k.a. two face. Because while Batman and Joker clearly represented absolute good versus evil, Harvey Dent was good went bad, which seemed more realistic to me, and in contrast to the two group of people on separate vessels who weren't able to push the button to save their own lives, which was touching but unrealistic and "so movie" at most, Harvey Dent's completely distorted self came to me as more true-life.

It is impossible to clear cut the world we are living in now into the good and bad. Rather, the world we are living in have become so complex that almost everything is in the grey area. From Harvey Dent, the icon of right and justice, to Two Face, vicious and frightful both inside and outside, it was one pretty damn big transformation. Did the betrayal of those whom he had believed in, and the distress from the death of his beloved transform the good in him to the bad? Or, was it only due to his ceaseless effort to restrain his inner evil and to achieve and realize "justice" that he could have been viewed as justice itself to the public? Or maybe he wasn't either good or evil, but might have been two face from the very beginning.

Perhaps everyone has both sides of Harvey Dent's faces - the handsome and the hideous, and the people we view as "nice" and "good-natured" are simply capable of showing their nicer part of the two faces more often than the other people, whereas the people we view as "evil" and "malicious" are more capable of showing the uglier part of their faces. Maybe after all, it all comes down to how well you cover up your uglier part from other people. When all my complicated thoughts led to this conclusion I was rather bitter - but then once again, I thought, life always is bitter.

It's awkward to bring in reality and economic theories into discussion, especially after all this rambling about good and evil, but how on earth could people not activate the triggering device in the Joker's social experiment scene? Game theory it is. (If you don't know what "game theory" is, google it up. If you don't want to, that's also fine. No need to understand this concept to follow my trail of thoughts in this particular post.) Chances are, if Joker really did stick to his original plan, they would have died anyways if they hadn't blown the other vessel off. They could have lived, if they did manage to sacrifice the other vessel for themselves. I'm pretty sure if this experiment had taken place in real life, (I'm glad not though,) both sides would definitely have pressed the button. Well, I guess this movie needed at least some hope and the faith in the good of people, otherwise the movie would have been too realistic and scary that it would almost have been uncomfortable for me to watch.

Anyways, unlike almost all other movies with the rather "cliche" repatory in which there are always a good and bad, and the good always wins in the end, Dark Knight was too realistic that it made my blood run cold. That night, I was tired after an especially long and heavy-loaded week, and an especially long and thought-invoking movie, but I couldn't get to sleep right away on my bed because I had too many thoughts all scrambled up in my head.

p.s. Rachel Dawes (the heroine of the movie) has these big, but drowsy and drooping eyes which I am not a big fan of most of the times, but I found her surprisingly attractive. Plus, she seemed very familiar, so I googled her up on the internet. BINGO! She was the girl who was on Mona Lisa Smile, one of my favorite movies. (So yes, this is my usual appetite when it comes to movies.) That's not all. Well, all of you guys might have known this already, but Google, (the greatest search engine of all times,) told me that her real name was Maggie Gyllenhaal, and yes, she's Jake Gyllenhaal's sister! No wonder I found her so attractive, haha :P

Run-On...I think not!

This is my attempt at creating a really long sentence. I am hoping that I do not have a run-on here. It is 260 words!

When the children crept up to their respective rooms and beds on Christmas Eve night, after the unyielding anticipation of a year long wait for the glorious day when they would celebrate the birth of their savior once again, although they may not really appreciate the true meaning and profoundness of the holiday, they undoubtedly believed they heard the faint jingling of bells and the stomping of hooves on roofs from a distance where Santa already began his trip across the world to deliver presents to all of God’s children with the help of his trustworthy reindeer; however, little did the little boy and girl know that their parents were about to pull out their presents from the hiding place in the basement in the locked closet where the children would never venture and most definitely never question why they could not gain access to this area, were about to devour the cookies that they had actually helped bake but allowed the children to decorate with all sorts of ornate frosting and sprinkles that also ended up all over the walls and floors of the kitchen in the process, were about to place all the wrapped presents with labels inscribed by “Santa” himself, and were about to fill the stockings hanging from the fireplace which would cause the children to question in the morning how Santa managed to slip down the fireplace with burning embers still at the bottom from their late night fire and escape without a single burn, scrape, or any other sort of mark what so ever.

Write to us!

Our presentation was about the modifications to chapter 17 of the Wisconsin System Policy. We are going to inform students about the pros and cons of the revisions. Let us know what you think!