You are the envy of the entire lecture hall. Among hundreds of frantic faces bubbling silently with No. 2 pencil, you are the first to make a loud and disruptive rustling of paper as you flip to page 2 of the midterm exam. You breeze through it now, but a few hours ago you were practically shaking with fear. You had not been to class all semester. Three nights before, you sat yourself down in the library with a cup of coffee and started to read. You flipped through a phone book-sized chunk of your textbook, highlighting, making concept charts and doing the practice problems. You ignored Snapchat. You shunned text messages. You slipped emails, dodged phone calls and ducked under Canvas notifications for the next two days. It seems you snatched victory from the jaws of unpreparedness and laziness. Who needs lectures anyway?
It is starting to feel like you will make a perfect score. But as you flip to the last page, dread sets in. Spread before you is a minefield — each question on the last page begins with the words, “As discussed in class…” You close your eyes and sigh. You look at the answer choices and settle for making educated guesses. The question reads: “Which of the following is the arbiter of pop culture and politics?” You pick A) …
Darts and Laurels
More than a million homes and businesses are without electricity after Hurricane Michael tore through the Southeast on Wednesday. The Florida Panhandle was the first to be hit. Many communities there, directly in the storm’s path, are some of the poorest in the state and did not have the means to evacuate. They stayed and faced destruction.
The storm upturned houses and flung them apart like sandcastles. Those residing in mobile homes were largely unprotected. The death toll stands at six and is expected to rise with the continuing work of search and rescue teams. One such death was that of 11-year-old Sarah Radney, who was killed in Seminole County, Georgia, after a carport was flung into the modular home she was in. She was sitting next to her grandmother at the time.
We can only award laurels to those who are doing their best to help residents of the affected areas; medical teams are scrambling to bring aid to communities that were bludgeoned by wind and flooding. Four hospitals and 11 nursing homes were closed in Florida.
You can earn yourself a laurel by texting MICHAEL to 90999 to make a $10 donation to the American Red Cross. Every bit helps. It just as easily could have been Gainesville that took the brunt of the storm. As Florida residents, we all know how destructive a Category 4 hurricane can be when it is aimed at your neighborhood, home, loved ones and life. You should donate because it is the right thing to do, but also know there is a laurel in it for your good citizenship.
In other news, a mission to the International Space Station ended abruptly Thursday when the Soyuz rocket carrying a two-man crew malfunctioned. The rocket triggered an automatic abort command that sent U.S. astronaut Tyler N. “Nick” Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin parachuting to the ground in their capsule after they were already 31 miles above Earth.
And so, in the face of destruction from natural disaster and the narrow escape of the Soyuz crew from man-made disaster, we award laurels to the engineers who contributed to Hague and Ovchinin’s safe return. Darts to whoever or whatever is at fault for the automatic abort command. It scares us that a rocket independently decided that it no longer wanted to leave Earth and started going the other way on its own.
A dart to the Soyuz for being so badly behaved. Technology is supposed to work perfectly, free from human error — it is not supposed to do things like abort mid-mission or miss an entire semester’s worth of lectures and fail a midterm.
