The College Perspective by Lindsey

Chuck Palahniuk’s Stranger than Fiction is a wide variety of short stories that will leave you confused but definitely entertained.

Palahniuk has a particularly cynical and dark world view that comes out in these stories, especially the ones about his father’s and friends’ deaths.

He veers wildly from public sex acts to men building castles to an interview with Marilyn Manson, some of the stories are incredibly hard to believe. Often shocking and larger than life, these stories represent more of a stream of consciousness from Palahniuk than real life actions. He claims it’s what inspires his fiction writing, but it’s unclear if he actually slipped some fiction in with the true accounts.

Palahniuk is a novelist and journalist who is most well-known for his book turned popular film Fight Club which he brings up several times throughout the book.

The stories are gathered mostly from personal interviews with celebrities and people Palahniuk knows. Most of the stories rely on dialogue while many others are simply a recollection of childhood memories and Palahniuk dealing with his father’s death.

While I did enjoy most of the random collection of stories, some dragged on more than others. The stories where he interviews celebrities is different and hard to follow at times. It’s mostly dialogue that seems like it was taken right from the recording device and not organized at all.

In all, the collection of short stories seems mostly like a project in between bigger projects. It’s almost like Palahniuk had these random half stories bouncing around his head and his friends urged him to write them all down into a book.

She sits in the brown overstuffed armchair surrounded by papers and books with a computer on her lap. On the couch next to her and all across the floor are a variety of plastic toys, mostly superhero themed. Old fast-food bags sit on the coffee table with crumbs and food spilling out. Her short blond hair falls in front of her eyes as she concentrates on the screen. She’s in sweatpants and a shirt that says “World’s Okayest Mom.”

Soon a red-headed toddler runs screaming into the room dressed only in superhero underpants. He climbs on her chair, begging to sit in her lap. She yells “Jaxson stop! I’m studying!” before relenting to the small child’s demands.

Lauryn Norton is a 29-year-old family nurse practitioner and a registered nurse in labor and delivery. This is just a small part of her daily hectic schedule.

When someone brings up the homeless in this country, it’s often to complain about how nothing is being done or a random act of kindness someone showed to someone living on the streets.

While homelessness is a huge problem in this country and something must be done, my anger at this situation comes more from the red tape stopping people from helping.

Kansas City, Missouri officials recently responded to resident’s complaints of people serving food to homeless in the area once a week in a local park by pouring bleach on the food. Residents had become increasingly concerned that rising levels of homeless people would increase the level of crime within the community.

The group serving the food, called Free Hot Soup Kansas City, posts the time and location of their food drops every week on Facebook. After they started serving food this past week, officials told them they couldn’t serve food without a permit and poured bleach on the food because it was “unsafe.”

Even though the Free Hot Soup group tried to save the food by claiming the homeless as their friends and defining their event as a picnic, it wasn’t enough for the health officials.

Over 554,000 people in the United States are homeless in 2018. Besides that, 1 in 8 Americans have incomes that put them at risk for food insecurity.

With these numbers, it’s hard to have sympathy for these bleach pouring officials. In fact, the Health Department stated that future violations of this kind could result in citations or court appearances. However, the strict guidelines for food permits are nearly impossible for volunteer groups to follow. Many don’t have the resources or time to comply with a designated kitchen and clean environment for cooking.

This latest step by officials shows a dire need for restructuring the bounds of government officials, volunteer organizations, and where they can work together to eliminate a common problem. Since many like to use the American homeless as a political talking point, maybe it’s time we actually do something to help instead of talk. If people are willing to help, let them help.

Students cram into a white, two-story house, rap music blaring from the speakers. In the kitchen there’s an intense beer pong match, people are crammed onto couches nearby, talking and drinking. Downstairs the music is even louder. A girl carrying a bottle of Jägermeister yells “Shots? Shots?” at anyone who comes near her. A group of very drunk girls tries their hardest to take a picture with their arms around each other’s waists while all of them lean dangerously close to falling on top of each other. One girl chugs an entire bottle of Smirnoff surrounded by people cheering her on.

Sound familiar?

According to recent reports, around 4 out of 5 college students abuse alcohol. Students arrested each year for alcohol-related violations can reach up to 110,000. Besides that, 1,825 students on average die each year from alcohol-related injuries.

For most students, especially in small towns across Iowa where there isn’t much else to do, excessive drinking starts in high school. Even though binge drinking is on the decline, many middle to lower class students still struggle with excessive drinking versus their wealthier counterparts. This trend becomes more and more common once they go on to college.

For people like Austin Norton and Cameron Shook, college is the first time they come into contact with alcohol at all. Norton says, “I really wasn’t against drinking, I just never had the opportunity in high school. I was a nerd. People just had booze and I went for it.” Cam agrees with this sentiment.

It’s unclear why heavy drinking is so common for college students, but Norton believes it has to do with social interaction. He says, “Some people are just alcoholics, but I would say it’s mostly trying to fit in and it’s a social crutch essentially, though it’s a lot less common nowadays. There’s just a general better understanding. As a culture, we’re more appreciative of the detrimental effect of alcohol and drugs. And as far as social crutches go we have our phones now so I’m sure that helps.”

Even though Shook comes from a small town where drinking runs rampant among the teenage population, she didn’t start drinking until college as well. Unlike Norton, however, she’s spent the last year trying to recover from a summer of binge drinking, almost bordering on alcoholism according to some.

She says, “I had a huge falling out with my roommate and friend since high school my freshman year of college. They created a really toxic environment for me and I lost a lot of self-esteem. With school piled on top of that, I started to drink pretty regularly but it wasn’t a problem. The stress from this last year at school helped start my heavy drinking. I drank every night and became obnoxious to the point that my roommates moved out to get away from me. Over the summer the drinking got worse and I was raped three times. I live on my own now and I only drink three drinks every night. I don’t really know why I started drinking so much, but I definitely think the drinking culture at my college (University of Iowa) helped.

On the other hand, sometimes students at large schools still don’t drink despite ample opportunities. Lauryn Feauto is one such student who attends Iowa State University. She says, “I personally just don’t have any interest in drinking and possibly not being in control of myself. Plus, I have an underlying feeling that I could quickly become an alcoholic due to an addictive personality.”

Despite the expectation of heavy drinking in college, graduation is normally the catalyst that separates binge drinkers from alcoholics. The amount of drinks consumed by the average adult in a middle-class job typically drops the more years go by.

Norton believes it’s simply because of the change in lifestyle. He says, “It’s partly getting older. It’s hard to keep up with that lifestyle. There isn’t room in your life for it with family and work.”

Feauto agrees, saying “We get busy and it gets expensive.”

Even though people are still drinking, most funnel it into structured hours during the week, only weekends, or one or two drinks at a work function. These are the unspoken rules of moving into adulthood, yet they don’t affect everyone. More than 15 million people are still struggling with alcohol abuse in America in 2018.

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