The College Perspective by Lindsey

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.

Lauryn’s life has been full of ups and downs, from her father’s death at an early age to an unexpected pregnancy three years ago. Despite the many challenges of juggling motherhood, work, and school, Norton finds a balance.

Nursing wasn’t always her first choice. Like many kids, she wanted one of the “fun” careers. She says, “I wanted to be a dancer. From a young age, I was always in dance like ballet, jazz, tap, competitive teams, and I danced all through high school.”

As she grew she felt more passionate about nursing. “I had many reasons I wanted to go into nursing. My mom was a nurse and my dad died when I was five so I knew I wanted to help people.”

Her dad’s passing has been a large part of Norton’s life. “When I was younger I was bitter because I didn’t know why any God would take him away from me. I was angry and acted out more.”

Even as she grows and gains more success, Norton still remembers her father. “Losing my dad was very unfair, but now I realize that I have an amazing family to rely on and tell me how proud he would be of me, especially now that I’m only a year younger than he was when he died.”

Lauryn was only 25 years old when she learned she was pregnant. She was in the middle of nursing school, not exactly ready for a child. She says, “I was a complete wreck. I remember breaking down crying, almost hyperventilating when I told my mom about my pregnancy. Jaxson was a big surprise and I wasn’t prepared. Even then I knew I didn’t have a right to run and hide. Jaxson’s father left. It was difficult to know I was completely alone as a parent. Now that Jaxson is three I think we’re lucky he doesn’t have to go to anybody’s house that doesn’t care about him.”

Austin Norton, a senior at Morningside College and Lauryn’s sister, remembers the day she revealed her pregnancy. “It was during my senior year of high school. She came home a complete mess. My mom was mostly just shocked it was happening, but she started to make a plan for the rest of the pregnancy to keep Lauryn from freaking out.”

Nowadays Lauryn can’t be happier to have the life she has. Even though her days are usually anywhere from 12 to 16 hours long, she does it for Jaxson. She says, “Beyond school, my only goal is to raise Jaxson to be a good, decent human being who is always honest with me.”

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.

Nursing wasn’t always her first choice. Like many kids, she wanted one of the “fun” careers. She says, “I wanted to be a dancer. From a young age, I was always in dance like ballet, jazz, tap, competitive teams, and I danced all through high school.”

As she grew she felt more passionate about nursing. “I had many reasons I wanted to go into nursing. My mom was a nurse and my dad died when I was five so I knew I wanted to help people.”

Her dad’s passing has been a large part of Norton’s life. “When I was younger I was bigger because I didn’t know why any God would take him away from me. I was angry and acted out more.”

Even as she grows and gains more success, Norton still remembers her father. “Losing my dad was very unfair, but now I realize that I have an amazing family to rely on and tell me how proud he would be of me, especially now that I’m only a year younger than he was when he died.”

Lauryn was only 25 years old when she learned she was pregnant. She was in the middle of nursing school, not exactly ready for a child. She says, “I was a complete wreck. I remember breaking down crying, almost hyperventilating when I told my mom about my pregnancy. Jaxson was a big surprise and I wasn’t prepared. Even then I knew I didn’t have a right to run and hide. Jaxson’s father left. It was difficult to know I was completely alone as a parent. Now that Jaxson is three I think we’re lucky he doesn’t have to go to anybody’s house that doesn’t care about him.”

Austin Norton, a senior at Morningside College and Lauryn’s sister, remembers the day she revealed her pregnancy. “It was during my senior year of high school. She came home a complete mess. My mom was mostly just shocked it was happening, but she started to make a plan for the rest of the pregnancy to keep Lauryn from freaking out.”

Nowadays Lauryn can’t be happier to have the life she has. Even though her days are usually anywhere from 12 to 16 hours long, she does it for Jaxson. She says, “Beyond school, my only goal is to raise Jaxson to be a good, decent human being who is always honest with me.”

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.

Election Day Activities: Homework

Election Night Watch Party

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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, 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. It becomes more and more common once they go on to college.

For people like Austin Norton, college is the first time they come into contact with alcohol at all. He 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.”

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.”

On the other hand, even students at larger schools don’t even 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.”

Feauto also believes that people who drink excessively often do because they are free from the control of their parents.

No matter what the current drinking trends are, one thing is certain: binge drinking diminishes for most people after college.

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.”

Whether we get better with social interaction or there’s simply no time in the “adult” world, drinking will probably always be a facet of college culture in America.

Hog Fever by Richard La Plante is a fun 269-page ride for motorcyclists and non-riders alike.

Published in 1995, this narrative nonfiction follows the life of a motorcycle obsessed writer in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

La Plante himself is a very relatable character and admits many times that he is not a macho man hardened by the road. He simply loves to ride. This shows in his open admittance to overdraft fees while in the clutches of hog fever, desperate to have that next new model of Harley or custom part. To add to this, his several run-ins with the law as a young adult and in his mid-life adventures give the reader nostalgia of their own childhood and adventures.

The author takes you through many of the challenges of riding in a personal way. He isn’t afraid to put his personal shortcomings in the bike world on the page for all to see. He even admits to being fully pantsed after a crash in England before he had his motorcycle license which left him more cautious for future rides. He hides riding magazines from his wife like most people hide porn.

Later on, he describes his long-distance trip to Spain in such vivid detail you can almost envisage La Plante wiping the rain off his goggles every two seconds during the rain storms, covered in water and mud from head to toe.

Admittedly there are some issues with the book for those of us who don’t yet possess hog fever. To accurately write about riding, La Plante obviously has to use the correct technical terms for bike parts, but at times it can feel a bit overloaded for the reader who has no idea what different models of bikes and their parts consist of. The pictures sprinkled throughout the book help a little with the look and feel of different bikes that La Plante describes, but I still have no idea what the different engines look like or how one Harley looks too different from another.

Before reading this book, I was only vaguely aware of two brands of motorcycles and motorcycle gangs, so coming into this world took a little bit of adjusting. In the end, I think La Plante’s charm and genuine openness about the struggles and joys of riding a motorcycle will encourage any reader to read the book if not also buy a hog for themselves.