A Writer's Everything

Story 1:

Christy Wapniarski died suddenly yesterday night after a leisurely afternoon sailing with three of her friends turned dangerous.

Randy Cohen, one of the three who accompanied Christy during this trip, tells how the events occurred from his hospital room in Halifax Hospital in Daytona.

The four friends went out to sea in a 16-foot catamaran, which at about 5 pm started leaking until it sank. They weren’t wearing life jackets, Cohen says. The four friends hung onto one of the pontoons throughout the night, but with a strong ocean current taking their toll on them, they decided to swim four miles to the nearest shore, Ormond Beach.

Partway through the swim, Wapniarski called to Cohen for help, claiming a shark had attacked her. Cohen called for help from the one swimming ahead of him who warned him not to go back or he would also be attacked.

Cohen went to help anyway, but Wapniarski was unconscious by the time he got to her, no sign of sharks in the area. He tried swimming her back to shore, but Perrin, another of their friends who were swimming behind Cohen and Wapniarski took her pulse and pronounced her dead.

Cohen tried swimming her body back to shore, but with another six hours before the three reached the beach, he let her go and finished the swim.

While Cohen is still in residence of the hospital, the other two were examined and released.

Story 2:

A United Airlines jet bound for Omaha, NE crashed into a residential district outside of Chicago’s Second City Airport Friday Afternoon.

Of a total of 61 people on board, 55 were killed, though only 42 bodies have been found so far. One of the deceased was Rep. George W. Collins who was coming back from Washington. The remaining 16 survivors of the crash were admitted to Holy Cross Hospital with injuries.

One survivor reports that the pilot told his passengers that everything was going well, but “knew something was wrong a few seconds later because he began to rev the engines.”

Eyewitnesses, such as John Eldon, are concerned with how Chicago is running their airports and are considering moving.

College students aren’t getting the amount of sleep they really need. Sleep is one of the things everyone needs in order to live and work well.

Sleep is one thing college students become good at making time for, whether it is a quick nap in some free time after a bad night, or scheduling it in when they have to wake up for class on time.

Several articles, such as those written by the University of Georgia’s Health Center and Terri Williams at Goodcall.com, tell about how lack of sleep affects, and is important for, college students.

The common points between the two articles are about why we need sleep, how much we need, and why not sleeping enough can be very harmful.

Though mainly pointed at college students, especially a negative side effect of sleep deprivation affecting memory recall and disrupting academic performance, these reasons can all be applied to everyone on Earth.

The University of Georgia’s Health Center has a bolded section headline titled “CONSEQUENCES of sleep loss,” which gives some physical and mental health issues that come with sleep loss, such as “impact[ing] the immune system function,” “obesity,” “impact[ing] brain function, attention span, mood and reaction times,” depression, and anxiety.

Williams reports about a recent survey showing “college students consider sleep to be an important factor in their success – but admit that they’re not sleeping as much as they should.”

According to the study, as many as 84% of students say they “would like to sleep 8 hours or more” on a school night, but only 16% actually do.

The University site says “Establishing A Sleep Ritual” and avoiding caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol will help students get enough sleep.

Williams at Goodcall.com also relays tips from a professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, such as “Setting a cut-off time for studying – and then sticking to it – is helpful, as is keeping that schedule regularly.”

Overall, both of the articles give compelling reasons and statistics for why sleep is important, but not always probable for students.

Anya Kamenetz on npr.org gives a different viewpoint, believing that college students are getting the right amount of sleep.

“Students aren’t as sleep-deprived as we might think. The overall average was 7 hours and 3 minutes during the week, and 7 hours 38 minutes on the weekends,” Kamenetz reports on a study released by Jawbone, a developer of wearable sleep and activity trackers.

The study also tells that students at more difficult/high level universities are night owls, or more likely to go to sleep later, though they still get within the appropriate range of time asleep.

Sleep is needed for all humans to correctly function. It’s one thing college students become good at is making time for, whether it is a quick nap in some free time after a bad night, or scheduling it in when so they can wake up for class on time.

However, college students might not be getting as much sleep as they should be. These articles from the University of Georgia, goodcall.com, and npr.org give the issues from students lacking sleep, but also tips and tricks for them to get the sleep they need.

The article written by the University Health Center at the University of Georgia is very informational about why sleep is invaluable for college students.

Their website is separated by small sections for each bolded heading, such as “WHY do we need sleep?”, “HOW MUCH sleep do we need?”, and “CONSEQUENCES of sleep loss.”

After the “CONSEQUENCES of sleep loss” section, they list some of the physical and mental health issues associated with lack of sleep, such as “impact[ing] the immune system function,” “obesity,” “impact[ing] brain function, attention span, mood and reaction times,” depression, and anxiety.

The article also mentions the impact on a student’s top priority: academic performance. It’s usually negative because sleep deprivation affects memory recall, among other things.

The article finishes with ideas for figuring out how to get enough sleep, what to avoid for getting sleep, as well as some insight for students to recognize if they might have a sleep disorder.

The article written by Terri Williams on goodcall.com gives many statistics in her article about what students think about sleep: “A recent survey reveals that college students consider sleep to be an important factor in their success – but admit that they’re not sleeping as much as they should.”

Williams continues the article with more survey statistics, as well as creating sub-headlines in her article about why the appropriate amount of sleep is ideal: “Emotional and cognitive reasons why sleep is important” and “Other problems caused by insufficient sleep.”

Williams also relays tips to students for “How to develop better sleeping habits” from associate professor Dr. Ann M. Romaker at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, who says “Setting a cut-off time for studying – and then sticking to it – is helpful, as is keeping that schedule regularly” and more.

The article written by Anya Kamenetz on npr.org tells the opposite side of the story. She believes college students are not actually sleep deprived.

“Students aren’t as sleep-deprived as we might think. The overall average was 7 hours and 3 minutes during the week, and 7 hours 38 minutes on the weekends.” This comes from a study released by Jawbone, a developer of wearable sleep and activity trackers.

The study also tells the reader that students at more difficult/high level universities go to sleep later, but are still within the appropriate range of time asleep.

Kamentz acknowledges the opposing side to her argument by quoting Jawbone’s head of data science and analytics, Brian Wilt: “Framed another way, they got less than seven hours of sleep on 46.2 percent of nights. So I think it’s definitely a problem.”

However, she sticks by her original argument that students are in fact much more concerned about their health, including their sleeping patterns, than originally thought. This is shown by their increase in buying and using fitness equipment such as Jawbone’s tracker.

The first thing to catch my attention when it came to Tim Mulkerin’s article “How exposure therapy helped me hack my OCD brain and eliminate my greatest fear” on mic.com was his lede. The first thing he mentions in his article is knives, and connecting the lede with the title, I knew I wanted to continue reading.

Mulkerin writes this article about his difficulties with OCD thoughts, in this case his thoughts about taking a knife and stabbing his loved ones with it. He relays that his violent thoughts are from his OCD and his fear of him being capable of committing these acts, then continues with telling about his exposure therapy and the little steps he took to slowly control his fear into something manageable.

Mulkerin says he is now better, and he is “doing [his] best to accept that” he “can’t have total assurance about anything.”

Read the original article here.

Last Monday, five students at East High were put on week-long suspension for being caught smoking marijuana in the school parking lot.

Disgruntled students protested the suspensions by causing a cafeteria-closing food fight Tuesday, followed by three false alarms sounding on Wednesday.

Principal Laura Vibelius reported there was general unrest among the students, “Not so much unrest because of the suspensions, but because of summer vacation being so near.”

Ten upperclassmen were also put on week-long suspension, with Vibelius stating she sees no continuation of these “incidents” in the near future.

In the mic.com article “Want to save money and grow richer? This is the best way to rank financial priorities, experts say” by Anita Hamilton, she starts with telling the reader to write down their financial goals in their lives. Following these goals, Hamilton says a “financial plan” will help the reader get to these goals as they continue to find wiggle room with their extra savings.

These extra savings would then be put toward one of the “financial priorities” Hamilton lists in her article: “Pay down any high interest credit-card debt”, “put money in an emergency fund”, “start saving for retirement — especially if you get a company match”, “paying off your student loans”, and “paying for a big expense or saving goal”.

Hamilton says “the best way to avoid getting into debt for these things is to start budgeting well in advance: as much as two years ahead,” which will help the reader get to their goals much faster than without putting their little bits of extra money into these “financial priorities.”

Find the article here.

Jesseca Ormand, an international student here at Morningside, has come to us from the Caribbean nation of Antigua. She was born in 1993 on the island known as St. Martin. She has a total of four siblings, though two of them come from her father’s previous relationship before meeting her mother. Jesseca is a Mass Comm major, having always known she wanted to go into public relations and communications. She says “I like communications [and] knowing how that works.” In fact, the reason Jesseca chose Morningside is because of the Mass Comm program and the good scholarships available to her. She decided to come to college in the United States because “you have to know people [in Antigua] or you leave and come back with experience.” This, Jesseca says, is the reason she came to college so late: she needed to raise the funds to come to the US before she could get the experience she needs to get a job in her home country. She also loves photography and the color black, though she knows it’s a shade rather than a color.

In the mic.com article “Donald Trump signs memorandum banning transgender people from joining the military” published by Stacey Leasca, she tells about exactly what the title describes: banning transgender people from being able to join the military. Using other sources in her article, she tells details of how many possible transgender people are in the military currently, how what is going to happen to them is “unclear,” and that Trump is in denial of how small the cost of gender reassignment care really is (“0.1%”) by saying “Our military […] cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.” Though Leasca doesn’t give an outright opinion, but she does give the sense throughout the article that she isn’t the happiest with Trump’s newest memorandum.

Read the original article here.