Kaycie's blog

A naked, beautiful woman with her face out of the frame. Her gorgeous body is arched back as if she is stretching her spine like a cat. Getting bombarded by nakedness when you first go into someone’s apartment is a sign that you should hightail it out of there, but this particular painting is anything but vulgar. It is awe inspiring. As I look around Patrick’s apartment that is what word comes to mind. Inspiring. His apartment is adorned with artifacts, paintings, and books from around the world. You can tell just by his apartment that he is an intellectual person.

In fact, Patrick Brett is one of the smartest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of speaking to. However, his IQ  is paired with an unexpected level of humbleness. For example, it took him about an hour to confess that the paintings hung up around his apartment were painted by him. He signs them using an alias, as he wants to paint for the love of painting and not the credit.

Patrick is currently working for John Delaney’s campaign, who is seeking the Democratic nominee for President in 2020. Delaney thinks very highly of Patrick and praises his work towards the campaign. Since beginning his work for Delaney’s campaign, Patrick has quickly become one of his most valued workers.

Just a decade ago Patrick was couch surfing as a teenager just to make it through high school. Although his childhood isn’t something that he enjoys talking about, he has recently been asked to give the keynote address at a Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) summit to inspire kids that are going through similar situations as he did growing up. With this invitation, he figured he might as well get his information ready.

As we settled down for our interview he leaned back with his hands in his lap, seemingly relaxed. Patrick is a big guy. Not big as in overweight; the kind of big that drunk men would cower from in a bar brawl. With his short, blonde hair and piercing blue eyes, he seems like the type of golden boy that breezed through his childhood. That definitely was not the case.

We start with some basic information to loosen him up. Patrick was born in Winbur, Pennsylvania on August 16, 1991. He’s the second oldest of eleven children. His parents are  Patrick and Marney. Growing up, his father worked as a laborer, mostly doing construction work. His mother was unemployed. One doesn’t have to be a genius to realize that having eleven children supported by a lone laborer’s pay doesn’t exactly work.

Patrick recalled when he was eight years old, he had to wear his father’s old shoes to his first day of school. Since he was the oldest boy, he had no hand-me-down clothes like the rest of his siblings. “We were all trying to find shoes to wear for school, trying to make do with whatever was laying around,” Patrick says.

He didn’t realize that his home life was different from everyone else’s until high school. “My family situation was kind of all consuming. I had no exposure to any healthy families. When I moved in with my dad at the age of 12, I was couch surfing through my dad’s friend’s houses. They weren’t nice houses. When I started dating girls was when I made the comparison with their families. Whenever it got to the point where I wanted to stay there rather than go home.” As Patrick recalled his experience, he looked to the ground as if in deep thought.

Finally meeting my eyes, he explained, “I never wanted to go home.”

The “ass-kickings”, as Patrick referred to them, started at the age of eight. That’s when the open handed hits turned into closed fists. Social services would get called on his family almost every month regarding Patrick’s continuous signs of abuse. His mother would beat him for any reason she could conjure. At such a young age, Patrick was continuously covered in bruises, black eyes, and, even at one point, choke marks. Strangely, he was the only one out of all his siblings that was beaten to that extent.

When social services would come talk to Patrick, they would call a week in advance to let his mother know. They also would let his mother sit in on their conversations, so there wasn’t much that Patrick could say. Before the meetings, his mother would remind him that if he told them anything, they would split their family up and he would never see his siblings again. Shaking his head, Patrick admits that she had that part right. He explained to me that a family of that size would never be able to find a home that would take all eleven of them.

When questioned about his mother’s mental health, his face shifted to anguish. He believes that she has some form of delusion disorder, possibly schizophrenia. There would be no way of knowing though, since she refuses to get checked. They know for sure that she has severe depression and has tried committing suicide mutliple times.

On one instance before she attempted committing suicide, she went as far as writing each of her children a letter. As her attempt failed, she was admitted into a hospital. Patrick found the letter intended for him and read it. Essentially, the letter said that she wished she had never had him and that she was disappointed in him.

As Patrick remembered the letter a great sorrow fell upon his face; it was almost as if he was that little kid again reading the letter for the very first time. “This is something that she consciously did and put into words on paper because she wanted this to be the last thing she ever left me.That was the first time I ever got completely and totally drunk. I got a bottle of vodka and drank so much”, he recited as if it was just yesterday.

He continued,“I had heard the things before but it was because they weren’t in the moment, she truly believed them.”

Finally, Patrick recalled at the age of twelve his mother had gone too far. In a fit of rage, she broke his cheek bone. Then when she went to choke him, he caught her hand. Once he finally stood up for himself, she kicked him out. In the middle of winter, Patrick made his way without a jacket to his friends house to call his dad to pick him up. His mother still denies abusing Patrick to this day. He honestly thinks that she might be so delusional that she actually believes it.

His parents had split when he was about seven years old. Afterwards, his father had an apartment with a friend of his for a while. That didn’t last long, though. After a couple of years, Patrick and his father left the apartment and couch surfed through his high school years. Once he graduated, he went straight into the marines since he didn’t really know what else to do. At that point, he didn’t know that college was an option.

Coincidentally, his parents found out about his high intelligence at around the same time the beatings began but Patrick didn’t find out until he was seventeen. His mother actually requested to check her son out for his mental health because she thought he was mentally handicapped. This could be because he was dyslexic, but Patrick confided that it was probably so he could get sent away to a special school for the school year. Patrick recalls that a man followed him around to every class for about a week or two and had him take a bunch of tests.

Patrick later took an IQ test before he went into the military to try and get grant money. When he took the test he found out that he had an IQ of 139, which categorizes him as a genius. When I asked him what percentile that puts him in, with a small smirk, he replied that he technically is one of the .1% smartest people in the world.

Through his intelligence, hequalified to join the group Mensa International, which is a high IQ society. As Patrick spoke about his intelligence, his face showed true pride. This was a drastic change from what he appeared to be feeling during the recollection of his childhood. He even joked that Arnold Schwarzenegger was in Mensa too.

“Finding out that I was a genius was huge for me”, Patrick exclaimed, “With being dyslexic and being made fun of, I was scared to go to college because I thought I was stupid.” But quite the opposite happened. Through college he got straight A’s as he attended Penn State for a political science degree.

Patrick will never forget his experiences though. He stopped talking to his parents at twenty years old. He keeps in touch with his siblings, but he hasn’t really been apart of the family since he left. His eyes grow sad when he speaks of his family and the lack of relationship there. On the outside, he says that he is better off without them but deep down there is still a hole.

Dylan Root, one of Patrick’s good friends, reflects on his relationship with Patrick. “He’s a very determined and headstrong person and it often comes through in his relationships.” He explains that Patrick takes the initiative with his friends, which is not something that you see in a lot of people. “He’s a decision maker, which works very well in our group of friends.” Dylan has only been friends with him for a couple of months, but in that short time it is obvious that Patrick has made an impact on him.

Through these experiences, Patrick has become the man that he is today. The resilient, strong-willed, intelligent, and humble man that cares so much about the world around him. He got into politics because he believes that it’s the one way he can help society. Personally, I have a feeling that Patrick could be making an impact on Sioux City and the political world in the near future.

Reflecting back on his childhood now, Patrick looks at it the only way he ever does, intellectually. “There’s a point in getting your ass kicked that you finally realize that your skin isn’t made out of paper and your bones aren’t made out of glass,” Patrick says matter of factly. “Whenever you reach that point you realize that if I can take that, there’s not much I can’t take. It made me resilient.”

A naked, beautiful woman with her face out of the frame. Her gorgeous body is arched back as if she is stretching her spine like a cat. Being bombarded by nakedness when you first go into someone’s apartment usually should be a sign that you should hightail it out of there but this particular painting is anything but vulgar. It is “awe” inspiring. As I look around Patrick’s apartment that is what word comes to mind. Inspiring. His apartment is adorned with artifacts, paintings, and books from around the world. You can tell just by his apartment that he is a smart person.

In fact, Patrick Brett is the smartest person I’ve ever had the pleasure of speaking to but his intelligence isn’t as obvious when you speak to him. Yes, he has an amazing vocabulary and sometimes uses words that I later have to look up the meaning to, but he is humble. When you speak to him, he really listens to what you say and never talks down to you, even though I’m sure in his career he must have a hard time not doing just that.

Patrick works on the campaign of John Delaney, who is currently running as a Democratic presidential candidate for 2020. And to think, just a decade ago Patrick was couchsurfing as a teenager just to make it through high school. His childhood isn’t something that he enjoys talking about but he has recently been asked to give the keynote address at a national child abuse summit to inspire kids that are going through similar situations as he did growing up. Due to this, he figured he might as well get his information ready.

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer is a book about the adventures and the tragic death of Chris McCandless. Chris McCandless is an outsider to say the least. Through interviews with Chris’s family, friends, and acquaintances, Jon Krakauer tries to piece together aspects of Chris’s life. The author also resites passages from Chris McCandless’ personal journal and different books that he treasured. I felt like as the book led to Chris’s eminent demise, the reader learned as much about the author as you did McCandless. It was very obvious that the author thought very highly of Chris.

Even though the story of Chris’s life isn’t really that long of a story at all, I mean the kid was only 24 when he died, it seemed like the book took forever to get to the actual story. Chris is really famous for surviving for 114 days in the Alaskan wilderness by himself with little provisions and then of course dying out there as well. The book doesn’t get to that part until basically the last chapter.

I did enjoy the thoroughness of Jon Krakauer’s writing because through the extensive background of Chris’s life you get a glimpse into what Chris most likely was going through and thinking about during his last few days. I felt at times that there were things that the author couldn’t possibly know about Chris and what he was thinking but that is where you find out more of the author’s point of view than Chris’s.

There is no doubt that Jon Krakauer sees himself in Chris McCandless in my opinion. Jon Krakauer is personally invested in the story because of his own personal experiences exploring Alaska and his his extensive research into Chris’s life. Sometimes I wish he would focus more on that than himself because I felt like throughout the whole book the author was trying to convince the reader that Chris wasn’t crazy in risking his life and going into the wild alone. When it comes down to it, it’s obvious that Chris wasn’t emotionally or mentally sound when he was on all of his adventures, at least that is the conclusion that I made.

Through Krakauer’s extensive background information you basically delve into literally every relationship that Chris ever had, even the human contact that lasted a couple hours. I understand that the author was trying to get everyone’s opinion on Chris but it became a little tedious at times. I felt like some of the stories just didn’t really matter, especially since Chris didn’t seem to care what anyone thought of him anyways. For example the author dedicated two chapters to his own travel stories and I had a hard time wondering why the information was relevant in the story about Chris McCandless; at least when the author was talking about people that actually met Chris you could get a glimpse into how Chris was but I felt like the author’s life was irrelevant to the story.

My all time favorite chapters were about Chris’s childhood though. Those chapters really helped the reader connect with Chris and I felt like I lost the opinion of the author for a second and that’s kind of what I wanted throughout the whole book. In reading these parts was when I actually started to feel connected to Chris and almost feel sorry for him. It’s when you realize how young and innocent he actually was. I also couldn’t help but make the personal connection between Chris’s relationship with his sheltie Buckley, since I grew up with a sheltie as well.

Overall I really enjoyed Chris’s story. I wish the book would’ve let you make your own conclusion about him instead of pushing certain viewpoints in your face but at least the author was genuine. The book also could’ve dropped a couple chapters in my opinion but the depth of the research is very impressive. I definitely would recommend this book to a friend and would give it five stars for Chris’s journey alone. This book would be perfect for anyone seeking adventure.

In high school the choice to go to college is almost made up for you. You either go to college and be a successful, contributor to society or you don’t go to college and ruin your life. That’s obviously not the reality but that’s what it seems like the teachers and parents are telling you.

For me, going to college was expected of me. My brother went to Doane College four years before I graduated high school so my parents just expected me to go. Now this article isn’t about how college is bad and that you shouldn’t go to college because I believe college is a great thing.

College allows students to immerse themselves in the real world in a somewhat safe and sheltered environment. It helps students transition from living under supervision all the time to actually being a decision-making adult. College also helps you get educated obviously.

My rant is more on the push of college in high school. I just don’t understand why and how society expects a 17-year-old kid to know what they are going to do with the rest of their life when they’ve barely experienced life at all. About a third of undergraduate students end up switching their majors at least once within three years of initial enrollment . Students rush into college and choose a major that they think they like to realize much later that they don’t want to study that subject at all; thus wasting thousands of dollars just because people forced them into going to college right away.

Yes, there’s always the option to go in freshman year as ‘undecided’ and figure it out through taking a bunch of different courses but is that the best way to really figure out what you want to do with your life? I know countless students that did just that and still ended up changing their majors later on.

I came to Morningside as an advertising major and I thought that I would never change. I even made a bet with my step dad for $50 saying that I would never change my major. Jokes on him because I changed my mind too late so I’m still graduating with a major in advertising. My point is that if I wouldn’t have been rushed into college at such an ignorant time in my life, I could have went to college for something that I’m actually passionate about and saved thousands of dollars.

The career I’m interested in now doesn’t even require a degree in anything, just a couple certifications. This is the case for a lot of jobs. There are so many students that end up wasting thousands of dollars taking courses that they will never use. This obviously isn’t the case all the time but it happens enough that you’d think we’d learn from past mistakes.

I changed my mind on my major in the middle of my junior year. When I finally decided that I didn’t want to go into advertising after college I knew that it was too late to change my major. Literally one of the worst periods in my life was when I decided to change career courses because I knew that I had just wasted my time and money.

Now I’m stuck. I’m stuck going to classes that I really couldn’t care less about, except for my news and feature writing class which I love. I’m also stuck with an amount of debt that will most likely follow me around for the next thirty plus years.

In the end, I’m not angry that I went to Morningside College. Morningside taught me a lot about myself and the world around me. The experiences that I’ve had here will impact me throughout my life. I just wish I could’ve saved a few bucks along the way.

And to the high school senior that is being nagged at by their parents to pick a college and major already, you have time. Even though up until now your parents have made most of the important decisions in your life, this choice is yours. Choose wisely, because it may come back to bite you in the ass.

Cannabis. Marijuana. Hemp. Weed. Pot. Dope. Grass. Mary Jane. Bud. Ganja. Reefer. Dank. The Devil’s Lettuce etc. One person may wonder, how can so many words mean one thing? But to a stoner, these words are used daily. Marijuana use is especially prevalent for the younger generation, namely college students.

According to the University of Michigan, who performed a study on marijuana use in colleges in the United States, marijuana use among full-time college students is at an all time high. In 2016, they reported that 39% of full-time college students had used cannabis at least once in the past year. Even more shocking, 4.9% of full-time college students indicated that they were daily or near daily users of the illegal drug. When comparing this statistic to the Morningside student body, that would mean about 65 students at Morningside are daily or near daily users of marijuana.

Between the ages of 19 to 22 is when young adults show an increase in experimenting with drugs and alcohol but the statistic is much higher for college students. The American Journal of Public Health found that the college setting almost promotes substance use, but they suggest that this could be because for most students this is the first time living without supervision.

For Sarah Baker, a student at Morningside College, she actually started smoking at the astonishing age of 13. Sarah states, “I was young and influential. I was doing a lot of new things at the time.” Sarah falls into the daily user category. She smokes four to five times throughout the day. Sarah has anxiety and claims that smoking marijuana helps her get through the day.

When asked about stoner culture in colleges she states that she has noticed three types of stoners. “You’ve got the stereotypical stoner that is lazy and is doing nothing with their life, the stoner that you wouldn’t suspect is a stoner, and then the third is the person that uses for medical reasons,” says Sarah.

Sarah is definitely in support of the legalization of marijuana but she does admit that it isn’t for everyone. “I think it’s great for certain people and it can be a bad thing as well for others.”

Morgan Simpson, another Morningside student, agrees with Sarah’s view. Morgan claims that there are benefits to smoking marijuana but it depends on the person because it affects everyone differently. Unlike Sarah, Morgan is a recreational smoker. She only smokes about once a week, sometimes less.

Morgan started smoking marijuana in high school at the age of 17. She was friends with an older crowd at the time who smoked so she decided to try it out for herself. Morgan thinks that stoner culture in college is different than most people think. She states that it isn’t just the outcasts that do it in college like is usually portrayed. “I think that it is more than a culture. Literally everyone is doing it. All cliques, all types of people,” she says.

Patrick Meyers, a professor at Morningside, has noticed the change in stigma around marijuana. Back in his day marijuana was thought of as a gateway drug and he thinks that it is still thought of that way by the older generation. Patrick is for the legalization of marijuana, as well stating, “I see very high functioning people using marijuana recreationally.”

Patrick thinks that one of the main reasons that marijuana should be legalized is because of the racial discrimination behind the drug. He thinks that it is the “driver of change even for people that don’t use”.

Patrick started smoking marijuana in high school at the age of 16 because of peer pressure. He admits that his first time was not a great experience. “You end up having to buy it somewhere shady and end up doing it somewhere shady. It doesn’t feel safe and it doesn’t feel recreational. No one wants to break the law, particularly in high school.”

When he was a young adult he only smoked about four to five times a year. Patrick ended up quitting at around 27 years old because he was trying to quit smoking cigarettes at the time and felt like smoking marijuana was a trigger for him.

Stoner culture to Patrick doesn’t represent a lot of the people that smoke recreationally. He claims that there is a subset of the culture that is true as in any culture but it doesn’t represent all people that smoke pot. The one thing that comes to mind for him when thinking of stoner culture is the famous stoner movie Half Baked that was released in 1998.

Even though students are more prevalent to try marijuana for the first time in college, most the time it doesn’t stick. Most people live in areas where it is illegal and like Patrick said, no one wants to break the law. This trend could be changing soon though with the national legalization of marijuana on the horizon. The Iowa Department of Public Health announced last Tuesday that Sioux City will be opening their first medical marijuana dispensary due to open as soon as December 1.

Cannabis. Marijuana. Hemp. Weed. Pot. Dope. Grass. Mary Jane. Bud. Ganja. Reefer. Dank. The Devil’s Lettuce etc. One person may wonder, how can so many words mean one thing? But to a stoner, these words are used daily. Marijuana use is especially prevelant for the younger generation, namely college students.

According to the University of Michigan, who performed a study on marijuana use in colleges in the United States, marijuana use among full-time college students is at an all time high. In 2016, they reported that 39% of full-time college students had used cannabis at least once in the past year. Even more shocking, 4.9% of full-time college students indicated that they were daily or near daily users of the illegal drug. When comparing this statistic to the Morningside student body, that would mean about 65 students at Morningside are daily or near daily users of marijuana.

I have three interviews planned which will be the bulk of the paper. I’m still trying to figure out what to focus on.

My first thoughts about the book Shutterbabe by Deborah Copaken Kogan were that this book is a great read for photographers and journalists. After further inspection though Shutterbabe is really an amazing tale of adventure, love, and self- growth.

Written over the course of the authors early 20s, Deborah Copaken Kogan writes about her adventures as a photojournalist. Throughout the book she recollects the adventures she experienced after graduating and moving to Paris to follow her strive for adventure. Each chapter tells of an adventure and of the man in her life at the time.

The stories range from shooting images of war in Afghanistan to capturing the revolution in Russia. In the beginning Deborah gets into a lot of horrible situations because of her ignorance but by the end she is a seasoned photojournalist that has become very successful through her experiences. Each story Deborah meets a new guy that impacts her in a certain way until she finally finds the guy that she falls in love with and eventually marries.

I would be lying if I said that I understood everything that was discussed in the book since a lot of the photography description left me skimming over numbers and words that I had no meaning to me. Also the chapter she spent in Russia was hard to read as well because a lot of the words were Russian words that also had no meaning to me. Having a knowledge of journalism and photography definitely would’ve advanced my understanding of the book.

Kogan’s descriptions also were pretty lengthy for my tastes. I understand that as a photojournalist, the author described her surroundings very well but I felt like a lot of the description took away from the actual story. Deborah also frustrated me early on in the book because of all of the stupid decisions she made but at least she learned from them.

I am used to reading books that have plot twists or unpredictable endings so it was a little hard getting to the end of the book but it was a very good read overall. Kogan’s experiences shocked me and her vivid writing helped me see what she saw and felt in her adventures. I still can hardly believe her visit to the orphanage in Romania.

After reading Shutterbabe, I have so much respect for Deborah Copaken Kogan and photojournalism as a whole. The book expertly depicts the self-growth that the author went through during those years. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone seeking adventure and romance.

Calendar Girls is a comedy that I would describe as a “feel good movie”. It’s the type of movie that makes you feel good afterwards and I found it very entertaining. Besides the fact that you see a couple different naked, old lady bodies throughout the movie, I really did like the message behind the movie. The movie encouraged women empowerment and even old age empowerment, if that’s even a thing. I feel like the movie itself is very inspiring especially since it is based on actual events.

The movie starts off at a Women’s Institute meeting where the main characters are bored as hell during one of their weekly meetings. The main character, Chris, played by actress Helen Mirran, comes up with the idea for a nude calendar after finding nude magazines in her son’s room and seeing a nude calendar at the mechanic’s shop where she’s getting her car fixed.

She ends up concluding that her and her group of friends could do the same thing to raise money. The money ends up going to their local hospital because her best friend’s husband died of leukemia there. A lot of the people in the women’s organization are appalled at the idea but a lot of them decide to do the calendar with Chris anyways.

The calendar ends up being a huge success despite their age and ends up helping them raise around $1 million. The movie goes through the different challenges the women face from  husband scandals to delinquent kids that act up because of the photoshoot.

All in all, the movie was very entertaining throughout. I thought that some of the storyline got a little repetitive since they showed Chris’s son walking into weird situations where his mom was basically nude like four times. Also I feel like the son’s role in the whole movie was very annoying and they dramatized the whole situation a little much for my tastes. I feel like they could’ve done more with a couple of the supporting roles since I found their situations a lot more entertaining than the main character’s.

Overall the movie was very uplifting and body positive. I liked the message that women are beautiful no matter what age they are. I can’t believe that it actually happened too. It’s funny to think that there were literally a group of old ladies posing for a nude calendar in the late 90s. In my opinion I would rate this movie a four out of five mostly because of the message behind the movie.