The University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
UMich Campus News
| ↑ |
‘SONGWRIGHTS APOTHECARY LAB’ is musical therapyby The Michigan Daily
Jan 01, 2023
“Why do we listen to music? Is it purely for entertainment, or to provide a background soundtrack for moments in our lives? Is it for political reasons, is it for a message or in protest? How about for healing, for spiritual nourishment?
The latter is the primary goal of Esperanza Spalding’s latest album SONGWRIGHTS APOTHECARY LAB. Her 12 “Formwelas” numbered 1-13 (notably skipping number 12) aim to target certain stressors in our lives and alleviate them. For example, “Formwela 8” aims to provide a place of comfort and a feeling of ease to the listener. Spalding’s medicine cabinet of eclectic songs and sounds are as pleasant to the ear as they are healing to the soul.
The album is somewhat of a departure from her previous album 12 Little Spells , in that the music is more abstract, straying away from traditional song forms and morphing into something closer to soundscapes. SONGWRIGHTS APOTHECARY LAB walks the line of experimentation and peculiarity without being too dense — it’s accessible while pushing the boundaries of the acoustic experience. T he album starts off with “Formwela 1,” a prelude to the mystical and foreign sonic landscapes in the rest of the album. The opening is a unison; it cuts through the silence like a beam of light, and the music opens up into a dreamy lullaby filled with whole-tone scales and sounds of nature. The songs flow seamlessly from one to the next thanks to well-executed transitions.
The way that Spalding utilizes her voice, the sheer range of characters and emotions she conveys, reminds me of Erykah Badu. Listen to “Formwela 10” and then listen to this acoustic version of “Rimshot” by Badu. Spalding layers her own voice in unison many times, leading to a strange ethereal sound. It’s not mechanically precise, yet there is something inhuman about it — like she’s a shaman channeling some greater spirit through her melodies. There is an incredible diversity of different sounds and timbres on the album as well; each “Formwela” is a musical microcosm. From the sounds of acoustic bass to overdriven guitar to ambient electronics, there is an incredible biome of sounds on the album. One of my personal favorites is “Formwela 2,” where Spalding collaborates with Ganavya, an Indian vocalist who lends her voice to sing ragas and improvise over the lush harmonies. Ganavya is like a songbird singing in a vibrant rainforest.
Generally, the album is collaborative and successful on that front. Another notable contributor is Corey King, who collaborated with Spalding on “Formwela 5” and “Formwela 6.” It’s incredible how different the two songs are, and yet King and Spalding work so well with each other on both. While “Formwela 5” is more reminiscent of a song from musical theatre or cabaret, filled with strong emotions and passionate delivery, “Formwela 6” is as minimalist as possible with a gorgeous quasi-baroque bassline and simple melody. King manages to match Spalding’s energy on each track, which is no small feat.
Another standout track on the album is “Formwela 9.” It goes from spoken word to a ballad to an Ornette Coleman-styled jazz break in the span of two minutes. It’s hard to believe, despite covering so much ground musically, that it still manages to sound coherent. It’s definitely worth a second listen.
SON GWRIGHTS APOTHECARY LAB is a magical journey through various soundscapes. The vocal wizardess herself Esperanza Spalding once again takes us to places that we didn’t know we needed to go. There’s something for everyone on this album, whether you’re just looking for some tunes to relax to, or you need to unpack some negative emotions, or anything else really: This album could change your life.
Daily Arts Writer Jason Zhang can be reached at zhangjt@umich.edu .
The post ‘SONGWRIGHTS APOTHECARY LAB’ is musical therapy appeared first on The Michigan Daily .”
| ↑ |
Dr. Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve discusses racial stigma in American courts at Ford School eventby The Michigan Daily
Jan 01, 2023
“Dr. Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Brown University and an affiliated faculty with the American Bar Foundation in Chicago, spoke on how race has shaped criminal justice policy Tuesday at a Racial Foundations of Public Policy event hosted by the Ford School of Public Policy. Dr. Celeste Watkins-Hayes, the director of the Center for Racial Justice at the Public Policy School, hosted the event.
Gonzalez Van Cleve’s book, titled “Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America’s Largest Criminal Court,” won The American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Book Prize, which is the highest book honor in her discipline. Her research focuses on how race affects the experiences of participants in the criminal justice system.
When asked by Watkins-Hayes why a sociological approach is important to understanding criminal justice policy, Gonzalez Van Cleve said sociology gives insights into the patterns of criminal justice abuse.
“We saw the George Floyd murder , and in some cases, policymakers talk about this as a one-off phenomenon, that this is a bad apple trope,” Gonzalez Van Cleve said. “Institutions and cultures are bigger than one individual. If we see them as one individual, we see a tragedy that has happened as an outlier rather than a part of a pattern that in some ways indicates how policing occurs not just in one jurisdiction, but in multiple jurisdictions.”
Gonzalez Van Cleve said the criminal justice system should not be the first respondent to many issues, including addiction and mental health. She said many other institutions can help individuals suffering from those problems instead of prosecuting them right away.
“When they hear the word criminal justice, they should start thinking, ‘What other institutions could have solved this, what other policies somewhere else could have solved this?’” Gonzalez Van Cleve said.
Gonzalez Van Cleve said she is a “dramaturgical sociologist” who thinks about the performative aspect of social life. She described border patrol officers “as putting on a performance” when they interact with immigrants.
“It is possible that immigration laws say that we need to round up people that are undocumented, and if they are not citizens they needed to be deported to their home countries,” Gonzalez Van Cleve said. “There’s probably a more neutral way that it is stated in the law. It does not say to rope people like they are cattle, and yet, those officers have images and cultural scripts about how to do this and to what type of people … I call those performances racial degradation, which is the signal to us that these people are different from us.”
Discussing what students should focus on when they want to help marginalized individuals, Gonzalez Van Cleve recommended a change in mentality by focusing on those in power and how they came to implement the harm they do today.
“Nobody wakes up and says, ‘I’m going to do harm today,’” Gonzalez Van Cleve said. “They want to serve justice, they want to serve their country, they want to protect people. The million-dollar question is how did they become co-opted to do that action and create such harm.”
Watkins-Hayes brought up the importance of looking back in history and relating past events with the imagery we see in the media today.
“I think the examples we’ve recently seen at the border of agents trying to round up Haitian migrants on horseback, and the images being very disturbing, and what that invokes for people with the links to slave patrol of the previous centuries,” Watkins-Hayes said. “That kind of criminalizing and way of surveillance and capturing people has a certain historical valence for people that in the present day add a whole nother level of significance for people when they see it on their tv screens.”
Relating her earlier years to her book “Crook County,” Gonzalez Van Cleve shared that when she was a student observing other prosecutors, she noticed the blatant use of racial slurs and derogatory language towards Black people. She then conducted a study that involved sending law students to courts to observe prosecutors, and observed that white students are often given better treatment than Black students.
“How did this become rationalized?” Gonzalez Van Cleve said. “At the heart of the answer is that you have a segregation between who gets to determine justice and who gets to be held accountable to justice. You have mostly upper-class white people making decisions about the morality of people of color.”
Gonzalez Van Cleve also added that prosecutors often used racial tropes to make case processing more efficient. One of the major racial tropes is the mope trope, which is used in drug cases to describe the defendant as lazy and under-motivated, and therefore not competent enough to be a criminal.
Another racial trope Gonzalez Van Cleve described is the monster trope, which is used in violent crimes where Black men are described as predatory monsters to white women. These tropes are seen as helping to justify the defendant’s actions, but in reality, they are humiliating and detrimental to how Black people are treated in the court, according to Gonzalez Van Cleve.
“Those two tropes became easy handles to justify not just processing cases quickly, but also to justify denying people rights and to abuse the general public,” Gonzalez Van Cleve said.
Relating racial stigma to other social issues, Gonzalez Van Cleve said race is embedded in the media and policy-making through the idea of deserving and undeserving.
“When we start to talk about deserving and undeserving, that’s the signal that you need to start thinking about the racial stigma being associated with those labels,” Gonzalez Van Cleve said.
Daily Staff Reporter Caroline Wang can be reached at wangca@umich.edu .
The post Dr. Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve discusses racial stigma in American courts at Ford School event appeared first on The Michigan Daily .”
| ↑ |
Why I won’t choose between passion and productivityby The Michigan Daily
Jan 01, 2023
“Now and then, I stumble upon a new hobby. I have a track record of dropping commitments soon after I decide I want to pursue them, which usually makes me doubt the next will stick for long. Growing up, I was a ballerina, a tap dancer and a cheerleader. I quit all of them adamant that there were other things that needed my time. These “hobbies” are just distractions , I would tell myself. I was partially right, though. I never truly looked forward to doing these things and I never regretted quitting. This was all until I began writing and playing the ukulele. This time around, I think these hobbies will stick.
I started writing again a few years ago after I finally rebuilt my shattered confidence. All throughout my childhood, adults in my life told me to focus on something other than writing — something I was better at. I willingly listened and searched for a new passion, but in the process, I unwillingly let go of my youthful love for storytelling. In March 2020, I picked up the pen out of boredom and wrote out everything that had been pressing on my mind. I then began writing poems, personal stories, and whatever else came to my mind. Once I fell back into the practice, I couldn’t believe how I had ever stopped. Writing brought me peace of mind at a time in my life when I didn’t know that it was possible to find peace and it continues to provide this for me.
Over the summer, I wrote just for myself. One day, I felt satisfied with what I had written, and when I glanced at the time I realized there was still so much of the day left to fill. I grabbed my phone and did a quick Google search on the easiest instrument to learn. A list of instruments popped up and the first instrument listed was a ukulele. Without a second thought, I opened up Amazon on a new tab and looked up ukuleles. The screen was filled with varieties of the small, four-string instrument. Each one was covered in mahogany wood and had thin white strings that glowed against the wood. I endlessly scrolled, filled with excitement at the possibility of being able to play an instrument. Eventually one in particular caught my eye. The engraved body was meant to honor Hawaiian body ornamentation. Throughout the summer, I taught myself to play with the help of videos on the internet. Once I was confident in my ability to play, I started to sing along with the music I was making. Day would fade into night as I sat in my room learning strumming patterns and chords for new songs.
I reflect back on what I’ve been doing over the past year and I wonder whether or not I’m wasting my time with these hobbies. I think to myself, you’re just writing incomplete thoughts in a Notes app and calling them poems . There’s no one explicitly telling me I’m wasting my time, but a voice in the back of my head tells me that I could be doing something more productive with my time. I could be volunteering, or working or doing homework, but instead, I let my entire day slip away as my pinky reaches for the first string of the ukulele to play an E chord.
I can’t help but wonder if my hobbies would be more productive if I were making money off of them. But I shut this idea down as quickly as it comes to my head. I predict what it would be like to turn a hobby into a side hustle. My incomplete-thought-filled notes app might need more polishing before public approval. My fingers might need to switch chords faster so my mistakes aren’t audible. My mumble-singing might need to sound more powerful and confident.
Once I start to think about making my hobbies more “useful,” I find myself more fearful and apprehensive to pursue them. We live in an era of productivity. Our society tells us from an early age that perfection is something that we should strive for, and if we can’t reach it, we should choose something more attainable. I’m slowly coming to realize that it’s okay to shift away from this cut-throat mentality. In the midst of modern-day hustle, it’s more than okay to change pace by doing something you enjoy just because you enjoy it. It’s easy to slip into the idea that hobbies aren’t productive if you’re not getting assessed on how well you’re doing; but if you’re doing something that makes you happy, it will always be worth doing, regardless of whether or not it meets societal hustle standards.
MiC Columnist Meghan Dodaballapur can be reached at mdodab@umich.edu .
The post Why I won’t choose between passion and productivity appeared first on The Michigan Daily .”
| ↑ |
More than weeks, months and yearsby The Michigan Daily
Jan 01, 2023
“My parents always described heaven as a place where you lose track of time. It’s a paradise so blissful that the days meld into one another. My mom explained there’s no use for the date when all your worries dissipate. She said time ceases to exist when you are at peace. It was a big concept for an 8-year-old to digest, but I think about it from time to time now. I specifically remember it during moments where I forget the days: hot, busy weeks in August, mindless hours spent with good company or lazy mornings where there are no alarms to wake up to. To me, those become heavenly moments.
Unfortunately, time has been the only thing I’ve been thinking of lately. There always seems to be an upcoming deadline, or something I thought was due a week later that was suddenly due at 11:59 p.m. There hasn’t been a blank square on my calendar for a while now and the items on my to-do list are never fully crossed off. I count how many hours of sleep I would get if slept at this exact minute. My frames of time have been reduced to just today and tomorrow. The only other marker of time I have is how fast the pile of dirty clothes and empty water bottles grows. From Google Calendars to Excel sheets, I am constantly running through my daily schedules, but even then, I forget a thing or two that can’t fit in the short 24 hours of the day. Time is always moving quickly, and it moves even faster when there’s so much to do. It moves fast enough that I am already warped into the very next thing, not even taking a moment to think about yesterday.
The other day, however, it hit me that I turned 19 a bit over a month ago. Nineteen . I hadn’t even registered that I was 19 until I noticed my outdated Twitter bio. The memory of my birthday feels so far away. The hard-hitting realization that my teenage years will be over in a few months was another reminder of how time is slipping right through my fingers.
As I changed the bio to “9teen,” I thought about how it’s too easy to summarize all the memories, people and stories I’ve lived through into a single measure of time. It’s not just 19 years. It’s a number of people who have walked in and out of my life, all of whom I miss and others who taught me hard truths. It’s all the missed connections, unsaid words and things I’ve learned to let go of. It’s also the time elapsed between once dreaming something to now seeing it to full fruition. All the sly smiles and sleepless nights are only a fraction of all the seconds I’ve lived so far. All those seconds that might’ve felt critical at the moment seem so minuscule now: the dates don’t matter so much anymore. Looking back for a moment, I saw how the 19 years melded together to make a string of miles traveled, humid summer nights and lots of Drake rather than 603,055,860 individual seconds.
With midterms right around the corner, I found myself switching tabs from Twitter to the next Canvas assignment. In the moment, it is easy to lose myself in a world of due dates highlighted in yellow. I realize time will continue to be on my mind until it is past me. So I find comfort in knowing I will probably be changing my Twitter bio once again next year and look back at the past fondly. For now, I’ll have to enjoy the short moments where I forget about time, like cheering at Saturday football games, showering after a long night out or convincing myself I will wake up after “resting my eyes for a few minutes.” While my mom could be right about forgetting about the hands on the clock when living at peace, I’ve learned that time doesn’t equate to the exact weeks, months or even years when you begin to reminisce. When you look from afar, all the minor stressors and deadlines become so small and life itself begins to look a lot more heavenlike. And rather than measuring life in time, I start to pick out the memorable moments and feelings throughout it all. I’ve realized you don’t need to lose track of time to have or even enjoy heaven-like moments because they’ll always be there, whether you see it right now or not. The key is just to recognize those moments at one point or another, regardless of time.
MiC Columnist Zafirah Rahman can be reached at zafirah@umich.edu.
The post More than weeks, months and years appeared first on The Michigan Daily .”
| ↑ |
You should stop listening to GaryVeeby The Michigan Daily
Jan 01, 2023
“In 1978, Gary Vaynerchuck migrated from Belarus to a studio apartment in Queens. Soon after, the 7-year-old “ entrepreneur at heart ” opened a lemonade stand before moving on to make thousands of dollars selling baseball cards.
Now, Vaynerchuck is the chairman of VaynerX, a communications company that parents several media-based properties. Most notably, he’s a social media mogul in the startup space, where he’s known as “GaryVee”: you might’ve seen a video of Vaynerchuck on your LinkedIn feed dissecting the lucrative NFT market or a clip on Instagram of him divulging the secrets of starting a business. In fact, if you haven’t heard of him or his buzzword-infested rhetoric, I envy you. Vaynerchuck hosts a Q&A show , a daily video diary , a podcast and even owns a signature sneaker — and this doesn’t include the full schedule of events he books. For someone who rejects the label of motivational speaker — claiming he doesn’t want to be anyone’s Tony Robbins — Vaynerchuck acts the part exceptionally well.
Vaynerchuck preaches the “hustle,” a broad philosophy on work that encourages a gutsy expression of free will, chronic productivity and a self-starting mindset. Hustle culture oversees the startup phenomenon that draws young, steadfast pre-entrepreneurs to the Silicon Valley area code, each with an idea that will make them the next Mark Zuckerberg. It rings of meritocracy with more festive catchphrases — “the grind doesn’t stop,” “work smarter not harder” and anything else you would expect to hear from a business major powered by Ritalin.
However, it’s all pretty disingenuous because Vaynerchuck already succeeded — he gets to look back at his journey and tell people how it happened, and how they can do the same. In a piece he wrote for Medium, “ The Day I Decided to Become GaryVee ,” Vaynerchuck credits brute force for his success. He writes, “So you know why I’m sitting here right now? At the top of one of the fastest growing creative agencies of all time … At a 150M dollar annual revenue business? At a company that has ambitions to become worth billions and billions of dollars? Not because I got lucky but because I outworked you. I went for it. Think about it. I outworked you.”
Okay, Gary. You did outwork me. Unfortunately, I don’t plan my days down to the minute , depriving myself of any and all moments of relief, no matter how infinitesimal. I don’t book meetings from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. just to wake up at 5 a.m. the next morning and do it all over again. If Vaynerchuck is setting a standard for a lifestyle that guarantees success, it’s physically impossible to accomplish doing anything less than a 19-hour work day. In Vaynerchuck’s school of thought, that’s why I’m unsuccessful.
Vaynerchuck is an excellent orator, addressing his audience with the tone of a mean high school coach — a little hostile, yet claims what he’s saying is in everyone’s best interest. His sentences are short; they hit you like slam poetry. Each carries tangible passion, sprinkled with expletives and vocal inflections. In this way, Vaynerchuck is an evangelist, and productivity adopts a spiritual quality. If you are listening to or watching Vaynerchuck, you must feel inadequate — he addresses the plebian, the chronic wannabe, and tells them that their problems don’t matter, that they should simply choose optimism. Socioeconomic status, gender, race, sexual orientation — these things aren’t barriers to success.
The single mother who relies on child support to feed her children, the ambitious kid plagued by generations of poverty, the ex-con who is denied employment from McDonald’s: These people just aren’t working hard enough. Because to Vaynerchuck, circumstances that are out of one’s control might not stop them from trying to do the impossible. To Vaynerchuck, you are the driving force, not the woes of capitalism or the social binaries that alienate marginalized communities, or the company you inherited from your parents in order to bypass the latter.
But Vaynerchuck is not a normal person — regular people don’t say things like “ I’d rip both my legs off, and arms, to be 25 years old ” or “ I would suffocate and die if I worked 9:00–5:00. I wouldn’t be happy. I want to work. ” The average GaryVee listener might try to be just like him, because that’s what he’s telling them to do. What if the average GaryVee listener or average worker in general does not derive happiness from workaholism? Turning something you don’t enjoy into a lifestyle, especially when that lifestyle requires an 80-hour work week, almost guarantees burnout. Go and live like Vaynerchuck for a week, and try to come back with a brain that hasn’t been reduced to gray sludge.
I can understand why hustle culture is so seductive — it evokes our survivalist nature: work harder than everyone else and you will reach the top. The strongest deserve to triumph and the weak eat their dust. Hard work, excessive work, makes you a valuable member of society.
But American work culture is already riddled with toxicity — 83% of American workers report stress and burnout negatively impacting their personal relationships, and 91% report a reduced work performance due to these same factors. Absolute commitment to productivity requires sacrifices in other aspects of life, including mental health. There is no getting around the fact that well-being and success at work are not mutually exclusive.
With Vaynerchuck as the high priest of workplace productivity, what happens if everyone who listens to him actually puts his advice into practice? Will these people ever figure out that brute force alone can’t make you a millionaire? To me, the Gary Vaynerchuck story creates a sort of paradox: He must attribute his success to something in order to market himself as a motivational speaker, but that something isn’t going to work for everyone. It isn’t going to work for most people. Corporate America doesn’t want you in the club unless you’re already a part of it. The grindstone of capitalism is not meant to be an accessible venue; it’s evil and devoid of empathy, it pulverizes the disenfranchised and garnishes the CEOs and GaryVees with more money. What we’re looking at, in the long term, is a generation of people who completely run out of gas before they turn 25, chasing the 1% chance of breaking through. That’s why his popularity feels like a bad omen.
In a perfect world, America runs on the 4 day week — we’d be more productive, less stressed, and wouldn’t have to take a cold shower at the crack of dawn just to wake ourselves up. And we certainly wouldn’t have to listen to GaryVee to be successful.
Daily Arts Writer Laine Brotherton can be reached at laineb@umich.edu .
The post You should stop listening to GaryVee appeared first on The Michigan Daily .”
| ↑ |
Sudhanshu Kaushik speaks to UMich Indian American Student Associationby The Michigan Daily
Jan 01, 2023
“In partnership with the North American Association of Indian Students , the Trotter Multicultural Center hosted an in-person event on Tuesday night with Indian activist Sudhanshu Kaushik as the guest speaker and about 100 people in attendance. The Indian video streaming service ZEE5 sponsored the event, which featured Bollywood music and film.
Kaushik is the executive director of NAAIS, a nonprofit organization aiming to uplift the social and economic well-being of Indian international students and Indian Americans residing in the United States.
Kaushik said NAAIS partnered with ZEE5 to tour college campuses across the United States and network with Indian students. He said networking with this group is important given that Indians make up the second largest minority group of international students on college campuses.
“Our goal is to ensure that we can educate and raise awareness about young Indians across the United States,” Kaushik said. “The biggest thing is that there’s a channel for creating communication and sharing stories.”
Kaushik said he believes it is important to understand how every Indian student’s university experience is different, specifically highlighting the perspectives of Indian international students, Indian graduate students and Indian-American students. Kaushik also said there needs to be more awareness of the recent rise in hate crimes against Indians.
“The scale at which (Indians) are at (universities) makes them more accessible to becoming targets and victims of hate crimes,” Kaushik said. “Going beyond that, there’s just so much fragmentation, and there’s not a cohesive unit. We’re trying to create awareness of them and connect them with their city with their local regional governance, state and federal level.”
Additionally, Kaushik discussed how COVID-19 restrictions on international travel were a stressor for many international Indian students, some of whom lost their homes on campus as a result.
“What COVID did was it showcased that there’s a disconnect — a disconnect between Indian students, and a disconnect between them and the administration,” Kaushik said. “Whether it’s the university, or whether it’s the city, state, or our national level. This organization was started in 2020, but the history of Indian students in America is substantially old and significant.”
Rackham student Shaunak Puri, one of the presidents of University of Michigan’s Indian American Student Association , said in an interview with The Michigan Daily he hopes people get more involved with the university and national community of South Asians. He said IASA aims to work on building those connections nationally.
“I think something that I have learned over the last couple of weeks, is that we as IASA, are this connection point to a much broader network of Indian organizations across the country in the Michigan area,” Puri said. “I think that what I would want our members to gain is that sense of being part of something bigger that this (event) sort of opens the door to.”
LSA senior Jhanvi Garg, IASA’s other president, echoed the hope for more IASA club members at the University to get more involved in issues that pertain to Indians in the United States.
“I think that this was a great event to highlight the power that Indian voices have,” Garg said. “I think a lot of times we get shoehorned into the minority mindset of ‘we’re just Indian, we can’t really make that much of an impact.’ I think it’s a great message to our members — and the Indian youth nationally — that you really can get involved in politics and policy if you want to and they definitely should exercise their rights.”
Business senior Delna Sholapurwalla, board member of IASA, said in an interview with The Daily IASA considered the shift between virtual and in-person during the pandemic to help create engaging events for IASA members.
“Last year, everything was over Zoom, so we really did our best to get membership engaged and tried to put on some high quality events,” Sholapurwalla said. “This year, it’s a lot more (of) trying to get people pumped (to be) in-person … and we’ve definitely noticed high engagements.”
LSA sophomore Nidhee Reddy, a member of IASA, said she joined IASA and attended this event to get more involved with the University’s community of Indian students.
“I’ve always wanted to keep the sense of (community) that I had back home, (so) I think it’s really important to stay connected with your culture,” Reddy said.
During his speech, Kaushik said he believes that while the perspectives of Indian students are often underrepresented, their stories and experiences are still important and worth telling.
“We’re trying to organize and effectively (channel) this huge energy of potential that we have with Indian Americans towards creating a larger, more significant community for them, but history matters,” Kaushik said. “I want you to know that your history matters … it’s the fact that you represent something more significant, something more larger that isn’t talked about, that isn’t spoken about overall for the South Asian community, but specifically for the Indians as well.”
Daily Staff Reporter Nirali Patel can be reached at nirpat@umich.edu.
The post Sudhanshu Kaushik speaks to UMich Indian American Student Association appeared first on The Michigan Daily .”
| ↑ |
These are the things we do for loveby The Michigan Daily
Jan 01, 2023
“When I measure the distance from my apartment to his, it’s 66 miles. It’s an hour and five-minute drive for him, sometimes even more dependent on traffic. For me, it’s a bus ride to the Blake Transit Center, getting on the Michigan Flyer for an hour and a half, and then driving to his apartment. No matter the distance between the two of us, these are the things we do for love.
I met my boyfriend online in December of freshman year. We met on Bumble (yes, a dating app). The beginning of our relationship was very exciting. I was at home in New York City and he was at home in East Lansing, so our “talking stage” was completely virtual, sharing memes and text messages. I remember texting him about my family, sharing our Christmas tradition of only eating pepper pot and bread on Christmas morning and him sharing his stepmother’s tradition of making Yorkshire pudding for Christmas Eve dinner. We would exchange pictures of our locations in time, me sending him pictures of art from the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan and him sharing pictures of his cat Kiwi curled up on the beige cat house at his dad’s house. I was attentive to his text messages, taking in every sentence telling me about his family, cats and friends each day because that was the only form of communication we had. After a month of only communicating virtually, I was squealing with joy at the thought of meeting him in person. By the time we met in person that January, I felt as if I already knew him for ages. Sadly, we would only see each other on weekends, because while I was a first-year student in Ann Arbor, he was a junior at Michigan State University in East Lansing.
Saturday mornings during my freshman year were a race against time. Being in a (somewhat) long-distance relationship makes time spent together very sacred. Every second, minute and hour spent with him brought me peace at the end of my hectic school week. Therefore, I was always trying to find the fastest way back to my dorm from work in order to get on the earliest bus to see him. During my walks back to the dorm on Saturday mornings, I would carefully break down my entire afternoon, assigning a task to each minute to ensure I caught the bus on time. “Shower at 1:00, makeup at 2:00, hair at 2:30, be out the door by 3:30” repeated in my head like a broken record to make sure I never missed a beat. For me, time with him was precious, something I could not afford to lose.
This race against time and me came to a finish when the pandemic hit. After dating for only three months, we took a leap of faith and decided to move in together. Before moving in, I was nervous because we only knew each other for such a short amount of time, but were about to take a huge step forward in our relationship. “Are you sure you want to do this?” I’d ask him at least once a week. “I mean, if this is going to work, it’s better to find out now instead of later,” he would tell me.
Living together had its own challenges: who was cooking dinner, who was cleaning the bathroom and who was taking out the trash were always debatable questions. As time went on, I slowly caught myself frying my onion and garlic and making curry for us. Eventually, I turned the stove on every other night. On the weekends, the scent of fresh laundry detergent would intoxicate my nose when I started the washing machine. Slowly, but surely, I was fulfilling the stereotypical duties of a housewife.
He began to embody the role of a man of the house, spending all day at work and returning home only to answer more phone calls and finish projects. I spent the day making the bed, cleaning the room, making each meal and running the dishwasher. When sharing the dynamics of our relationship, my friends would roll their eyes and say, “He needs to pitch in more, you can’t be the only one doing everything.” At first, I did not have a problem with the role I embodied, but hearing their words made me notice just how much I was contributing to household chores. Eventually, I felt resentment build up inside of me.
I remember calling my mom one day and expressing my frustration, telling her he “leaves his things all over the apartment” and “takes advantage of the things I do for him.” As an Indo-Caribbean woman, I grew up watching my mother do these same “chores” for my father while he was at work. She would make him chai in the morning, clean the house and make him fried okra and roti for dinner. When I asked her if she ever got tired of doing this for my dad, she would always say no and tell me she understood how hard my dad worked during the day. She used to say something that I never really understood: “These are the things we do for love.” She was quick to remind me that my significant other was working 14 hours a day for us and that when we weren’t living together he was constantly calling me, reassuring me whenever I had doubts in school and driving to Ann Arbor to spend the little hours of free time he did have with me. She expressed that it is not about who does more laundry or dishes or who makes dinner in the relationship, but about how we spend time together at the end of the day. Her perspective shocked me because I always assumed that as a stay-at-home mom, she was tired of taking care of the house for my dad and us as children. However, she said she was always willing to do these things if it meant that she and my dad could sit together for dinner at the end of the day and simply have a conversation.
Looking back at this internal conflict I had with myself, I now understand what my mother was saying when she said, “These are the things we do for love.” It is not about who does more for the other person in relationships, but the things we do for one another that makes our days easier. Now that school is back in person, my partner and I have returned to short-lived weekends and homes 66 miles from one another. On Fridays after class, like freshman year, I find myself rushing home to take a shower at 1:00, finish my makeup by 2:00, and have my hair done by 2:30 to be out of the door at 3:30. During our time living together, I used to think I was contributing more to the relationship by taking care of the chores in our home. However, I think of the hour and five-minute drives he used to take to come see me, the 14-hour days he would work to support us and the sleep he would sacrifice. Somewhere in the midst of it all, I have learned that it’s not about how far you travel, but where you meet each other in the middle.
MiC Columnist Anchal Malh can be reached at anchalm@umich.edu .
The post These are the things we do for love appeared first on The Michigan Daily .”
| ↑ |
Some parents call on AAPS to mandate COVID-19 vaccination for employeesby The Michigan Daily
Jan 01, 2023
“Parents of Ann Arbor Public Schools are calling on school leaders to mandate COVID-19 vaccination for its employees. AAPS was among the first districts in Michigan to require unvaccinated employees to submit to weekly testing in July.
AAPS parent Danielle Stockton said she believes weekly testing for unvaccinated employees is not enough to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and thinks AAPS should begin requiring its employees to get vaccinated to continue working in the school system.
“If anything should remain open, besides businesses and everything else, it should be schools for children for in-person learning, for those who need it,” Stockton said. “Especially special education and special needs where at-home learning is not feasible.”
The vaccinate-or-test model is consistent with the Biden administration’s recent vaccine mandate . However, some AAPS parents like Stockton say this does not go far enough.
In a Sept. 13 email obtained by The Michigan Daily, AAPS Superintendent Jeanice Swift told an AAPS parent that the district is increasing its support for vaccine uptake among its current and new staff, but no staff vaccine mandate has been put in place.
“Following the recent FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine and the President’s subsequent call for vaccines last Thursday evening, (AAPS is) continuing to increase our support to compel continuing and new team members arriving in our system during back-to-school hiring season to ensure they are fully vaccinated,” Swift wrote. “At this time we have achieved extremely high rates of vaccination among our AAPS school staff.”
Currently, the district has seen 56 total COVID-19 cases across the school system since the fall semester began on Aug. 27. However, cases have trended upwards in recent weeks, with 23 cases reported for the week of Sep. 24, the highest case count for any week since the semester started. Officials at Dicken Elementary announced this past week that one classroom would switch to remote learning following two positive cases.
Stockton pointed to the upward trend as a reason to pursue staff vaccinations more aggressively — especially in elementary schools where some students are ineligible to be vaccinated, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently recommends only children 12 years and up to get the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. On Tuesday, Pfizer Inc. submitted initial trial data for vaccinating 5-11 year olds and will submit a request for emergency use in the coming weeks, though approval could be stalled until Halloween to Thanksgiving.
“If cases are on the rise within schools, this is a perfect example of (asking), ‘OK, what can we do to not let this happen to other elementary schools and some middle schools?’” Stockton said. “Obviously, (the elementary and middle schools) are probably more of the hot spots than the high schools, just because of the availability of the vaccine for older kids.”
AAPS does not publish vaccination data from its employees, citing HIPAA protections. District officials did not immediately reply to a Michigan Daily request for comment.
In an email to Kate Sweeney, an Ann Arbor resident and Stockton’s mother, whose grandchild is enrolled in the AAPS district, Swift defended the district’s existing policy, saying it is among the most stringent in the state. Sweeney said she believed vaccines are the most effective way to protect the AAPS community and was frustrated by the district’s decision to implement the vaccinate-or-test model.
“It’s an elementary concept, mandatory vaccines,” Sweeney said. “I just feel like (AAPS) should be taking the leadership role.”
Sweeney said it is important for school employees to be vaccinated so kids who rely on their schools for support can continue attending in person.
“These kids have been through a lot with virtual school (with) the experience of learning over the past year,” Sweeney said. “I think the staff was doing the best that they could, but it still was not replacing the experience of face-to-face learning. And it’s pretty important when you see changes in kids now being back and how important that is for their learning and social development.”
Daily Staff Reporters Dominic Coletti and Vanessa Kiefer can be reached at dcoletti@umich.edu and vkiefer@umich.edu .
The post Some parents call on AAPS to mandate COVID-19 vaccination for employees appeared first on The Michigan Daily .”
- #1 Top English School Ranking in Michigan
- #1 Top Kinesiology School Ranking in Michigan
- #1 Top Economics School Ranking in Michigan
- #1 Top Math School Ranking in Michigan
- #1 Top Philosophy School Ranking in Michigan
- #1 Top Sociology School Ranking in Michigan
- #1 Top Kinesiology School Ranking in the Great Lakes
- #2 Top Physics School Ranking in Michigan
- #2 Top Archaeology
- #2 Top Mechanical Engineering School Ranking in Michigan
- #2 Top Political Science School Ranking in the Great Lakes
- #2 Top Political Science School Ranking in Michigan
- #2 Top Civil Engineering School Ranking in Michigan
- #3 Top Kinesiology
- #3 Top Computer Science School Ranking in Michigan
- #3 Top Anthropology School Ranking in Michigan
Rankings UMich appears in
Similar Colleges by Education Quality
StudentsReview Advice!
• What is a good school?• Statistical Significance
• How to choose a Major
• How to choose your Career
• What you make of it?
• How Ivy League Admissions works
• On the Student/Faculty Ratio
• FAFSA: Who is a Parent?
• FAFSA: Parent Contribution
• FAFSA: Dream out of reach
• College Financial Planning
• Survive College and Graduate
• Sniffing Out Commuter Schools
• Preparing for College: A HS Roadmap
• Talking to Your Parents about College.
• Is a top college worth it?
• Why is college hard?
• Why Kids Aren't Happy in Traditional Schools
• Essential College Tips
Ah, college. Considered by many to be the time of a young person's lif... more→
• Cost of College Increasing Faster Than Inflation• For parents filling out the FAFSA and PROFILE (from a veteran paper slinger)Just so you know, filling out these forms is a lot more than penciling... more→
• How to choose the right college?My name is Esteban Correa. I am currently a second year INTERNATIONAL ... more→
• Create The Right Career Habits NowGetting ahead in your career can be easier if you make the choice to b... more→
• Senior Year (Tips and experience)
It's the end of junior year and everyone is anticipating the arrival o... more→
• Informational Overload! What Should I Look For in a College or University?We are in an instant information age, where you can find almost anythi... more→
• Personality Type and College ChoicePersonality type is something very important to consider when deciding... more→
• A Free Application is a Good Application As a senior finishing her scholastic year, I feel that it is my duty ... more→
• College Academic Survival Guide
The leap from high school to college academics is not an insignificant... more→
• Getting Involved: The Key to College HappinessAs a tour guide, the absolute, most frequently asked question I got wa... more→
• Choose a Path, Not a MajorUnless you're one of the fortunate souls who's already found their cal... more→
• The Scoop on State SchoolsA recent college graduate, I vividly remember touring campuses as a
p... more→
• The Purpose of a Higher Education
You are one of the millions of people this year applying for admission... more→
• The Importance of Choosing the Right College Major (2012)One of the most important academic choices you'll make while in colleg... more→
• How to choose a college majorI was not sure what college major to choose. When you are in your late... more→
• How to guarantee your acceptance to many collegesAre your grades are not what you think they should be from high school... more→
• Nailing the College Application Process
College applications seem to always be put on top of students procrast... more→
• What to do for a Successful InterviewInterviews seem to become more commonplace in every facet of life as o... more→
• I Don't Know Where to Start (General College Advice)Preparing for college is a difficult time for every student and it?s o... more→
• Attitude and Dress Code for an Interview (General College Advice) An interview is something we all have to go through when we get a job... more→
• Starting College (General College Advice)
College is a huge milestone in your life. You?ve seen the castle like ... more→
• Boston Apartment lease: Watch out!Are you a student and about to sign the very first lease in your li... more→
When thinking about their choices for colleges, many students and pare... more→
by The Michigan Daily
Jan 01, 2023
“The University of Michigan Central Student Government convened Tuesday night to discuss the status of the Ann Arbor City Council legal battle regarding early leasing ordinances. The Assembly also passed a resolution endorsing a faculty motion on the University’s sexual misconduct policy for the Oct. 4 Senate Assembly meeting.
The meeting began with a resolution titled “Continued Support for the Early Leasing Ordinance,” which condemns landlords who have signed onto a recent lawsuit against the City of Ann Arbor and asks them to be removed from the off-campus housing website Beyond the Diag .
City Council passed changes to the Early Leasing Ordinance earlier this summer, requiring landlords to wait at least 150 days instead of the previous 70 days before beginning to show properties to new prospective tenants. The Washtenaw Area Apartment Association, a non-profit organization representing rental property owners, filed a lawsuit against the city Sept. 10 in an attempt to overturn the changes.
CSG Vice President Carla Voigt, an Engineering junior, began discussion around the resolution by highlighting the previous work CSG did in collaboration with the Graduate Employees’ Organization and LSA Student Government in support of the changes to the Early Leasing Ordinance.
“A group of Ann Arbor landlords and leasing companies have banded together to sue the city for this,” Voigt said. “And essentially this resolution is continuing our support and is talking about the lawsuit and says that these companies should be removed from the ‘Beyond the Diag’ website.”
Voigt said the resolution asks for the University to include the leasing company or landlord on Beyond the Diag and to add a rating service to the website. Additionally, the resolution requests that any leasing companies which signed onto the lawsuit against the city be removed from Beyond the Diag.
LSA senior Elena Swirczek said she was concerned removing the companies from Beyond the Diag could impair the clarity of the website.
“While I appreciate the sentiment of (removing companies), I am worried that that could possibly just create less transparency and students won’t know what is going on,” Swirczek said. “Especially those that aren’t particularly well-versed in the internal politics of Ann Arbor.”
Voigt then reiterated that she wanted the Assembly to advocate for this resolution and addressed the safety concerns of students using companies which have been removed from the website. She said they plan to talk to the director of Beyond the Diag about implementing these changes.
“I feel like (the rental companies) should not be supported by the University while they’re being predatory,” Voigt said.
The resolution was referred back to the Communications and Resolutions Committees for further discussion on supporting advocacy in diminishing housing inequity in Ann Arbor.
At the meeting, the Assembly also approved a resolution to support a motion on making changes to the University’s sexual misconduct policy being brought forth by faculty during a Senate Assembly meeting this upcoming Monday.
The motion asks the University to adopt recommendations from the investigation into former provost Martin Philbert, who was removed from his role after multiple allegations of sexual misconduct.
When a search committee of a faculty or staff member is required, the recommendations ask the University to obtain written certification from committee members saying that all known information about the case has been disclosed and to document decisions on disciplinary action. The recommendations also ask the Equity, Civil Rights and Title IX Office to reference any reports on prior allegations while investigating allegations against an individual.
The motion also requests that the University form a committee made up of sexual misconduct survivors by Philbert as well as Robert Anderson , a former athletic doctor who has been alleged to have sexually abused hundreds between the 1960s and early 2000s; Walter Lasecki , who resigned in August due to sexual misconduct allegations; and Bruce Conforth , who also had several sexual misconduct allegations arise against him. This committee would create an additional set of policies to present to the Board of Regents.
LSA sophomore Karthik Pasupula, who is sponsoring the resolution, said a student approached him about bringing this resolution to the Assembly.
“(The student was) pursuing a faculty motion to propose recommendations to the changes and sexual misconduct policies that the University recently made,” Pasupula said. “(This is) because (the University wasn’t) centering on the right priorities, and they weren’t operating in the proper way.”
Pasupula said though he feels CSG should endorse the motion, they should not be the main organization advocating for the changes.
“I just don’t want CSG to be the main driver behind it,” Pasupula said. “We should be in a stance where we’re supporting it, not where we are the main pushers.”
On this issue, Swirczek said she felt it was CSG’s responsibility to both endorse and encourage the resolution.
“To me, (passing this resolution) seems like we’re making it clear to people in the administration that we are endorsing (the motion) and it is something that we care about,” Swirczek said.
Despite conflicting opinions, the Assembly passed this resolution. Daily Staff Reporter Brooke Halak can be reached at bhalak@umich.edu .
The post CSG debates Assembly’s impact in supporting Ann Arbor’s early leasing ordinances and changes to UMich sexual misconduct policies appeared first on The Michigan Daily .”