A Blog on McConnell Center Life

By Abigail Cheek   This semester I spent a month in an intensive outpatient psychiatric treatment program. It was there that I met another patient named Salma. She speaks little English so I communicated with her via a translator. Despite the language barrier and substantial age difference, we became friends quickly. As I listened to her speak about her past I became grateful for the opportunity to get to know someone so strong and resilient in the face of great adversity. Salma and I both came to the program to heal from trauma, although we were both recovering from very different types of trauma, we shared the common goal of taking back the power we felt we had lost. Healing from trauma is a complex process. Trauma generates intense emotions that need to be processed, otherwise these negative feelings become bound to us, unconsciously affecting our lives. One of the most effective ways to heal is to tell the people who hurt you what they have done to you. But who do you tell...

By Thomas Hulse   I could not in good conscience have a post which doesn’t quote some scientist from centuries past. So let me begin with it instead of beating around the bush towards it: Isaac Newton once said “If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.” Now, he is perhaps the largest giant of them all, yet he was still humbled all his life by that work which preceded him and allowed him to be a genius. Today, we Americans experience comfortable lives of comparative luxury free of strife. I by no means intimate that we are, or even, ought to be free of struggle—for struggle only urges us to be a better nation—nor that we all live in the same degree of comfortability. We all know the fights that are being fought in our country—ones which are good and purposeful and others which are misguided. And we all know the disheartening disparities between our best off and our most unfortunate—disparities to the point of obscenity. Still, when these issues and pov...

By  Julia Blackburn   Navigating college is difficult to say the least. The transition from the familiarity of home and childhood friends to a big world full of new responsibilities, freedoms, and people is a daunting experience alone. Not to mention mastering rigorous course content, balancing finances, and juggling school and work schedules can pose as rather hefty stressors. As if things could possibly be more chaotic, the world was just recently launched into a global pandemic. With the onslaught of the Coronavirus, college students worldwide have been met with even more challenges that have impacted their mental and physical health, academics, employment, and relationships. Yes, the pandemic has proved to be challenging, frustrating, terrifying, and even exhausting. However, despite these troubling times, things aren’t as necessarily bleak as they seem. As crazy as it sounds, the pandemic, in some way or another, has proved to be what some may agree to be a blessing in d...

By Claire Harmon  When I was in the third grade, my brother was diagnosed with ADHD. As an eight-year-old, I didn’t know anything about his disorder or what it meant, but it became clear to me as we grew up that his thought patterns and processes were different from mine. I didn’t know anyone else with ADHD, and I had never seen anyone on television or in books who shared that condition. I knew the same was true for my parents who didn’t understand how to help him with his homework or make friends at school because they had no frame of reference for what he was dealing with. We couldn’t figure out why he had trouble keeping a planner or staying on task, and even with medication, he struggled in school and socially.  Over time, though, I met more and more people with ADHD and other cognitive differences, and through those connections, I learned more about my brother’s diagnosis. I have been lucky to know people with a range of diverse neurological conditions such as Down syndro...

 By Austin Dillon    Justice Antonin Scalia was perhaps one of the most influential contemporary originalist/textualist thinkers to sit on the Supreme Court bench.  Justice Scalia often chose between two interpretive canons when making his judicial decisions, and that dichotomy led many of his critics to call him inconsistent . One aspect about Justice Scalia’s philosophy that was consistent, however, was that he did not believe that the meaning of the Constitution evolved with contemporary politics - he was not a “living constitutionalist.” Many claim that this means Justice Scalia believed the Constitution to be fundamentally “lifeless” so as to protect a certain bedrock of rights. I think that Justice Scalia would likely disagree with the “lifeless” characterization, arguing for the vitality of originalism by using the common law tradition. I will support this claim by first describing Justice Scalia’s originalism/textualism, then analyzing his prior remarks about...

 By Noah Tillery   I spend a lot of my free time telling stories. Often, they are short and simple, and take place in a made-up world with made-up people facing humanly impossible challenges. Other times they are long and complex, trying their best to tackle issues that are important to me and that I have lived through. I’ve never made a dime from my stories, and probably never will. And that is completely fine with me. When people learn that I enjoy creative writing, they are always interested, but generally for the wrong reasons. They don’t ask about the stories or characters, or the process of detailing a plot and organizing scenes. The go-to question is something like, “So, are you published? No? Well, when do you want to be published?” It’s frustrating to have my hobby—one that has played a significant role in my life—equated to a money-making scheme. It’s frustrating, but I understand. If not to make money, why else would someone spend hours in front of a computer screen...

 By Sydney Finley   I Look at the World​ by Langston Hughes  I look at the world  From awakening eyes in a black face—  And this is what I see:  This fenced-off narrow space  Assigned to me.  I look then at the silly walls  Through dark eyes in a dark face—  And this is what I know:  That all these walls oppression builds  Will have to go!  I look at my own body  With eyes no longer blind—  And I see that my own hands can make  The world that's in my mind.  Then let us hurry, comrades,  The road to find.  As my perspective on life and living has evolved, I have grown into a stronger, more thoughtful, and more determined version of myself. Things are constantly changing: I am continually barraged with conflicting opinions and perspectives and questions that I don’t know the answer to. People, opportunities, and experiences come and go. It is painstakingly difficult to decipher the purpose and m...

By Allison Boarman My fall blog from 2019 started off with explaining how self-care had grown in popularity on social media. Clearly, if I thought it had grown in popularity then, I really didn’t have any insight into my future.  I figured I’d give a little bit of an update on how my view of self-care has changed since, or how it’s stayed the same, throughout 2020: “ Take your vitamins .” Yeah…I wasn’t good at this one, even after I wrote it last year and told all of you to take your vitamins. I am now, though. I even set an alarm for them every night. It’s a good practice to have at any time, but for any of you that still aren’t taking your vitamins, I’d really recommend you all start.  “ Cry when you need to. ” YES. In fact, I can tell you all that I definitely cried within the last week. It’s not something to be ashamed of. Don’t let your stress and emotions build without releasing them through a good cry…it’s not as healthy! “ Surround yourself with incredible people. ” ...

By Jakob Sherrard This past summer, my grandfather and I undertook a joint-mission: a bingeing of the legendary Godfather trilogy. After having knee surgery just two weeks before, it was exactly what I needed: to be out of my home and away from my immediate family, with whom I was marooned with during my post-surgery recovery. What better an opportunity for escape than watching classic films that I had not yet seen? As we began our cinematic odyssey, I realized something about what the experience meant for my grandfather. It was clear that to him, these films were vital to understanding the culture during which he was a young adult. It took the first scene of the Godfather for me to realize this. During the classic wedding scene, my grandfather spoke about the film in a way where you could just tell from the inflections in his voice that these movies meant something to him. Not only did the films themselves mean something to him, but I could tell that spreading this cultural experie...

By Tanner Morrow One of the more peculiar moments of the already bizarre 2020 Democratic presidential primary was when, in the first debate, upon being asked what her first call as President would be; then-candidate, spiritualist, author, and F.O.O. (Friend of Oprah) Marianne Williamson proclaimed:     "My first call is to the prime minister of New Zealand, who said that her goal is to make New Zealand the place where it’s the best place in the world for a child to grow up, I would tell her,   'Girlfriend, you are so on,' because the United States of America   is going to be the best place in the world for a child to grow up." While strange and out of place in a party primary debate, Williamson connecting herself with New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern (affectionately known as simply Jacinda) helps to emphasize another issue entirely from the one Williamson sought to highlight. Jacinda, it turns out, was going to be running in her own 2020 election. But whil...