A Blog on McConnell Center Life

 By Eli Graft    Every single person has been impacted by COVID-19 in some way. Now, I know what you may be thinking after reading that first sentence. You are about to read yet another person’s take on the disease that has dominated the attention of nearly every aspect of this past year. However, I only want to share my experience as a college student during this time. Having COVID-19 is stressful, anxiety-inducing, and downright scary. Many of my peers both in college at UofL and back home in Northern Kentucky had managed to avoid the ominous disease as the worst part of the pandemic raged across the world. February through August, I had yet to see coronavirus truly impact the student population. Nonetheless, I was isolated for this period of time. I would gather bits and pieces of news as we learned more and more about how the virus worked and I would regularly watch the White House briefings updating the nation on the situation. It was pretty early on that scientists ...

 By Isabella Martin   My favorite word is “resilience”. First and foremost, I am a biracial woman of Filipino and Scotch-Irish descent that grew up in a small town in Appalachian Kentucky. I have always heard, “Isabella, you’re so quirky” or “Isabella, you’re different.” This was not about my ethnicity. I am a biracial woman from Appalachian Kentucky that grew up dreaming of exploring the world and, not just reaching but, joining the stars. I remember thinking, “I am a visionary. I’m meant for something greater, something more.” I started dreaming this at the ripe young year of fourth grade. The time that followed included many moments of being brought back down to Earth and the cliché “sitting at my classroom desk and staring off into the stars hoping that I would someday join them”.   I have never attended anything other than a public school. My educational experiences were limited but turned out to be exactly what I needed. My parents and grandparents were the...

 By Paighton Brooks   This year we celebrated the centennial of the passage of the 19 th Amendment which granted women’s suffrage. While it was a glorious day and step forward in the United States for women, I would be remiss in not acknowledging that this initially only applied to white women. It took much longer for Black women to find themselves among the electorate. Even still I can recognize the importance of this milestone. It has an equal importance to me now because this year is my first time voting and 100 years ago women who looked like me could not vote. However, overshadowing my excitement to vote I find myself in disbelief by the state of politics and humanity in America.  So much division, so much hatred, so much violence but where is the resolution? People are hurting. America is hurting. We are still combating the domineering presence of racism that seeps into every crevice and institution of society. This was displayed through the senseless deaths of Bla...

 By Katie Hayden   When I first started running, I never thought I would enjoy it. I find it crazy that, when asked what my hobbies are, the first thing I say is running. I never imagined I would stick with it. I am a social person, and running was a way to stay in shape while spending time with my friends; however, running has taught me so much more. I have noticed so many parallels between the highs and lows in life and struggles in running, and I have learned so many life lessons in the process. Here are a few things running has taught me: Discipline. There are 24 hours in every single day. When distractions surround you and try to consume you, focus in. Remember your goals and push through. Stay the course and you will reap great benefits. Often this requires you to wake up early or stay up late, but in life, we are forced to do this sometimes to meet a goal.  Perseverance. Running is challenging both physically and mentally. It is so easy to want to quit and even eas...

 By Emily Bevins   If there is any piece of literature that modern feminists should blindly hate, it is probably William Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew.” The main character Katherine Minola begins the play as a headstrong, quick-witted woman who knows her worth in society, even if society prefers her obedient, soft-spoken younger sister Bianca. By all accounts, Bianca is the pinnacle of Elizabethan womanhood, and a great number of men seek her out for her docile traits. Katherine, on the other hand, is sought after only by Petruchio. He’s arrogant, foul-mouthed, and can turn any of Katherine’s insults into a sexual innuendo. He is the sole catalyst for the devolution of Katherine’s character. He starves her and deprives her of sleep all while constantly reaffirming his love for her (truly the ideal husband). By the end of the play, Katherine, once willing to verbally spar with anyone at the drop of a hat, is reduced to a housewife more obedient and loyal than a golden retr...

 By Caleb Aridano   Regrettably, I view life as a sort of checklist. Tasks are compartmentalized and completed sequentially: pleasure is found between the ever-growing mountains of responsibility. Or at least I’ve thought that way for the past 18 years of my life. High school presented me with some of the most profitable opportunities, yet some of the most complacent habits I have ever found myself to practice. I viewed those four years as a race, where I could take breaks, but I had to drive to the end to achieve some sort of finish line. I have immediately found that the finish line has tuned into the starting gate for more daunting trials and obstacles.  University is a labyrinth of possibility and self-control, in which most students end up losing themselves. If you’re anything like myself, you have very high aspirations for yourself and your career. Within and outside of the classroom, I have a set of standards that I hold myself to. The cardinal difference between H...

 By Jacob Banta   Ask anyone around you if they would want the Covid era of isolation to end right now. You would receive a resounding yes. Given the choice, many would even rewind the clock back to March wishing they never experienced quarantine. It's personally tempting for me. Being a freshman I missed out on the end of high school and the transition to college never felt real. I’ll never experience that common milestone of every other year before me. Though I wouldn’t say this life is all that bad. I definitely value a sense of community more than I did before and I know this change of pace has caused personal growth for many people. Still, was it worth getting kicked out of the normal way of things just to see the world and ourselves in a different light? To answer that question we must first ask ourselves, was our old life ever even normal to begin with? I know personally highschool was a scramble. Every day I kept myself busy with something to do. Joining a club or devo...

 By Bryson Sebastian   When I was in the 4th grade, I started going to my grandparent’s house before school every morning so my Mom could get to work on time. During this time, my relationship with my grandparents grew more than it ever had. Every morning, My grandparents and I would sit at the kitchen table with a pot of coffee and talk about life. The topics ranged from the difference in the world between their childhoods and mine, sports teams, politics, music, and just about everything else. I learned about things about my grandparents that I would never have known otherwise: the values they hold closest, the experiences that shaped them the most, and the way they see the world. Complex, meaningful discussions that have now shaped me as a man, yet all these conversations sprouted from a few cups of coffee around a dining room table.  Now, while I do not necessarily think that allowing an 11-year-old to start drinking cups of coffee every morning (still haven’t shaken...

By Yelena Bagdasaryan   Over the past few months being in college; with the stresses of homework, extra curriculars, and trying to keep some semblance of normalcy in our lives, I have found myself taking comfort in cooking for myself and with my close friends. However, there has been nothing that I have missed more than traditional home-cooked meals that I grew up with. And the dish that I have missed the most was something that I always made with my grandmother that has an important meaning in our family. Dolma is a popular Armenian dish that consists of grapevine leaves stuffed with a mixture of meat and rice. The ingredients consist of minced beef, rice, medium chopped onions, chopped garlic, a lot of coriander and parsley, tomato sauce, chopped mint, yoghurt, and the grape leaves. The first step is to put it in a large bowl, mix all the ingredients very well by hand, except the rice and grape leaves. Then you mix in the rice and you take your canned leaves, wash them in hot wat...

 By Mary Catherine Medley   I’m sure most people would agree with me when I say that 2020 has not been the best year; as a matter of fact, that is a huge understatement. Between having my senior year of high school end so abruptly, starting college nearly completely online, having a major decline in social interactions, while also facing some of the toughest personal battles I’ve ever dealt with, these changes have truly taken a toll on me. With that being said, I am currently trying my hardest to take this crazy life day-by-day, and recently there has been 1 thing that has helped me to do so: listing just one thing each day that brought me some form of joy. Now I know this seems so simple, yet on those days that seem like life is simply getting out of hand, finding joy in the little things has helped to make everything else in this world seem a little less scary. It has been one of the only things to keep me going this semester, and here are a just few examples of those joys ...

By Sawyer Depp My dad told me that he had to have sixteen conversations with me before I left for college. We only got to four. Within weeks of my leaving for college, my dad contracted COVID-19 and was placed in a hospital. After a difficult, hazy week of combatting the same disease that had ended the life of his mother months before, he woke up to the metallic hissing of a ventilator. After thirty-one days of wrestling with death itself, my dad left the hospital. I want to make one thing clear: he was not released, he left. I do not wish to make this blog about COVID-19; You, myself, my dad, my family, the city of Louisville, the world is tired of this disease. It is hard to find much good that has come out of it and even harder to do so for myself. There is, however, one thing: I was forced to reevaluate my relationship with my father. For thirty-one days, I did not know if my dad would ever come home; nothing makes you admire something on which you have relied on for much of your ...

 By Laura Hinkle   The mission of the Council of State Governments (CSG) is to "champion excellence in state governments to advance the common good." I work in the Center of Innovation (COI), which is the public policy research branch of CSG. My research team within COI is the Overseas Voting Initiative (OVI). OVI is a collaboration between CSG and the Department of Defense's Federal Voting Assistance Program to make voting for overseas military and U.S. citizens as simple and accessible as possible. We are grant-funded by the Department of Defense as well. Beyond making voting accessible for overseas voters, our mission is to ensure that states are enacting policies and practices that support overseas voters as much as possible. This involves in-depth research of voting laws, recommendations on removing archaic language from these laws, and helping to design a data format for the Election Administration and Voting Survey Section B. CSG is member-driven, as we are compris...