A Blog on McConnell Center Life

By Leah Hazelwood  The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in the film industry. They are regarded by many as the most prestigious and significant awards in the entertainment industry worldwide. Every year millions of people around the world tune in to see who will be awarded the highest honors. The award show has come under fire time and time again for its’ lack of diversity, its’ support of abusers, and other issues. Despite these issues the Academy persists and every year there is always a stand out from the show. From Jennifer Lawerence’s fall up the stage, "Adele Dazeem", #OscarsSoWhite, the 2017 Best Picture gaffe, to this years’ slap heard round the world. All these events were widely talked about in their time in both positive and negative ways. This year at the Academy Awards actor Will Smith slapped presenter Chris Rock after Rock made a comment about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith. The comment made by Rock wa...

 By Madelin Shelton   I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the time has come for my final blog for the McConnell Center. As a senior about to graduate this May, this doesn’t seem possible. I think I’ve learned over the last four years that what people say about time flying really is true.  When I first came to UofL, senior year seemed like a far-off problem of sorts. Moving from a rural Kentucky town to the big city fresh out of high school presented so many new challenges and experiences that I could hardly think about what it would be like when this season of my life came to an end. But it is here, and graduation is creeping closer and closer by the day. The emotions I’ve felt about this have ebbed and flowed, with some stronger on certain days than others. Excitement, sadness, and nervousness have all made their presence known. While my emotions have felt like a conglomerated mess at times, the one feeling that rises above the rest is gratitude.  Over the last fou...

 By Claire Harmon  T hroughout history, the worlds of art and politics have collided countless times. Whether it's a Banksy mural protesting the jailing of fellow artists, a statue of Stalin built in Soviet Russia, or Picasso’s anti-war painting  Massacre in Korea,  political art has a deeply entrenched place in society. However, when most people think of “political art” they conjure images of feminist sculptures or traditional paintings -- very few people would think of architecture as political. But what could be more political than housing, meeting spaces, government buildings, and public resources like libraries and hospitals?  Victor Horta, a nineteenth century Belgian architect and “international figure in the heyday of Art Nouveau” (Aubry, et al., 176) understood this intersection of politics and art. Horta considered “the social and cultural mutations and evolutions… [and] became aware of the need for new architectural programmes that had to meet the exp...

By Allison Boarman  Everyone close to me knows that I am absolutely obsessed with Mike Flanagan’s Netflix limited series shows. You’ll likely recognize the first two shows Flanagan created for Netflix— The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor . They were both stunning shows, discussing topics like addiction, mental health, and grief through the lens of horror. Midnight Mass , though, had an undertone neither of the other shows had—religion. As soon as I finished the 7-episode limited series, I immediately restarted it to watch it again and see what I missed. Flanagan had hidden meaning everywhere. He wrote dialogue extremely carefully and directed the camera to focus on things the average person (or even director) wouldn’t care to think about. I forced everyone in my life to watch it with me, and they loved it just as much as I had.  The show follows a group of people in a small fishing town. Riley Flynn, the addict who killed a young girl in a drunk driving a...

By Abigail Cheek  Most Americans would consider crime to be a pressing national issue. However, few are informed about the makeup and history of the American criminal justice system.  Understanding the criminal justice system can aid in understanding one of our nation’s most pressing issues.  In his seminal work,  Crime and Punishment in American History,  Lawrence M. Friedman summarized a general history of American criminal justice from the seventeenth century to the 1970s.  Friedman conveyed the thesis that judgements about crime, and what to do about it, come out of a specific time and place by providing a social history of crime and punishment.  Friedman described the system as being made by the way society is organized and the social norms interacting with the context of the time period as well as with specific events and situations.  Friedman divided the work into three different periods; colonial America, from the Revolution to the close o...

 By Bella Beilman  When self-love is often discussed in the mainstream media or culture, it is often seen as bathtubs by candlelight, special dates you take yourself on, treating yourself, or sips of tea in front of rainy window sills with face masks on. Unfortunately, it is not that simple. This overt romanticizing of self-love has been somewhat harmful to younger women and girls, because it is not rooted in reality. Self-love cannot be found in a cup of tea, or any material object, as the wellness community may insinuate. Before self-love becomes a liberating force, it is first a heavy burden. The pinnacle of self-love is not endless ecstasy, as many wellness companies may lead us to believe. Instead, it is a heartbreaking process of undoing the life your unloved self built, brick by unworthy brick, then rebuilding with meaning and intent. Self-love has to be won and this process is very often painful, it is a new birth of self. It is real and strenuous, not fun.  To g...

By Alli Wade  Lately, I have put on some extra weight– the kind you don’t notice until you catch your brief reflection in a window. It bears down through my shoulder blades, leaving a trace of heaviness in my steps. This weight is not measurable in pounds or ounces and isn’t reflected on a scale. Instead, I carry the weight of the legacy of those who came before me and of the one I will leave behind after graduation.  As I write my final blog as a McConnell Scholar, this weight feels even heavier. I recall each book I read as a Scholar that added another pound. I fondly remember the seminars that moved me and ultimately only increased the heaviness.  In a few short months, I will join a wide network of alumni who span across the globe. They have accomplished major feats and left their marks on the world as I know it. They forged the paths that I now walk. Like me, their journeys began as hopeful teenagers gathered in the McConnell Center seminar room to discuss topic...

 By Emily Davis   For the past couple years, I have fought hard to protect the habit of reading something for fun every night before I go to bed. Even if I can only read one page or even one paragraph before I feel my eyelids flickering shut, I try to give my brain a reprieve from the never-ending list of textbook chapters I must read through to keep up in class. It is practically beneficial because it gives my mind a chance to unwind and shift its focus from the demands of school. But, more importantly, it is good for my soul. It reminds me that my mind does not exist solely for me to acquire knowledge and use that knowledge to pursue academic success. My mind exists to dream as well. If I starve my imagination, I may even destroy the intellectual curiosity that allows me to enjoy all the things I must read to do well in my classes. I love learning. A consistent theme in my life is the pursuit of knowledge: going down all the rabbit holes of curiosity. I will always feel more...

 By Kieran Waigel  Thank you McConnell Program. Thank you for encouraging me to still read books worth reading and not just textbooks. I can confidently say that I would have never read Plato’s Republic had it not been for the Center. I can just as confidently say that my life is richer for it. When I was in elementary school there was nothing I despised more than the Nightly News. My parents would put it on every day. It was so incredibly boring, and it never made any sense. Watching local and national leaders on television seemed like an elaborate game of political mad libs. Things were seemingly random and therefore unpredictable, intimidating, and to be avoided. Eventually (and thankfully) this hatred turned into a curiosity, a curiosity that inspired me to apply for this program. Starting college, I was planning on spending 4 years solving integrals and writing for-loops. Thanks to the McConnell Program I also spent those 4 years learning about religion and politics...

By Lauren Reuss  What does resilience mean? This is the question that greeted me at the 2022 United States Naval Academy Leadership Conference, Resilience Rising: Forging Through Adversity. I can practically separate my life into chapters based on the kinds of adversity that have been present. After receiving a plethora of “no’s,” a series of rejections, taking difficult classes, having doors closed in my face, struggling with doubt, and the most obvious – living through two years of a global pandemic – I was pretty confident I knew what it meant to be resilient. But being confronted by the question, being challenged to understand what it meant to forge through adverse life experiences and rise from the ashes renewed and determined, was a whole new lesson I was unaware I needed. On January 23rd , I hopped on a plane at the crack of dawn to fly to Annapolis and meet with midshipmen, ROTC students from across the country, and even a few mid-career professionals to learn about the imp...

 By Laura Hinkle  As my time in college draws to a close, I can’t help but reflect on my past four years at UofL. It has truly been the best of times and the worst of times, but I feel a sense of peace knowing that a younger me at ten, fourteen, or even eighteen would be thrilled knowing where I’m at in life. While developing new friendships and having new experiences was a journey in and of itself, I feel it’s important to reflect on the knowledge I’ve gained as a college student. In a fashion similar to Robert Benchley’s “What College Did to Me,” here are some of the most important things I learned each year: Freshman Year Yes, it’s obvious you’re a freshman. French and Arabic are fun to learn in theory but definitely aren’t for the faint of heart. The Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility absolutely applies to tacos consumed. Pericles had a cool name and magnetic charisma (thanks to Dr. Gregg for that one). Au pairing is not as fun and simple as it sounds. Sophomore Year Ther...

 By Will Randolph  As my time in college comes to an end, I am struck by how much I haven’t learned. Sure, I’ve certainly learned a lot (I’d be wasting my time if I hadn’t), but as I prepare to leave UofL and the McConnell Center, I know that I have barely scratched the surface of the depths of knowledge and learning I have at my disposal. This isn’t all that surprising. After all, I can only take eight to twelve classes a year for four years for a maximum of 48 classes. UofL offers way more classes than that. Even if I limited myself to taking only classes I'm interested in and didn’t include required classes, there’s no way that I could fit all those classes into my schedule.  However, my limited schedule is not the only (or most limiting) reason why I haven’t been able to learn as much as I’d like. The real reason is that I, and every other person in the world, have what I call a “limited hard drive.” In a rough explanation (and with the qualification that I am not a n...

 By Caleb Aridano  As much as people claim to try new things, I have found that people often seek what is comfortable, warm, known, and guaranteed. There is nothing wrong with this. In fact, seeking what is familiar is a natural human instinct, it is why humankind has lasted for thousands of years. However, only doing what is known can contain a person in what they can know. Conversely, always seeking out the unknown, the untested, and the uncharted can be somewhat foolish and misleading. Here, I posit a framework where humans can still live a comfortable, known life, while also expanding their mind and challenging themselves both internally and experientially. Earlier this semester I had the unique privilege of attending the Naval Academy Leadership Conference (NALC) in Annapolis, Maryland. The conference was a three-day excursion from my normal life at UofL and it was one that provided me with renewal, energy, and perspective. For three days, undergraduates from across the c...