Here are the readings for Monday, 4/6. Please DO NOT write a blog in response to these readings. DO NOT post to the discussion board (as we did last week). Just read them and be prepared to talk about them in class on Monday. In the meantime, get working on selecting which two of your four essays you are going to focus on revising during the last month of the semester.
Just before Valentine’s Day this year, Sunday Styles did something very unromantic: we asked college students nationwide to tell the plain truth about what love is like for them. We weren’t sure what to expect, but we thought we wouldn’t receive many essays about red roses and white tablecloths.
When the contest deadline passed seven weeks later, more than 1,200 essays had arrived, from 365 schools in 46 states and Puerto Rico. In perhaps typical collegiate fashion, nearly 700 poured in on the last day, 400 over the final hour. We counted only three red roses among them, and one was bestowed in a laundry room.
As for the more complicated stuff, and the uniquely 21st century struggles — those we got by the hundreds, covering everything from how students view communications technology (as a lifeline, a crutch or a scourge) to their ambivalence about the no-strings-attached sexual opportunism of the hookup culture.
Five of these essays will appear as the Modern Love column, starting today with Marguerite Fields’s winning entry, “Want to Be My Boyfriend? Please Define,” an eloquent, clear-eyed account of her generation’s often noncommittal dating scene. On the Sundays between Mother’s Day (May 11) and Father’s Day (June 15), we will publish the four runner-up essays.
(Read more "Modern Love" columns...)
When Sheryl Crow said that people should use only one sheet of toilet paper, she was lampooned by everyone from Rush Limbaugh to Jon Stewart.
More recently, the issue of toilet paper has become less of a joke (except when celebrities express an opinion) and more of a cause: since the fluffy kind cannot be made from recycled paper, conservationists argue, consumers can do their part to protect the environment by buying the rougher stuff. There are skeptics who say the benefits of such a switch are overstated.
But looking beyond the choice of toilet paper, what are the simplest — or the biggest bang for the lowest cost — changes that Americans can adopt that would make an environmental difference?
Dear Sir Obama: Presidential Advice
Every day after school about 65 children come to our center to get help with their homework. The place is always vibrant, but on Nov. 5, 2008, the 20 tutors in the room essentially played zone defense to keep things in order. For the students, the election of Barack Obama had overturned their world.
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