The lecture, called “The Excellent Human Life,” was based around Professor Wellman’s two core criteria for valuing whether or not a life is well lived: meaningful relationships and worthwhile projects. The entire lecture kept threading back to these ideals as Wellman touched on family, friends, regrets, the unoccupied mind and attitude.

The most salient point of the lecture for me was his emphasis on the unoccupied mind, which he introduced with a discussion of cell phones, BlackBerrys and iPods, saying, “Turn them off.” Wellman pointed out that in our constantly changing and fast-paced world, we always have things to do, people to communicate with and Twitters to check—less and less do we take time to simply let our minds wander. He stressed the importance of the unoccupied mind and how those distraction-free moments are vital for good self-communication and good decision-making.

This message has been replaying in my mind because intuitively I know it, and because, for this entire academic year, I haven’t been letting my mind wander enough. I have filled my time with other people, petty discussions, work and tetras—and I have felt less satisfied, less control, and less connected with myself. Because I am scared of graduating and the future, I have avoided thinking about it, and in the process, I honestly feel less satisfaction with the way I am living. Sure, I’m having fun, but I am on some level always aware of the costs.

In the past, I naturally spent time alone thinking about whatever, and now, looking back with a bit of perspective, I realize that during that supposedly “wasted” time, I was fantasizing, prioritizing and organizing—all things that helped me focus and live my life more fully. The time wasn’t really wasted at all.

Professor Wellman put it perfectly when he said that nowadays we are “excessively accessible.” We make ourselves available to others at all times, and the price is that we make ourselves less accessible to ourselves. We don’t let our minds wander anymore; after all, we have a million other things to do. Because of this, I have felt the consequences in my own life and have seen its effects on the lives of my friends. Sure, the distractions are fun and even sometimes valuable, but next time you have a free moment, turn off your phone, computer, iPod, etc., and let your mind go.

For literally hundreds of years it was generally accepted that having orgasms during sleep was a physiological occurrence reserved just for men. The experience, scientifically called “nocturnal emissions,” was colloquially dubbed “wet dreams”— a term that has obviously stuck around.

It wasn’t until 1953, when the famous sexologist Alfred Kinsey published a study on the occurrence of sleep orgasms for women, that “nocturnal emissions” stopped being an appropriate term, both because females don’t “emit” anything, and also because, as college students know, sleeping certainly doesn’t have to happen at night (regardless of this, the term “nocturnal orgasms” is still widely used).

Since Kinsey’s study, there have been only a few researchers to look at female sleep orgasms. In fact, the general knowledge of this phenomenon has remained so well hidden that when Barbara Wells published her study “Predictors of Female Nocturnal Orgasms: A Multivariate Analysis” in 1986, only 35 percent of her female college student sample had ever heard of nocturnal orgasms.

Until about a week ago, I was as clueless about the universality of this phenomenon as the other 65 percent. During a discussion with a friend, we stumbled onto this taboo topic, and I have been fascinated by it ever since. Turns out, a lot of women orgasm in their sleep. Kinsey’s study of 5,628 women found that 37 percent of women had experienced an orgasm during sleep before the age of 45 with an average of three to four per year. You can imagine how elated I was to read that he also found that the incidence increases with age (something to look forward to, ladies). Unfortunately, the more recent study by Wells refutes or complicates a lot of his other conclusions. In fact, the differences in the results between the two studies leave very little clear about female sleep orgasms other than the fact that a good number of women have them, and that they are not, as Kinsey asserted, closely tied to past sexual experience or current sexual activity.

What fascinates me is that our bodies are capable of having purely physical responses to completely mental stimuli. Without trying or having conscious desires, our bodies can create psychological situations powerful enough to ignite something as tricky and stubborn as a female orgasm. Furthermore, women have been shown to reach orgasm significantly faster in their sleep than when they are awake.

For me, this boils down to one really simple but surprising idea: orgasms are a lot more of a mind matter than we think. Obviously, I’m not saying that it’s all mental (can we even imagine a world where it is?), but it seems that mental roadblocks or unbuilt bridges must play a large role.

If only it were easier to build those bridges.

I spent last semester abroad in Chile, and I remember quite distinctly a day in my Chilean culture class, when our professor pointed out that poet Gabriela Mistral, the first of the two Chileans to win the Nobel Prize for literature, was unable to vote in her country’s elections when she received the award. In 1945 she became the first Latin American to win a Nobel Prize for literature, and women did not gain suffrage in Chile until four years later in 1949. Obviously, I was not ignorant to the centuries of female subjugation including a lack of suffrage, but this irony was too great not to puzzle over. Mistral had been deemed one of the most influential writers of the world; she had held professorships at Columbia and Middlebury, worked for the League of Nations and traveled extensively. And she could not vote.

For some odd reason, thinking of female suffrage now always reminds me of Mary Poppins. The looney mother, Mrs. Banks, a suffragette, is always heading out to some rally, preparing sashes and even talks about how she and her group of women are going to chain themselves up for the movement. Her big scene in the movie is when she sings “Sister Suffragette” and prances around the hall spouting her feminist ideals. Beautiful and invested, she could have been a great image of female empowerment. And yet, when her husband is home she caters to his every whim, accepts his angry decrees and submits humbly to him. She is even portrayed as a little goofy and out of sorts, unable to keep track of her children, and her dedication to her cause comes off as almost superficial. Certainly, as a kid, I never read into Mrs. Banks at all, I was far more preoccupied with the implied romance between Mary and Bert, but looking back, the movie is an interesting commentary on the feminism of the time. Despite ideals, women were held back in their homes and by society.

Obviously, suffrage is just one element of feminism, albeit probably one of the most important ones. But just think, before all of the feminist mumbo jumbo started, women had few property rights, rarely got custody of their children in cases of divorce, were relegated to being teachers and nannies and had no solid place in academia. The fact that those things have all changed now is not the result of men deciding to give their wives more freedom or a mere act of God; for the most part, feminists earned it.

I’m not really sure how I avoided thinking about feminism until college; it comes up everywhere—in movies, novels, popular culture and history. Nearly every study has a gender component. So I guess at some point, I opened my eyes and started looking for them, and I have realized how indebted I am to the women who have called themselves feminists. Without them, I would not have the memorable experience of casting my first presidential ballot. I would not be under the terrible stress of applying for jobs and to grad schools, but I would be applying for husbands, and, really, the world as I know it would not exist. And so I have gradually erased that negative stereotype in my mind and replaced the angry girl with a much less concrete figure that takes hundreds of forms with all kinds of hair, clothes and sexual preferences. I am a feminist because I am fascinated by the trajectory of my gender, because I am proud of how far we have come, because I am dedicated to making sure that my rights are never infringed upon because I am female.

//

I started volunteering at the Juvenile Detention Center in downtown St. Louis my freshman year. It has been the only extracurricular activity I have participated in for all four years at Wash. U., and it has been by far the most meaningful one. Many people are skeptical about volunteering with criminals, no matter their age or offense. Year after year at the activities fair, I sit and watch people’s reactions to our cause. Every now and then I spot a person looking at my table with a mixture of confusion, fear and more rarely, disgust. I guess it makes sense: they don’t want to offer affection to the kids who have stolen cars, sold drugs or committed assault. So when they see that a group of Wash. U. students goes to hang out with these “delinquents” a few times every week, their reactions aren’t sympathetic.

A few days ago, I was talking to a friend of mine about my volunteering at the center. He was shocked. “Anna,” he said with a hint of chauvinistic concern, “aren’t you worried about your safety? Couldn’t they hurt you? Isn’t there somewhere else to volunteer?” It was at that point I realized, first, that never once had I been worried about my personal safety at the Center, and secondly, how many terrible misconceptions there are about these youth.

This past Monday was a great day at the Center. The boys were divided into units by age, and we were with the youngest unit, ages 13-14, and the middle unit, which is 15-16. I was lucky enough to play one of my favorite card games, Spades, with three of the guys. I love Spades, and I especially love playing with the boys at the Center because no matter how hard I try I am always the weakest player. I leave reminded of the fact that although these guys may have trouble in school, they are by no stretch of the imagination stupid. Their ability to count cards, read people’s plays and predict my next discard demonstrates a mental agility that I would love to have.

They kept asking me about college: “What is it like? Do you party a lot? Do you have lock-ins?” I explained as best I could what Wash. U. is like, telling about coed dorms, long nights of studying and that Thursday is often considered part of the weekend. They all told me that they want to go to college some day, preferably soon.

And then, out of the blue, one of the boys, Marcus, looked at me and said, “We aren’t bad people; do you know that? We aren’t. We are people that have made bad decisions.” I was pleasantly struck by this reflective introspection, and I reassured him that I knew they weren’t bad people; that I wouldn’t come every week if I thought they were. Then he explained to me that he made bad decisions because he grew up under tough conditions, and that it was easy to make bad choices where he was from. I was so distracted by feelings of maternal warmth for this boy that I accidentally overplayed my partner who would have taken the trick. He sighed, the other two eyed each other and grinned and I thought about what Marcus said.

This isn’t the first time one of the teens at the center asked us not to judge them too harshly. A few years ago a boy told us that the world thought that they were all monsters and wondered if we got paid to spend time with them. I think that’s why I’ve never been concerned for my safety with these boys—they want us to like them. They honestly appreciate that we volunteer because we want to, not because we have to.

I don’t naïvely pretend that every person held at that Center is a sweet child who, forced by inescapable outside influences, makes an understandable mistake that lands him there.

The majority of them have committed crimes and they deserve to be punished for those crimes. I do, however, feel very strongly that these youth want to be taken seriously; they want to be understood; many of them realize on a deep level that they are the product of their unpleasant surroundings. They are also terribly aware of what people think of them and they don’t pretend to be unaffected by it.

In the past four years I have become acutely aware how easy, and wrong, it is to underestimate the intelligence and amiability of Missouri’s troubled youth. These kids deserve a chance, and in our plethora of opportunities to volunteer, I feel lucky to have found this one.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my roots. I grew up literally 10 minutes away from campus on Delmar Boulevard in University City. I went to the district’s public schools from pre-k to senior year, and I always had a lot of pride in my background. I loved telling people that I was part of a 10% minority being both white and upper middle class, and that over 85% of my high school was African American. I enjoyed shocking other St. Louis natives by telling them that, yes, I loved my school and, yes, you can succeed in a public high school that is constantly fighting for accreditation. I think, for some time, I also believed that I was better equipped to judge “Black America” because I was surrounded by it every day. The reality is, however, that I was living in a white bubble at a black school.

All of my best friends were white, the demographics of my advanced courses were not representative of the school as a whole, and, by being white, I was instantly accepted by some groups and rejected by others. I was treated differently by the administration; rarely did I have to show a hall pass, and I can’t remember ever being questioned about why I was leaving or entering the building. I was trusted by my teachers, and there was a certain level of expectation that I was always held to. At the time, I was confident that I had the respect of the administrators and teachers around me because I really was a good kid. I never skipped a day of school, I never drank or used drugs, and I was a very conscientious student. I’m sure that had something to do with it, but I also know it is more complicated than that. While I was given these privileges and then proved myself worthy, a lot of other kids had to earn them from scratch.

But behavior, tragically, played a huge role in the racial divide. For the past few days I haven’t been able to get this one girl, Dana Brokley out of my head. She was an attractive, black, very smart, and even more dedicated girl in the grade above me. She graduated Salutatorian of her class. We participated in a lot of the same extracurricular activities so I saw her on a regular basis. I think I always knew she struggled to find her place at our school, but I wasn’t aware how much until one day before mock trial practice I spied her crying to our coach. She explained how a group of black kids were harassing her during the day and telling her she wasn’t black enough, and that her motivation and doggedness was too “white” for them. I remember her looking devastated and confused.

Later I learned that her situation was a lot more complicated and sad. Dana had a crush on a white guy, and this fact somehow leaked onto the public arena of gossip. While we all wondered about whether or not they would “get together”, Dana must have been fighting a much more terrifying battle at home. After a few weeks we all learned that her father, a prominent man in the community who had high expectations for his daughter’s success, refused to let Dana date Mike, because he was white.

So where did Dana belong? She had been scorned by a lot of the African Americans at my high school for being “too white”, and yet was living in a home that required her to act and speak in a manner that caused her alienation. Furthermore, that same home refused to let her find refuge in the community her black peers had tossed her in. What could she do?

Dana has a younger brother that is the same year as my little sister. Today I was talking to Rachel about Dana and she mentioned that Dana’s brother was dating one of her white friends. I turned to look at her, shocked.

She read me immediately: “Anna, he doesn’t live at home.”

So where does this leave us? And where does it leave people like Dana and her brother? And how can we make it better? I don’t have answers to these questions; I don’t even know where to begin. I do think, however, that as a new generation searching for answers to hundreds of questions like abortion, terrorism, oil, globalization etc, we need to include this one. We need to keep working on the black-white divide that has plagued our nation since its conception. We need to prevent people like Dana from feeling that their skin color defines their actions and that identity is an issue of black and white.

If you drive about an hour and a half outside of St. Louis, west on I-70 and North on Route 51 for nearly 50 miles, you’ll eventually start seeing signs for Pike County scattered between cornfields and dense patches of trees. But before you even get there it’s clear that you have left everything “urban” and have crossed into its opposite—and often rival—“rural.” Billboards and McDonald’s signs have been replaced, by, well, nature, and the gorgeous view of forests and high grasses is dampened only by the persistent smear of roadkill.

Pike County has a population of about 20,000 and is made up of several smaller counties, one of which is Louisiana, where my friend Kathryn and I spent our fall break. Another friend of mine, Nick, has taken the semester off from Georgetown to single-handedly spearhead the Pike County Obama Campaign effort. When he asked me to volunteer for the weekend, I was immediately interested, not because I have any vested interest in rural Missouri other than as a political battleground, but because I was eager to learn more about the campaign process and contribute to the political energy that this election has stirred up.

It was hard work; 6 hours of phone banking and more than 12 hours of canvassing can wear a girl down, but after all was said and done, I think what affected me most during the weekend had less to do with the campaign or Obama and more to do with my first real intimate introduction to the struggle of rural America.

As we entered “downtown” Louisiana on Thursday night, Kathryn and I were immediately charmed by the small storefronts and narrow streets. We joked that we were really far from home. But we quickly noticed that more than half of those adorable storefronts had nothing but dust and old boards inside of them. Upon our questioning, Nick told us that as of a few years ago the world’s smallest Wal-Mart (according to the locals) had made its home on 3rd street, right next to the Hardee’s. The impact of this new neighbor had taken a huge toll on local businesses, pushing them to close.

The stores were the first sign that these people were suffering—but they were nothing next to the houses.

I would venture to say that between Kathryn and me, many miles were covered during our canvassing. As a result we got the opportunity to see how the people in Pike County live. Contrary to popular notions, they don’t all live on farms, and in fact there are many communities dense with homes and garages. A lot of the houses look comfortable and charming with little gardens in front and kids’ bikes leaning on the porch steps. But a shocking number had nothing in common with these sweet images of country tranquility; we saw homes begging for paint jobs and cars rusting with age. We walked up steps overgrown with weeds and overhung by dying trees and branches. We looked through dingy windows into rooms covered with filth, scattered papers and broken furniture. And people lived in them. “This is rural poverty,” Nick told us.

I know that people living in cities love to mock and tease rural Americans. They like to demean their problems and their frustrations. But my foray into Pike County left me convinced that rural America needs to be a priority and deserves more attention. The people of Louisiana are dependent on factory jobs that are exactly the types that have been exported to other countries in the recent past. Corporations don’t have the people’s best interests at heart and, I worry, neither does our government.

Nick said that the Wal-Mart has plans to close and relocate to a larger location in a different county. What will happen to Louisiana then?

I grew up in University City, and more than 90 percent of my high school peers were from liberal families like mine. I have been raised to believe that economic limitations hinder the possibilities of success for kids and that it is our duty, along with our government’s, to try and level the playing field. I am a strong pro-choice supporter and I believe that God is not offended by condoms or birth control. I believe it is time to change the way we live in order to treat our world and all of its inhabitants better.

At the presidential debate on Thursday, I saw an unambiguous winner (although I don’t like to think of it on those terms). Biden was clear, focused, personable, intelligent, straightforward and, without a doubt, he proved to me that he would be 100 percent capable of taking over our country should the opportunity arise. I sat in Edison Theatre surrounded by liberal minds like mine, and we smiled when Biden used data to back up his statements, when he said something profound and also when Palin repeated herself, stumbled and failed to give answers we deemed appropriate.

There were, however, Palin supporters in the mix too. They proudly and courageously wore their elephant shirts and sat among the “enemy,” watching our smiles (and sneers), and seeing something entirely different from what the rest of us saw. After all, McCain/Palin supporters say that she won without a doubt.

I’ve always been interested in why people make the choices that they do. Mostly, I wonder if I am merely a product of my childhood and genes. Did I only see Biden as the victor on Thursday night because that’s how everyone I know saw him? Did the McCain supporters see what they wanted or needed to see rather than what was right in front of them?  Would I have been able to walk out of that theater admitting Biden’s defeat regardless of what happened on that stage? I hope so.

All of this was passing through my head during the debate, and I wanted to leave knowing that my biases didn’t completely prevent me from seeing clearly—that I gave Palin a chance. I think, as far as I could have been, I was successful. Palin is personable, smart and funny, and I believe she is truly invested in the American people. I also think that, for someone who has been thrust into this political arena, she has held herself together admirably—but she is not who I want for a leader.

In the post-debate aftermath everyone scrambles for their favorite quotes, usually choosing the snippiest comments. To me, there was one moment that resonated beyond any other. It was when Biden shared a lesson he learned from Mike Mansfield.

Mansfield told him, “Joe, understand one thing. Everyone’s sent here for a reason, because there’s something in them that their folks like. Don’t question their motive.” Biden then told us, “I have never since that moment in my first year questioned the motive of another member of the Congress or Senate with whom I’ve disagreed. I’ve questioned their judgment.” As a U.S. citizen who has grown weary of those snippy comments, for me this was one of the most profound moments of the night.

I’ve thought a lot about this comment since Thursday and how I should interpret the subtle relationship between judgment and motive. I think Biden was saying that you can’t question why a person is in public office, or question whether they are motivated by greed or self-aggrandizement. Instead, we can only look at the decisions they make while they have that power, and whether the decisions they make are the best for our country.

I think the time of snide remarks and pathetic attempts at mean humor should end, or at least decrease their volume; we should stop trying to degrade the “other” side; we should think more for ourselves and rest less on what our parents and friends think; and finally, as Joe Biden said so well, we need to stop questioning each other’s motives. I will venture to say that close to all Americans want what is best for our country—we just differ on how to get there—and that should be the focus of politics.

Only a few months ago my showers were torturous; after a teasing two minutes of lukewarm, the water turned painfully frigid and I was left completely covered in goose bumps, rinsing my hair as I hopped about shivering. It was clear to me that I wasn’t in Kansas (or more realistically, St. Louis) anymore.

Actually, I wasn’t in St. Louis, I wasn’t even in the United States. From early January until only a few months ago, I was a temporary resident of Santiago, Chile.  I learned more about the world than I had ever imagined possible when I first boarded the plane leaving St. Louis, but the showers were a daily reminder of a really important reality: we waste. We, as Americans, as the middle and upper class, as the lucky recipients of a first-class American education, and especially as students of Washington University, waste.

I know that probably half of the Student Life articles published have some sort of environmental thread: to use metal silverware, recycle cans, turn off lights, and it seems nothing can spur us into being more environmentally aware. I don’t want to be redundant, but I’d like to give you a picture of another world, a world that tries so hard to emulate ours that they dream about being able to waste the way we do. And it isn’t even Africa.

Every morning I got up, and if I was daring enough, I’d brave the shower, knowing full well what was going to happen. Before I got in, I had to turn on the hot water valve in the kitchen and wait for a little bit of water to heat up. Despite that, unfortunately, here was never enough warm water; I even switched to 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner to try to make myself go faster. I’d dance about in the shower trying to avoid its freezing burn anywhere it wasn’t necessary and assuring God that I would be really, really good if he gave me one minute more of warmth. Sometimes I’d work myself into such a sorry fit that I would cry. To heat water costs money, and my Chilean family just decided that their money would be put to other uses.

My kitchen was another example of modest conservation. As in most modern kitchens these days the room was equipped with a microwave and radio, but the constant red or green florescent lights providing the time were never there because my family, like many other families, only plugged in those devices when they needed them. It takes energy to run those clocks whether or not the microwave is being used. It made me think about my own kitchen, where there are three clocks attached to the oven, radio, and microwave, all sporting the same time and therefore proving the other two useless. But we leave them on anyway.

In the last few months of my stay in Chile, winter set in, exacerbating my shower problem and also teaching me another valuable difference between my U.S. home and my Chilean home. In the winter in my U.S. home, I can walk around in jeans and a T-shirt whenever I want. The thermostat is never more than a five-minute walk away and the comfortable 68 degrees my family keeps it at make my wardrobe options vast. On a typical winter afternoon in my Chilean apartment, I wore a long sleeve t-shirt, heavy sweatshirt, and a thick blanket wrapped around my shoulders, as well as warm sweatpants occasionally accompanied by leggings underneath. There was one space heater for the living room, which was used sparingly. Usually I was cold, and I spent a lot of time in my bed under my covers doing whatever work could be done in a curled up position.

These were sacrifices my family in Chile made in order to have three TVs in their home, a car, and two computers. They were far from a struggling family, but they were conscientious—not because they wanted to be but because it was too expensive not to be.

I returned home this summer with open eyes to the disgusting waste my own family produces—long luxurious showers, car rides to friends’ homes less than one mile away, and the thought of returning to a much more sickening Wash. U., where energy is consumed as if it were free and lights are left on 24 hours a day.

I’ve also come to see how much I waste on my own—water and electricity, and sometimes my own laziness inhibits me from going the extra few steps to recycle instead of just tossing my plastic bottles into the trash. But Chile has put my lifestyle into perspective and I know I can survive on less. This year I am going to try harder, and although I know I am not ready to sacrifice my hot showers on cold days, I am prepared to be more aware and live a little greener.

I walked around outside it and felt like I had looked at it before, maybe a million times. I walked in, and it felt like I had been there before too, also maybe a million times.  This new student center, the object of more than a year of construction and anticipation looked to me like a new age rendition of a very affluent family’s mansion; exactly like 85 percent of all of the other buildings on campus. It has the classic pink granite exterior with the same curves and points, the same high ceilings, dark furniture, quiet ambiance, paneled walls and familiar fireplaces imposed on every reasonable spot of wall. I can’t deny that it is beautiful, classy and impressive, but creative it is not.

This summer I read a book about McDonald’s (trust me I’m going somewhere) which talked about how the struggle of the corporation has been for sameness, a promise of familiarity no matter what restaurant you enter, whether in St. Louie or Taiwan. The food is going to taste the same, and the chairs are going to feel the same. During that bit of summer reading, I realized how much I appreciated the sameness, but it also made me feel sad at the loss of eccentricity and creativity.

Allow me to make a stretch, and say Wash. U. is going for the same idea. It seems that in this new burst of construction and development, our University is creating an atmosphere of sameness, an undeniable feeling of familiarity in each building. And I’m not saying it is all bad—for gosh sakes the buildings are lovely, and no one can deny that our beautiful campus is one of our big selling points. I’m also not denying that the new building takes risks; our new student center has brightly painted ceilings, new types of chairs and bean bags, and some interesting metal screens around the main eating center—but that’s not architecture, that’s interior design, and it still isn’t much.

I imagine the basis for this construction is a desire for continuity, an architectural thread that unites our campus and gives it class and structure. But as an untrained-in-architecture English major, my question is “Is this the only way?” As far as I can tell we have a remarkable and intense architecture program, attracting professors and students from across the country. Could they not contribute some formula to maintain continuity and give each building some character of its own? Wouldn’t that make our campus more memorable?

I’ll leave my rant like this: if buildings like Mallinckrodt and Eliot are headed for their doomsday (which it seems they are), can we not replace their originality with new buildings that utilize new technology and new creativity without sacrificing the Wash. U. atmosphere and continuity?