By Stevie Schenk | sschenk@flagler.edu
Photo courtesy of Apple

Textbooks have always been a difficult part of classes for me. I’ve paid attention, taken notes, re-read material, but I always find the texts difficult to grasp. I’m not alone. Many students feel textbooks are necessary, but wish they could get more out of them. They don’t see the need for a book when a professor is just going to condense it into notes during class.

By Emily Hoover | ehoover@flagler.edu
Photo by Robert Heinrich

Sometimes I think I’m really paranoid. Sometimes I get the fear when I walk into a grocery store, such a deep fear from within, that I want to run back to my car, as if someone is chasing me with a blunt object.

It’s not about the sensory overload I experience when my eyes finally adjust to all the artificial lights and I observe consumers scrambling through the aisles, looking for sales, just waiting for the exchange of currency for nutrients. It’s not about budgeting, since I now live with my boyfriend and our combined income makes good food easier to afford.

The fact is: I can’t buy bagels without staring intently at the back of the package, looking for chemicals and preservatives. I can always locate xantham gum and high fructose corn syrup—oftentimes a combination of both—especially in food marked “All Natural” and “No Preservatives.” So I find myself putting products back on the crammed shelves, hunting for something not just certifiably organic, but really organic.

By Josh Santos | gargoyle@flagler.edu

Winter break is a time for students to relax from the hectic school year — to visit their families and work. But I wasn’t able to accomplish any of these this break and especially not the work part.

Instead, I spent this past Christmas in a home that was rotting from the inside out, 300 hundred miles away from my family, all while searching for a job to support myself.

My first mistake was assuming it would be easy.

By Emily Hoover | gargoyle@flagler.edu

I’ve never been so bummed about getting an A.

This might sound strange, but as a graduating senior with big plans for graduate school, it frightens me to think a pesky little minus might get in my way. And I don’t mean math class. Luckily, I passed both of the mathematics requirements for an English major my freshman year.

By Kara Duffy | gargoyle@flagler.edu

The Internet has come to dominate the way people communicate and interact in today’s society. People use the Internet to get information easily and quickly to access anything online.

We take the Internet for granted like it is a necessity rather than a luxury, assuming that we can access and use the Internet whenever and for whatever we want.

By Joshua Santos | gargoyle@flagler.edu

I have been working out with a personal trainer every morning for the past week and a half. I am not much of a healthy person. Up until I started working out, I was a pack a day smoker, more than half of my liquid consumption came in the form of malt liquor, and the closest I had ever come to stretching was me trying to put my skinny jeans on in the morning.

By Tiffanie Reynolds | gargoyle@flagler.edu

Placing the last gift basket on the shelf, I took a few steps back and watch as two women behind me rushed and grabbed six each, completely emptying the middle shelf. Walking to the back room to open and empty yet another box, I slid past men and women on their cell phones relaying the items they saw as they rifled through bins and scan shelves. All this while “What a Wonderful World” played through the speakers above.

By Kylynn Pelkey | gargoyle@flagler.edu

I spent thanksgiving this year at an Alzheimer’s home. My Grandmother’s sister, Sandie, was transferred into the home about two months ago. The transition has been hard on her family.

Sometimes she doesn’t remember her son, Steven Jr., who pushed to put her in a home. Once, she didn’t remember her husband Steve.

“Why is that man in my room? Who is that man?” she asked the nurse.

By Amber James | gargoyle@flagler.edu

Passing or failing, friends and the next alcoholic beverage–these are some of the things most kids my age are thinking of. Don’t get me wrong, these are concerns that occupy my mind as well. But I also have some unique concerns, like how to deal with military deployments, managing financial accounts for two and what to make my husband for dinner. Yes, I said husband.

I might have jumped the gun, being married earlier than most, but one defining factor pushed us in that direction, the military.

By Michael Newberger | gargoyle@flagler.edu

It seems every subsequent election year, most people say to themselves “There’s no way that this could get any more ridiculous,” and I realize four years from now I’ll probably being saying this again as political ads become somehow personalized by our facebook interests. “Hi Bob! I see you you like the Pittsburgh Steelers! I’m Rick Santorum and I love em’ too! I also think that gays are bringing down the moral fiber of our country! Check out my link!”

But so far this Republican primary race has been a spectacle that is both supremely entertaining, while also hinting at the dystopian landscape that politics is starting to turn into.

By Alex Bonus

Photo by Nate Hill

I’ve crossed the finish line, but this crowd is unfamiliar.   My surroundings, unexpected.  Until now, it was a place I’d only dreamt about, and this is not what I predicted.

My cross-country season is over.  Practices have ceased.  My races are done.  Like so many other senior athletes — and like generations of athletes who have come before me — my status as a student-athlete has effectively come to an end.

I’ve wondered about this day for years.  How I would feel?  How I would cope?  It’s the evitable finish to a 4-year race that, before today, was obscure and insubstantial, existing only in my mind as a quietly ignored but perpetually imminent mystery.

By Emily Hoover | ehoover@flagler.edu

In an economy where prices are raising and job wages aren’t, tourists are used to getting a discount, and they often do, thanks to AAA, student, Florida resident and military discounts.

But when a place doesn’t offer these discounts, what makes people act like its a personal attack? Just because they’ve slapped on enough sunscreen to protect half the state of Florida from the perils of ultraviolent rays and they are still sunburned, they think everyone who is selling goods or services is going to do them a favor and take 10 percent off their purchase. Perhaps even get them in free just for stimulating the local economy.

By Gena Anderson | ganderson@flagler.edu

This past May, I drove six hours to go home to visit my friend for his twenty second birthday. Or rather, visit his grave.

Troy died on Oct. 13, 2008 in a motorcycle accident. On our way to his funeral, me and my best friend got lost. On our way to visit his grave, the same thing happened.

Everyone knows where Troy is buried, but none of us know how to get there. I cried on the way there to his funeral because I was afraid we were going to miss it. I wanted to cry on my way to visit, this time, because I felt that same sense of defeat.

By Phil Grech | gargoyle@flagler.edu

The day before Easter this year, I ran into an engaged couple I know. The groom-to-be is an attorney (eerily similar to Patrick Bateman) and the bride-to-be, well, she defines her existence by the size of her engagement ring.

I did not say hi to them because the last three times I saw them, they pretended to not see me, so on this occasion, I acknowledged their existence, then got on with life, waiting to order a medium coffee at Starbucks–a local Starbucks that does not correct you, saying, “You mean grande? This particular day, however, this couple decided to break their habit of ignoring me.

By Mari Pothier | gargoyle@flagler.edu

I still remember the day my mom and dad told me we were moving to Brooksville. I thought to myself, “Brooksville? Why Brooksville? There is nothing there.” After having lived in Tampa for five years the thought of moving to a rural community was a weird blend of nerves and curiosity. Everyone says that people who live in the “country” are nice folks who make an honest living and I thought, well, it should be nice living among the kind hearted country souls of Brooksville. At least that was what I was banking on, but of course I was wrong…very wrong.

By Caitlin Carver | gargoyle@flagler.edu

“Hmm … St. Aug’s a town with a bunch of awesome restaurants and is always packed full of hungry sightseers,” observed a possibly obese entrepreneur one day.