Has the heat got you down? Eugene’s weather over the last week has been as bipolar as my attitude towards graduation lately. Sure it’s all #feelslikesummer for a while, that is, until #Idontknowwhattodowithmyself sets in. And then, a metaphor slowly merges from the image of Otter Pops in my waistband, whilst I lie facedown on my tiled kitchen floor and have every fan my parents ever possessed all pointing in my direction.

The record-breaking weather seems to be getting to others in town as well, as many have turned to the ever-cooling Willamette River for relief. But due to how unsafe people were this last week with activities like floating the river – KVAL News reported an unexpectedly high number of local rescues the past few days from people neglecting to wear life jackets – the universe realized we couldn’t handle the scorching heat. For the next week, leading into graduation day, temperatures don’t seem to exceed a comfortable 73 degrees. Unfortunately though, as of June 7, there is rain expected for June 13, UO’s main day of commencement, which means everyone has their 11:11 wish cut out for them from now until then.

I know what the men of UO’s golf team have been wishing for as of late. For the first time ever in the program’s existence, the men’s golf team won the NCAA Championship title on June 1. Like we saw in the semifinal match, the Ducks’ fate was put on Sulman Raza who didn’t disappoint once again. Raza went up against top-seed Texas’ Taylor Funk. It came down to a three-hole, sudden-death playoff. Raza swung and with a six-foot birdie putt on the 10th green – gibberish, I know – the crowd (actually) went wild. Golf claps aside; the team celebrated the great victory by tackling Raza Oregon football-style and disregarding all the grass stains on their trousers and polos. Way to go(lf), boys!

One sports legend who would have probably been really difficult to tackle back-in-the-day is Muhammad Ali who sadly passed away on Friday, June 3 at age 74 of septic shock while being treated for a respiratory problem. The Greatest had an exceptional boxing career that he retired from in 1981, then was shortly after diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. However, his illness didn’t stop him from receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom award in 2005 for all the amazing work he has done in his lifetime.

The man who could float like a butterfly and sting like a bee said himself, “It’s hard to be humble when you’re as great as I am.” Ali lived an active life in terms of his unmatchable boxing career, humanitarian work, civil rights involvement and his following and advocating for the religion of Islam. On June 4, President Obama tweeted, “He shook up the world, and the world’s better for it,” and that he did. From changing his “slave” name from Cassius Clay when he joined the Nation of Islam, a black Islamic movement, to resisting the Vietnam draft which he scorned for issues of race and religion, Muhammad Ali was, in Michael Jordan’s words, “bigger than sports and larger than life. He said he was ‘The Greatest’ and he was right.”

Why can’t all athletes be like Muhammad Ali and unlike, let’s say, Brock Allen Turner? Here’s the story: In January 2015, a woman was sexually assaulted behind a dumpster at Stanford University while being unconscious. The perpetrator was a former Stanford swimmer, Turner, who was tackled by two graduate students on the scene, arrested, dropped out of school and was then found guilty of three felony sexual assault counts and faced a maximum of 14 years in prison, according to The Guardian. But on June 2, Turner was given six months of jail time and probation, because the judge, Aaron Persky, said prison would have a “severe impact on him.”

After hearing this news, my anger turned to heart-wrenching sadness after the sexual assault victim’s impact statement went viral this weekend. The 23-year-old, who had no recollection of what happened with Turner last year, faced the man who violated her and read an emotional speech directly at him during the hearing in a full courtroom. The unidentified woman included just about every detail she could remember from that night last January and what she faced afterward. The text is raw and honest and something everyone should take time to read.

On June 6, CNN host Ashleigh Banfield spent over half her show reading the statement, which highlights how important of a document it is for our society today to take notice of. There is a rape culture that obviously exists, especially on college campuses, and the crimes of assault we often hear of involve athletes. It seems as though people are becoming more and more outraged by this topic, as Twitter clearly showed over the last week, since it is still being treated unjustly.

Turner was given a new sentencing and the victim’s statement went public thanks to Buzzfeed (which isn’t only good for quizzes), but what seemed to anger people the most recently is a letter Turner’s father wrote to Judge Persky, saying “his son should not have to go to prison for ’20 minutes of action’.” Turner Sr. basically justifies his belief that his son should not have to serve any amount of time because he has already been suffering from anxiety, depression and a lack of appetite since having been caught committing sexual assault.

Understandably, any father would have a hard time seeing his son not want to eat steak and the pretzels and chips he used to have to hide from him, but it in no way should affect his sentencing. What about the impact that his son’s actions had on the victim? I’m sure her father has a lot to say about her suffering – which isn’t needed – but come on.

I’m siding with the Twitter users who are using #WhitePrivilege #nomugshot to combat this situation. There is so much wrong occurring that reading the developments is unfathomable for me. The victim said herself in a response to Turner’s father’s statement:

“If a first-time offender from an underprivileged background was accused of three felonies and displayed no accountability for his actions other than drinking, what would his sentence be? The fact that Brock was an athlete at a private university should not be seen as an entitlement to leniency, but as an opportunity to send a message that sexual assault is against the law regardless of social class.”

On that frustrating note, that’s it from me. As my final pond(er) for the Emerald, I hope you continue to read on about what’s happening in the world – the entertaining, the traumatic, the depressing and the uplifting – and go on and form your own opinions about current events. Test your own ethics, and continue to question everything and everyone.

Thank you for keeping up! (Kardashian pun to come). Negina out.

The annual Lake Shasta trip (ungracefully) passed us. Sasquatch came and went. And, what midterms? It’s time to prepare ourselves for the final round of spring term procrastination full of nostalgic reminiscing. Seniors, this is it. There are only a couple more weeks left for us to bask in life as an undergraduate, and think about the ups and downs that will come in our post-grad experiences.

One negative that I foresee is the possibility of not being taken seriously by people since we’ll be new to this whole adulting thing. Sure, many of us are financially independent and are able to take on responsibilities, but our opinions may still go unheard at times and that’s when we need to be the loudest.

Take the topic of zoos, for example. These are outdated facilities that house wild animals for human curiosity, but with developments like the Internet, I don’t see any reason for zoos to still exist. I have never taken pleasure in anything being caged up, and if more “adults” would listen to me, the events this past weekend at the Cincinnati Zoo wouldn’t have occurred.

On May 28, a 4-year-old boy fell into the enclosed space of a gorilla named Harambe, resulting in Harambe being shot and killed by zoo officials for the safety of the young child. A video from the scene shows Harambe dragging the kid through water for a few minutes – what many saw as the gorilla protecting the boy – but the debacle ended with a bang. Many witnesses and social media users were heated about this fatal decision that took place, since the gorilla’s breed is endangered, and because the animal didn’t seem to be dangerous. The group consensus focused mainly on blaming the parents for not watching their son more closely.

Further news on this story came out on May 31 when a Daily Mail writer wrote a heinous piece on the young boy who fell into the gorilla habitat, specifically targeting his family. The story was not received well by readers because of its racist tones since the boy’s father, Deonne Dickerson, was the subject of the story, along with a number of crimes he committed in the past like kidnapping and drug trafficking.

Again, none of this would have happened if people like me and groups like PETA were taken more seriously and wild animals were freed from the constraints of a zoo.

Some kids who probably made their parents proud this past week were Jiram Hathwar and Nihar Janga, this year’s National Spelling Bee co-winners. With Hathwar’s final word to spell being Feldenkrais, and Janga’s being gesellschaft, the country (and many nail-biting students at the UO Recreational Center) watched the two boys equally earn bragging rights for the rest of their lives.

Another addition to the list of boys who can pat themselves on the back this past week is UO junior Sulman Raza who did the unthinkable on May 27. At the NCAA Men’s Golf Championship finals, Raza actually made golf exciting to watch. The South Eugene High School graduate elegantly sunk a par putt on 18 – aka he got the ball in the hole in the expected amount of strokes it would take an expert golfer – which ended with the UO men’s golf team knocking out both LSU, the defending champion, and this year’s No. 2 seed, Illinois.

This is significant in that Oregon men’s golf has been relying on Aaron Wise for quite some time now, but Raza undoubtedly came to play. On Wednesday, June 1, UO beat out Texas in the final round, taking home the university’s first NCAA men’s golf national championship.

I hope athletes and audience members alike have been carrying a kerchief in their khakis and keeping up with their allergy remedies while watching the parTEE this week, since the pollen count in Eugene is hard to PUTT aside.

Local Eugene news station KVAL has nicknamed the city “Achoo-gene” because the “Grass pollen is so high it is difficult to count,” according to Oregon Allergy Associates. To put things into scope, a “very high” amount of grass pollen on the ole’ NAB scale is above 200, and the amount in Eugene as of May 31 was 873.

However, if you have been personally victimized by local allergens before but haven’t been suffering this week, it may be because your allergy is to tree pollen, rather than grass, which was only at a moderate level. No runny nose, itchy eyes or throat closure for you Glen Coco.

The end of the 2015-16 school year is upon us, but by the looks of things, who would even know? The weather has yet to commit to springtime sunshine, construction on campus is as disrupting as ever and class exams are still being handed out as “midterms” even though the halfway-point was three weeks ago.

I am a person who is very much in need of closure, especially when it comes to finishing something as major as college, so how do I cope with my undergraduate career coming to an end when it doesn’t actually feel like it is? One thing that helps is taking a retrospective look at what has happened in the community over the last year.

Campus activism made some significant strides this year, more so than I’ve seen in any of my four years at UO. During fall term when the nation was abuzz about the Black Lives Matter movement, college campuses around the country marched in solidarity with the various young men who died at the hands of U.S. law enforcement throughout the year, and East 13th Street in Eugene was not left empty.

In addition to a rally put on by the UO Black Women of Achievement, the Black Student Task Force came up with a list of 12 demands on Nov. 17 for university administration in an effort to counter a number of racial issues on campus. Items on the list include changing certain building names that are KKK-related and integrating several historically Black fraternity and sorority organizations into UO Greek life.

The list has rightfully been acknowledged by administration, and in a letter by President Schill and VP for Equity and Inclusion, Yvette M. Alex-Assensoh, it is clear that everyone from administration to faculty and staff and student groups and individuals will (finally) be working towards a more inclusive university beginning in the fall of 2016.

Maybe one day, UO will be where it is with racial diversity awareness and implementation as it is with LGBTQ rights and recognition. On a list by College Choice, UO was ranked 42 out of 50 “Best LGBT Friendly Colleges and Universities” in 2016. This is the result of all the groups and individuals involved in the university’s various LGBT-centered organizations and services. The school has also created over 75 gender inclusive bathrooms on campus since last summer.

Undoubtedly, there are a lot of faults in society, many of which are amplified when on a university campus, and UO students continued to fight against these ills in a big way this year. Some students even pulled themselves out of the crowds to be a part of these campus-wide changes and ran for ASUO leadership positions during this past term.

Elections on campus are always entertaining for me to witness just because of the drama that surrounds them, and this year was no different. The three campaign slates fighting for seats in the student-governing body were I’m with UO, Duck Squad and One Oregon. I’m with UO overwhelmingly won positions in the school-wide elections with their executive ticket, Quinn Haaga, receiving 2,244 votes for the presidential seat during the runoff.

With it being a national election year as well, political drama was not limited to ASUO. The game of the American throne brought both Trump and Sanders to Eugene this spring, and the two rallies couldn’t have been more different. Now, Eugene’s liberalness is no secret, but I was surprised to see just how many fans of the Donald are among us. They came loud and proud in their monster trucks, trucker hats and other truck-things – I’m generalizing, of course – and wanted their pride for Trump (the racist) to be known. But I guess there wasn’t as much UO love for Trump as there was for Bernie, since the former did not tour the city or enjoy a Glenwood breakfast.

Politics can be polarizing, as can the spread of viruses on campus *brb, washing hands,* as well as sports, especially when it’s a fight between who does vs. who does not care that our men’s b-ball team made it to the Elite Eight round of March Madness, but I am both sad and happy to be leaving a place where there is cohesiveness in many aspects. So many students have been working to fix the problems on our campus, and the last year has given me motivation to live an active life in terms of righteousness, which in turn, gives me an opening in place of closure.

Everyone sees them in passing, many have a hard time remembering their shortened names and depending on what you study at UO, you can’t help but stereotype these individuals.

The University of Oregon campus consists of over 70 buildings on campus, which house over 270 science and liberal arts options. Every building is unique from another, with distinct elements of architecture and ambiance that all contribute to their individual characters.

So, if a few campus buildings were real people, these are what their stories would be.

Lillis comes from an old-school family in which female names are acceptable for men because of the traditional weight they carry. Think: Whitney and Leslie. He got into the Lundquist College of Business without any effort, since he inherited his father and grandfather’s skills in commerce, obviously.

This Business major with a double-minor in economics and Spanish (for his junior-year study abroad in Europe) would never be caught on campus without his perfectly pleated trousers that he should be endorsed on LinkedIn for. Lillis switches between a dry-fit Nike polo and crisp button-down throughout the week, neatly tucked in to show off the iPhone clip on his belt loop. He updated his no-sock Sperry’s look to dress-socks-only and penny loafers. He maintains his clean-cut appearance at the top of every hour with every coiffe to his comb-over and flick of his white gold Fossil watch.

But, from Wednesday thru Saturday after 9 p.m., Lillis carves out some leisure time with his esteemed fraternity colleagues in which they start at their lettered house and move their way from one end of East 13th Street to the next. The first round is always on Lillis and his introductory handshake with strangers is never a letdown.

While Lillis builds his career towards “anywhere on Wall Street, really,” McKenzie looks forward to getting her Masters in Library and Information Science to become, well, a librarian. She specializes in English Renaissance history during the week and looks forward to the BBC’s marathons of period pieces on the weekends.

When you open McKenzie’s closet, 50 shades of brown meet the eye and a spectrum of Dansko clogs to match. Her Portland upbringing is evident in the expert way she layers her clothes, serving her well in any type of weather from morning until evening.

McKenzie spends long hours on campus as she lives past East 20th Street, but she sees her daily 20-minute bike ride to a Bon Iver soundtrack as a treat. Her backpack is always fully loaded with granola and carrots to last her from sunrise to sunset, and of course, a good book.

Another avid biker and someone who likes to live away from the ruckus of campus is Lawrence who shares a house with his buddies near Hendricks Park. This Product Design major sees art in everything and the forested scene outside of Lawrence’s bedroom window serves as his muse. He didn’t always belong to the AA&A department, but after being a creative within the journalism school for a bit, Lawrence decided he wanted to still do art for marketing, but without the Allen Hall competitiveness.

Unlike McKenzie, Lawrence likes to stay up-to-date with trends and is well versed in everything-Apple. Technology is his “thing” as he uses platforms like Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter and Pinterest to express his creativity. Minimal is the aesthetic he goes for with his images, which has gained him a large fan base and the reason why he doesn’t need to hash tag his pictures anymore.

This minimalism has carried into Lawrence’s aesthetic IRL as well, as art so often does, causing his clothing collection to only consist of whites, blacks, grays and plaids. He was wearing “groutfits” before Drake and the “Hotline Bling” craze even surfaced. But once you get past Lawrence’s visual self-marketing, past his clear-framed Warby Parker glasses and his long-on-top, shaved-on-bottom hair, you see an outgoing guy who just wants to bond over a beer at The Pint Pot Public House.

Now that you know some more about a few people you often see in passing on campus, maybe try and uncover the lives of others like Erb, who only strangers call the EMU; or Robert of the Clark family who really is as intense as people say; and then, there’s Onyx and Willamette, notorious for the cadavers and other secrets kept in their depths.

Today in my history lecture, I had a hard time listening to a lesson about sexually transmitted diseases during the Victorian Era because of the loud sounds of machinery going on across the street.

The usual, pleasant noise of campus has continuously been drowned out this year due to all the construction, and it seems like when one project is done, another starts. The EMU, for example, is nearing its end in renovations, but then there’s the science library that’s still a work in progress and a Chapman Hall remodel is on the way.

It’s true that with construction comes both audible and visual ugliness, but the end product is usually worth it, no? I mean, the ogled-after, glass structure on the corner of 13th and Agate Street, nor Rome, were built in just one day.

It won’t be no Coliseum, but the science library seems to be coming together, slowly but surely, and  by July 2016, students and staff alike will be able to enjoy a more contemporary and useful space. With Cascade, Onyx and Willamette surrounding it, the Allan Price Science Commons will be above ground – unlike the old library that hadn’t been touched since ’62 – and will include a café and a lot more study space, including rooms designated for individual departments.

The way I see it is places like the science library are the breeding grounds for our future doctors, nurses, researchers and other science professionals, so these spaces should be made to be as beneficial to students as possible. We need these now-science majors to be able to successfully do things like catch and contain serious outbreaks of illnesses, such as norovirus.

PSA: If you are experiencing stomach pain, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting or symptoms of the like, visit the University Health Center ASAP. These are all possible results of having norovirus, a sickness that is said to be both very contagious and difficult to terminate. Over the last month or so, the Health Center has reported about 30 possible cases and 20 that meet the clinical criteria of the virus.

In order to keep our campus healthy, the UO Health Center medical director Richard Brunader says to keep commonly frequented areas sanitized. So, wipe down the next Stair Master you use. Pick up all the lettuce that falls out of your Chipotle bowl and onto the EMU tables. And don’t forget to get through the chorus of at least one Drake song while washing your hands.

As we all saw this past week, not all UO students know how to clean up after themselves. It has been a Duck tradition for some time now for members of Greek Life (and a handful of GDIs) to caravan down Interstate-5 at the end of May, grab an essential In-and-Out burger and enjoy the scenery of Northern California’s Lake Shasta. Along with sightseeing, the houseboats and tents full of college students have (just a smidge of) fun.

After a group traveled south to experience the aforementioned festivities this past weekend, images of trashed Lake Shasta grounds surfaced on Facebook and went viral. These pictures from Facebook user Jennifer Vick Cox showed the obvious presence of individuals affiliated with the University of Oregon given the amount of Duck paraphernalia captured at the site, as well as visible Greek letters. For example, “Lambda Chi Alpha,” a UO fraternity, was written on a cooler, in the company of the following statement: “Do you wanna do some blow man?”

As much as I love the movie Frozen and the song, “Do you want to build a snowman?” the actions of these individuals are absolutely tasteless and unnecessary. The fraternity has been suspended by its national headquarters, and on May 24, men of the UO chapter apologized for the destruction at Lake Shasta saying they would work with the U.S. forest service to help with cleaning.

OK, now it’s everyone else’s turn to apologize. Lambda wasn’t the only group there, and what about the university itself?

Further footage from the ever-popular Slaughterhouse Island at Shasta from KRCR News shows yet another cooler with the Greek letters, Sigma Phi Epsilon, and the words, “Make America Great Again,” as a nice, cherry-on-top to the story.

Trump fans or not, no group of people should leave the amount of trash and equipment behind as this weekend’s Shasta visitors did. How about instead of “shastasizing” in a physical way every spring, those who make the trip in the future do some “shastasizing” in terms of morals and common courtesy instead?

It’s week eight and almost time to lift a weight. Don’t give in to too much recreational bait but have your fun at a justifiable rate. “Dale.”

To answer the question on the tip of everyone’s tongue about what I’m doing after graduation, or rather what I’m not doing: no making rhymes for me, nor quoting Pitbull ever again.

To all my fellow graduates, whether you have a set post-graduation plan or not, I think we’re all in need of one last inspirational push into the real world. We’ve spent the last several years in school, listening to spiels left and right, but our commencement into the future is quickly approaching. When the day comes, there is no doubt we’ll hear speeches that are meant to give us both closure for the world we’re leaving and optimism for the one we’re about to enter, and I’m very much looking forward to it.

Over the last couple weeks, many colleges across the U.S. (that are not on the quarter system as we are) celebrated the accomplishments of thousands of graduates, and some of these ceremonies were graced with a star keynote speaker.

On May 7 at Washington D.C.’s Howard University and on May 15 at Rutgers University in New Jersey, President Barack Obama spoke to members of the class of 2016 with poise and wisdom. He had a few overlapping themes in the two speeches, but also some unique, standout points that I appreciated.

At Howard, the president was able to connect with his audience in terms of identity markers, specifically one of race. He said to the students of this historically black university, “Be confident in your heritage. Be confident in your blackness. There’s no one way to be black. Take it from somebody who’s seen both sides of the debate about whether I’m black enough.” He went on to talk about the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and continued to keep his words important and incredibly relevant.

On Sunday at Rutgers, the POTUS made his speech a little more political in that he took some not-so-subtle jabs at (Mc)Donald Trump. He never mentioned the Republican presidential candidate, but he did mention a few key aspects of Trump’s controversial plan for the U.S. From “isolating or disparaging Muslims,” to Trump generally being ignorant, Obama’s message to the graduates was, “It’s not cool to not know what you’re talking about.”

Obama is set to speak at one more graduation ceremony this year, unfortunately not at the University of Oregon, but at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on June 3.

Aside from giving speeches at graduations, the president continued to do good for the U.S. education system this week. According to USA Today, on May 13, the Obama Administration told “all U.S. public school districts to allow students to use restrooms and locker rooms ‘consistent with their gender identity’ in a letter from the Department of Education.” This policy was issued in response to the controversy surrounding the topic of transgender students and whether it should be permissible for them to use bathrooms according to the gender they’ve assigned to themselves, rather than the gender written on their birth certificates. I applaud Obama for paying attention to a marginalized community, and I encourage others to try it out.

One team that doesn’t need to hold try-outs for awhile is the Golden State Warriors who got to celebrate #AnotherOne this week in the fifth and final game of the NBA Western Conference Semi-Finals match-up against Portland. But the ‘Zers should be proud, since it wasn’t a blowout game, ending with a final score of 121-125. Mr. Zero, or Damian Lillard, and the rest of the Blazers went all-out in the paint on May 11, but the Bay Area’s bae, Steph Curry, just couldn’t be beat.

The man has no competition, which was clear at the end of the game on Tuesday when Curry received the 2016 Most Valuable Player award for the second year in a row. He’s the first player to ever win MVP by a unanimous vote.

Now, we’ll have to stay tuned to see whether Steph and his Warriors will come out on top in the remainder of the championship games, or if it’ll be the Thunder, Raptors or Lebron’s Cavaliers.

Diet and exercise are staple items to the modern outlook of living a healthy life. But the whole phenomenon of eating right and regularly working out has turned into a sub-culture of its own in which there is a spectrum, and depending on how much someone invests in themselves in this particular way, we tend to label them with stereotypes.

Think: “Gym Rat,” “Yogi/Yogini,” “Spin Head” and, my personal favorite, “Weekend Warrior.”

This subject, or way of life if you will, became increasingly interesting for me as my time in college progressed. Not only have articles, listicles and videos with titles like “The Ultimate Guide to Gym Lingo” and “Problems Only Girls Who Lift Understand” gained more popularity recently, but the way college-aged individuals treat and implement diet and exercise into their lives has also drawn me in.

These four years of studies are, as a whole, one giant juggling act. Many are conditioned to do well academically, while achieving in extra curricular activities as well, and then there’s keeping a social life afloat, all while simultaneously making money to survive. Since this is the case for a lot of people on campus, the question of ‘where does eating right and working out fit in?’ is often the question people ask themselves.

But keeping a healthy lifestyle is beneficial for the mind and body so students should make time in their daily schedules to stay fit and know what they’re doing throughout the process.

As I go around asking friends and strangers why they do or do not exercise regularly, the do-nots often use the excuse that they don’t know what they’re doing exactly, so why waste time at the gym when there is so many other things going on in life.

Workout enthusiast and UO senior Chase Clemens explains how seeing results is a great incentive to get someone to continue going to the gym.

“Once you start to see results, working out just becomes part of your daily routine because of that reward component,” Clemens says. “I do understand, though, how it can be intimidating when it’s new and you don’t want to look like you don’t know what you’re doing and the gym is crowded.”

The advertising student exercises for two hours a day, on average, switching up his routine every so often. His activities evolve based off research he carries out, whether it be following fellow enthusiasts on social media, or finding them in person and seeking advice from expert trainers.

Staying fit is not a new concept for Clemens who formally played sports his entire life, that is, until he began college. From football, to baseball and hockey, Clemens ended his participation in team sports when he started at UO because of the high caliber that university athletes are expected to perform at. But this didn’t take away from Clemens’ deep value in staying active.

“I’m not trying to be a body builder or anything – but I do respect those who are – my working out is mostly to keep my athleticism and have a healthy lifestyle,” Clemens says.

The physical advantage of exercise is obvious, but the mental component also involved with staying active is a powerful one that often gets overlooked.

As someone who studies the body, biology major Jordan Melchor sees exercise as a good mental strengthener.

“When things get hard, it’s really easy to give up and quit, especially in school, but with weigh training and running, I put that extra push in when it gets tough, and then eventually, I see the results of not giving up,” Melchor says.

It took the freshman both fall and winter term to really figure out how to balance a healthy college life, but now at the end of her first year, the runner sees exercise as a great way to counter the stress of school life.

“Whenever I have a couple hours in between classes, I see it as the perfect time to go to the gym and I don’t really see any reason not to go. What else would I be doing during that time? Say I’ll study but really just sit on my phone honestly,” Melchor says.

In addition to carving time out of one’s day to make a trip to the Student Recreation Center or to go on a run through town, it is also important for people to eat as healthy as possible. Students are often on a tight budget in school, and shopping at all-organic markets, for example, isn’t always possible but knowing your goals and how to achieve them can help as a guide.

“It depends on what you’re trying to achieve, for me, I want to build muscle, so I do high-protein and low-carb like a lot of chicken, eggs and veggies,” Melchor says.

Below are some more tips from both Clemens and Melchor on how to live a healthier life as a college student.

Diet advice, according to Clemens:

– Try to cook for yourself as much as possible, rather than eating out, so you can know exactly what you’re putting into your body.

– Leftovers of the meals you cook are great to turn into snacks for the days you stay on campus for a while. Take: lettuce wraps. You can stuff them with things like meat (lean protein is preferred), vegetables and maybe even throw a fried egg in there.

– Juices and shakes are also great to make to take to class and work, and the powder used in protein shakes can also double as a good substitute for flour. Protein pancakes (Clemens’ favorite), for example, can be made with protein powder instead of flour and smashed bananas can substitute for butter.

Exercise advice, according to both Clemens and Melchor:

– Finding a balance between weight training and cardio is a must, so that you’re working all parts of your body, as well as losing bad, stored fat and gaining muscle in a healthy way.

– If cutting fat is your main goal at the moment, “fasted cardio” is a great way to do this. This is when you go for a run or do some sort of cardio activity before you eat anything, so in the morning, right when you wake up is best.

– Also for burning the most fat, it is best to stick with high-intensity exercises – i.e. all-out running for a short amount of time then rest, boxing, circuit training – rather than doing something for an hour maybe at one sustained pace.

– Separating parts of the body and focusing on one or two each day is helpful in terms of preventing exhaustion and extreme soreness. For example, “leg day,” or biceps, triceps, chest, back, shoulders, butt, etc.

– Working out in partners is a great way to start out. It helps with boosting confidence, adds variety to activities and can serve as motivation.

– Time is the biggest issue for many students, but 45-minute workouts can be incredibly beneficial – don’t think one-and-a-half to two free hours is a must to get and/or remain in shape.

– Numbers like body fat percentage, bench weight or actual weight are helpful indicators of where you are in your fitness and can be used as goals, but they should not be used as your sole incentives or measurements.

“This term is going by so fast, yet so slow,” said everyone about every term ever.

It’s week seven! You’re probably at that point in the 10-week term when you’re oozing with confidence in one class, but ready to switch to the pass/no pass grading option for another, all while you’ve made it a goal to not skip another yoga class.

As a senior who has gone through the trials and tribulations of about 12 full-time quarters, one of the greatest feelings I’ve experienced is when a class proves to be applicable in the real world. This last week, I got to put my GEOL 306 Volcanoes and Earthquakes knowledge to use when updates about Mount St. Helens hit the news.

Over the last eight weeks, “a swarm of more than 130 earthquakes has been detected” beneath the volcano in Washington, as reported by The Guardian. Scary, right? Most of these shakes have been extremely weak, at 0.5 magnitudes or less. The largest, so far, was at a 1.3-level on the Richter scale. The U.S. Geological Survey said this week that these baby-earthquakes are “steadily increasing” with about 40 being located each week.

It was May of 1980 when St. Helens erupted most recently, but all these minor convulsions don’t mean she’s about to blow again, necessarily. It is believed by seismologists and volcanologists (and me since I’m a volcano-earthquake expert now) that stores of magma are recharging, and this can happen for a long time without any eruptions. As Frank Sinatra and Ariana Grande once sang, “you’ll never know.”

But in this world, devastation is more often brought on by people than natural disasters, which is what’s happening in Brazil right now. The country’s capital, Rio de Janeiro, was chosen as the site of the 2016 Summer Olympics, and as it usually goes, preparation for the international Games is costing Brazil a lot of money, effort and lives.

There’s chaos occurring within Rio’s infrastructure. The Zika virus and pollution in the local water are extreme health risks. There’s more and more violence breaking out in Rio’s favelas, or shantytowns, with each new day leading up to show time.

A little commotion has been going on in the States too, and it’s not all surrounding the upcoming presidential elections. Since mid-April, a number of employees belonging to Verizon Communications Inc. have been on strike because of their contracts, and on May 5, the protestors crashed Verizon’s annual shareholder meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Others protested in various cities across the U.S.

The No. 1 American wireless service provider is shortchanging its Internet, telephone and television network technicians and customer service representatives, which is why nearly 40,000 of these workers who have around $1.3 billion in Verizon’s stock holdings have been on strike for four weeks now. They are fighting for offshore call-center jobs, job relocations and healthcare coverage. I’m all for unions that combat maltreatment from corporations like Verizon. I mean, for the amount my parents pay for our family plan, Verizon should be including health benefits for its customers, too #VerizonCare.

You know what — for the amount we students pay for UO tuition, we should be provided with health insurance as well. Or maybe just some free food for students here and there? But our athletic program would be neglected if we common folk were fed, and events like the Oregon Twilight meet wouldn’t be possible.

On May 6 at Hayward Field, high school and college students and alumnus athletes threw discs, contorted their bodies over bars and did air-splits to overcome hurdles for the 2016 Oregon Twilight Invitational meet. It was an absolute (track and) field day!

The event was also the Oregon Ducks’ last regular-season meet and senior night. Olympic gold medal decathlete and ex-Duck Ashton Eaton was in attendance. The star surpassed the 400-meter meet record at 45.78 seconds, and that was only for second place, following former Oregon All-American Mike Berry.

Terveisiä Suomi! I’ve taken a break from the P-N-Dub and am currently sitting on the balcony of a fifth-floor (IKEA-drenched) apartment in Helsinki, the capital of Finland. It’s truly a beautiful place that seems to only experience wintertime and uses pastels for building colors. It’s also the host of the 2016 World Press Freedom Day conference, which is why I am here, alongside four SOJC colleagues.

Back across the pond was the annual Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York City. On May 1, celebrities used the excuse of ‘fundraising’ to get all dolled-up and wear works of art on their bodies.

The night has always been known for stars looking both ravishing and ridiculous, and this year’s event was no different with its theme of ‘Manus x Mashina: Fashion in an Age of Technology.’ Along with the costumes for the night, the guest list sure didn’t disappoint.

For all you pop culture fiends, Gigi Hadid and Zayn Malik made their red carpet debut, which Hadid needed a $2,000 manicure for — obviously. The Olsen Twins had too much fun and almost smiled. Emma Watson oozed classic elegance. Kimye looked as they always do: confusingly confident. Blake Lively attended in a prom dress. And then, there was Bey #LongLivetheQueen(B).

As mentioned last week, Beyoncé dropped her visual album, Lemonade, and Drake followed suit with the release of Views.

Everyone can stop worrying because now, ”Hotline Bling” is no longer a song-orphan, it now claims the No. 20 spot in the newest Drake family. Along with “Hotline Bling,” the other 19 tracks on this album are absolute fire, which points to the fact that Views will undoubtedly go platinum in the next few days (meaning it will reach 1 million album sales). In just its first night, 600K copies were sold and Views in its entirety was streamed over 1 million times this last week.

Drake’s success is no surprise. He knows what the people want, he realizes the current market demand and he and Rihanna have yet to disappoint on a collaboration. When considering top rappers of our time, I always choose him.

University administration had a lot of choosing to do last week with its search for new deans of both the School of Journalism and Communication and the School of Architecture and Allied Arts. The SOJC’s new Edwin L. Artzt Dean will be Juan-Carlos Molleda, as announced by University Provost Scott Coltrane on April 28.

Molleda is currently at the University of Florida, so a change of environment is most definitely in his near future. As for A&AA Dean, Coltrane deemed Christoph Lindner most fit for the job who will make the trek from his current gig at the University of Amsterdam.

Senator Bernie Sanders made quite a trek last week to little ol’ Springfield to get all riled up at a rally, and the turnout for Bernie was pretty remarkable. It was his first visit to the Eugene/Springfield area, and people were stoked. The rally took place on April 28 at Island Park.

Mr. Optimism then made his way to the UO campus and downtown Eugene. As he was eating at Glenwood – eggs benedict or bust – my social media newsfeeds were flooded with photos and videos of people meeting the senator and touching him to make sure he’s real, since all his promises for this nation aren’t. Bern.

The city is preparing for another presidential candidate visit, and I’m not sure how to feel about this one. Bernie’s rally was easy for me to skip out on because, with him, you can sort of predict the points he will cover and the bits he’ll get overly heated for, but with someone like Donald Trump, you never know.

The world’s most talked about ginger will be in Eugene on Friday, May 6 at 7 p.m. at the Lane Events Center. With it being Mr. Trumpet’s first visit to Oregon, the meeting shall be very interesting.

Terveisiä Suomi! I’ve taken a break from the P-N-Dub and am currently sitting on the balcony of a fifth-floor (IKEA-drenched) apartment in Helsinki, the capital of Finland. It’s truly a beautiful place that seems to only experience wintertime and uses pastels for building colors. It’s also the host of the 2016 World Press Freedom Day conference, which is the reason as to why I am here, alongside four fellow SOJC colleagues.

Just across the pond from this country of islands was the annual Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York City. On May 1, celebrities used the excuse of ‘fundraising’ to get all dolled-up and wear works of art on their bodies.

The night has always been known for stars looking both ravishing and ridiculous, and this year’s event was no different with its theme being, ‘Manus x Mashina: Fashion in an Age of Technology.’ Along with people’s costumes for the night, the guest list sure didn’t disappoint.

For all you pop culture fiends, Gigi Hadid and Zayn Malik made their red carpet debut, which Hadid needed a $2,000 manicure for, obviously. The Olsen Twins had too much fun and almost smiled. Emma Watson oozed classic elegance. Kimye looked as they always do: confusingly confident. Blake Lively attended in a prom dress. And then, there was Bey. #LongLivetheQueen(B)

As mentioned last week, Beyoncé dropped her visual album, Lemonade, and following suit was Drake this week with the release of Views.

Everyone can stop worrying because now, ”Hotline Bling” is no longer a song-orphan, it now claims the no. 20 spot in the new Drake family. Along with “Hotline Bling,” the other 19 tracks on this album are absolute fire, which points to the fact that Views will undoubtedly go platinum in the next few days, meaning it will reach 1 million album sales. In just its first night, 600k copies were sold and Views in its entirety was streamed over 1 million times this last week.

Drake’s success is no surprise to me. He knows what the people want, he realizes the current market demand and he and Rihanna have yet to disappoint on a collaboration. When considering top rappers of our time, I always choose him.

University administration had a lot of choosing to do this last week with its search for new deans for both the School of Journalism and Communication and the School of Architecture and Allied Arts. The SOJC’s new Edwin L. Artzt Dean will be Juan-Carlos Molleda, as announced by University Provost Scott Coltrane on April 28.

Molleda is currently at the University of Florida, so a change of environment is most definitely in his near future. As for A&AA Dean, Coltrane deemed Christoph Lindner most fit for the job who will make the trek from his current gig at the University of Amsterdam.

Senator Bernie Sanders made quite a trek himself this last week to little ole’ Springfield to get all riled up at a rally and the turnout for Bernie was pretty remarkable. It was his first visit to the Eugene/Springfield area, and people were stoked. The rally took place on April 28 at Island Park.

Mr. Optimism then made his way to the UO campus and Downtown Eugene. As he was eating at Glenwood – eggs benedict or bust – my social media newsfeeds were flooded with photos and videos of people meeting the senator and touching him to make sure he’s real, since all his promises for this nation aren’t. Bern.

The city is preparing for another presidential candidate visit, and I’m not sure how to feel about this one. Bernie’s rally was easy for me to skip out on because with him, you can sort of predict the points he will cover and the bits he’ll get overly heated for, but with someone like Donald Trump, you never know.

The world’s most talked about ginger will be in Eugene on Friday, May 6 at 7 p.m. The location has yet to go public, bringing some drama into the mix already. With it being Mr. Trumpet’s first visit to Oregon, the meeting shall be very interesting.