I
get sick a lot. Like a lot a lot.
“My parents never let me skip school,”
was a jealous line I got growing up. And
why wouldn’t they be jeal-
ous? For kids who don’t get
sick often, staying home
once a week would seem
excessive, perhaps luxuri-
ous. As far as they knew, I
was watching cartoons and
eating cookies all day while
they were solving math
problems.
Of course, I wasn’t. I was
doing all of the schoolwork
for that day from my couch,
and I was catching up on
sleep that didn’t come to me at night. The
sleep was a big part of it. I got less and less
sleep every weeknight, and by the end of the
week I was exhausted to my breaking point.
I’ve gotten migraines since I was in first
grade, and they became more frequent in
middle and high school. When I was over-
tired, the migraines came more frequently.
I would wake up with them on Friday morn-
ings and be unable to leave my bed. And that’s
how it became almost weekly that I would
miss Friday mornings. But only mornings,
because I knew had a limited number of sick
days and that I would end up needing those
afternoons later.
The afternoons were for illnesses — influ-
enzas and other bugs that would crop up in
school. I got my flu shot every year, and I still
caught the dreaded virus every time it swept
the building. I caught the cold in the winter
and the weird cold that comes around in the
spring. If it was contagious, I had it, and you
could bet I would be at school with it in the
mornings until it wore me down.
Sick days were a strategy, and my sickness
was managed like clockwork: I would be late
to school on Fridays to sleep off my migraines,
and I would leave school early whenever
there was a disease floating around. It prob-
ably looked a little too neat. I worried people
would think I was faking it. I wondered if I
was faking it. I worried I was imagining my
diseases, because it seemed impossible that
anyone could have such a tendency for fall-
ing ill. It seemed so improbable that I tried
to talk myself into believing I was imagin-
ing my headaches, joint pains, stomach aches
and tiredness. I hated missing school and I
couldn’t wait to get to college — the promised
land of flexible schedules.
I think most students can predict my dis-
illusionment upon arriving at college. Large
lectures can be skipped if you’re willing to
put in the effort of teaching yourself the mate-
rial. Teaching myself occasional lessons from
home was something I was used to doing in
high school. But small lectures, discussions
and labs almost always have an attendance
grade worked into the syllabus. Don’t get me
wrong: when class isn’t 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
every day, it gets a lot easier to attend. And I
have developed a few tricks as my class stand-
ing got higher and I had more control over my
schedule. I try to avoid scheduling my days in
huge chunks of time so I can nap in between
classes if I’m getting a migraine, and I don’t
schedule work or classes for Friday mornings.
But my control over the situation ends there.
I’m still living at the whims of unpredict-
ably falling ill. Because I rarely have more
than two classes back-to-back, I’m pretty
good at rolling out of bed and faking wellness
for three hours before rolling back into bed.
My philosophy is usually that if I’m not vom-
iting at that exact moment, I can be in class.
It’s not always doable. Even with my strat-
egies, I miss a lot of class. I always use up
my allotted freebie days that the attendance
grade sometimes allows. Then it gets trickier,
because I have to start explaining myself. I’ve
sent more “sorry, but I’m sick today” e-mails
than I can count. Once I’ve sent the same pro-
fessor multiple, I start to feel weird about it.
I start feeling like I need to specify the
problems I have in order to be believed, but
I don’t want to tell everyone the details of my
personal life just because they are assigning a
grade. I’ve done it before (trust me, there are
instructors on this campus who know more
about my bodily systems than some of my
doctors). But I don’t like it.
I’m so used to combating disease that I
don’t even bother doctors with symptoms I
know how to handle. I rarely have a doctor’s
note excusing me, which has never bothered
me because I feel far too old to be bringing
notes to the teacher (and most classes actu-
ally allot you a limited number of excused
absences). A good doctor’s note would pass
on information I don’t necessarily need my
professors to know.
For example, I got diagnosed with an
auto-immune disorder last summer. I worry
instructors might look at it differently than I
do. For me it came as a relief more than any-
thing else. It spoke to my susceptibility to ill-
ness, my pains, my difficulties sleeping. The
diagnosis was validation: yes, you were sick,
really. It was the reassurance I needed, but
not information I need my graders to know.
When I remember growing up, I don’t
remember a childhood of illness. One of my
childhood friends likes to tell me I was “sick-
ly.” The word frustrates me, because it leaves
me with the image of a paling child, frail
and bedridden. That wasn’t and isn’t me. I’m
tenaciously fighting to spend as much time at
school as I can. I like to think I’m resilient.
— Sydney Hartle can be reached
at hartles@umich.edu.
SYDNEY
HARTLE
Opinion
JENNIFER CALFAS
EDITOR IN CHIEF
AARICA MARSH
and DEREK WOLFE
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS
LEV FACHER
MANAGING EDITOR
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
tothedaily@michigandaily.com
Edited and managed by students at
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Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s editorial board.
All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4 — Tuesday, February 3, 2015
I am resilient
I
’ll never forget my first love.
Our eyes first met when I
was 17 and extremely impres-
sionable.
She
was
seven,
but
the
age
differ-
ence didn’t seem
to
matter.
Her
skin was velvet,
her body was the
color of the Gulf
of Mexico and she
had a moon roof
that seemed to
extend for days.
She didn’t have
a name, and she
didn’t have much to say. My friends
and family liked to call her 2003
Ford Taurus. She gave me every-
thing I had ever wanted: freedom.
Using my new job at Jimmy
John’s as leverage, I had finally
convinced my parents that I was
mature enough to handle the
responsibility of my own car. Look-
ing back, I’m pretty sure they were
just tired of chauffeuring around
my pre-teen brothers.
I believe in life after love, but
that didn’t make losing my Taurus
any easier. The last day we spent
together feels like yesterday. It was
a freezing February afternoon, and
we were heading home after a long
day at Andover High School. A mile
from home and bumping Jason
Derulo’s “In My Head,” we turned
right onto the winding west side of
Hickory Grove Road. About 30 feet
ahead, a Toyota Sequoia, bearing a
striking resemblance to the grim
reaper, was backing toward us on
the wrong side of the road. Taurus
was a fighter, but she was no match
for black ice. I pumped her breaks
with desperation as she honked
for life. It was too late. At a speed
of just 25 miles per hour, we slid 30
feet and collided into the Toyota,
which made out with just a scratch.
My car now resembled a pile of
scrap metal.
After dialing 911, the officer
neglected to write the driver of the
Toyota a reckless driving ticket,
because legally both of us were at
fault. Although I was obeying the
speed limit at 25 miles per hour, I
was not driving “safely for the con-
ditions.” The conditions of course,
being an unsalted, pothole-ridden
residential ice rink disguised as
a road. I’m not the first, or last,
Michigander to fall victim to Mich-
igan’s dangerous roads. According
to Michigan State Police, in 2013,
289,061 crashes were reported to
the police in Michigan: 0.3 per-
cent of these accidents resulted
in fatalities, 18 percent resulted in
injury and 82 percent resulted in
property damage.
Injury aside, as a teen I was
extremely fortunate to have parents
who financed both my car and the
insanely expensive auto-insurance
that comes along with every teenage
driver in Michigan. In Michigan,
drivers are legally required to pur-
chase a minimum basic no-fault auto
insurance. As of 2012, the average
driver in Michigan paid $1,048.87
per year for auto insurance. Insur-
ance rates are even more for teenage
drivers, who are statistically most
likely to be involved in an accident.
In Detroit, the average law abid-
ing driver pays $5,941 per year for
no-fault auto insurance, the high-
est rate of any city in the United
States Detroit Police estimate that
60 percent of drivers in Detroit are
uninsured, and risk paying a $200 to
$500 fine and a year in jail if caught
driving without insurance.
The average Detroiter makes
$26,325 per year, and commutes 26
minutes to work.
Working Detroiters are expected
to spend 23 percent of their income
on no-fault auto insurance. No won-
der the city has seen a declining pop-
ulation the entirety of my existence.
Sure it’s expensive, but if you pay
for no-fault auto insurance, after
an accident the insurance compa-
ny pays to fix the car, right? Keep
dreaming. Basic no-fault auto insur-
ance in Michigan does not cover
collision, and if you want it, expect
to pay an additional premium. Colli-
sion insurance probably isn’t a wise
investment when your car is worth
about $3,500. No-fault auto insur-
ance covers you in event of an auto
injury, as well as property protec-
tion, which covers up to $1,000,000
in property damage. Keep in mind a
car isn’t considered “property.”
Approximately 52,000 people
were injured in auto accidents in
Michigan in 2013, and 881 were
killed. At a rate of 4.74 million
registered vehicles in Michigan
in 2012, Michiganders spent just
under $5 billion on auto insurance.
I have a hard time believing that
auto insurance companies right-
fully awarded anywhere near that
amount to accident victims. No
wonder Flo from Progressive is
always so irritatingly peppy.
Michiganders
aren’t
terrible
drivers. North Carolina has a simi-
lar population to Michigan, and
in 2013, their accident rate per
licensed driver was 0.8 percent less
than Michigan’s.
The average annual snowfall in
Charlotte, North Carolina, is four
inches. Detroit’s average annual
snowfall is 11.05 times higher than
North Carolina’s: 51 inches. We
need to be spending more on pre-
ventative measures, like infrastruc-
ture, salt trucks and snowplows,
and less gambling on potential
health care expenses.
Lawmakers recently proposed
a one-percent increase in Michi-
gan’s sales tax, and voters will
decide on this measure in May. If
the tax passes, it will generate just
over $1 billion in tax revenue to
invest in our roads. No-fault auto
insurance, forced on every driv-
ing Michigander, costs citizens
more than $5 billion per year. If
we used just one-fifth of this on
our roads, we could probably pre-
vent thousands of accidents from
occurring in the first place. No-
fault auto insurance paired with an
increase in sales tax will financially
cripple those already struggling in
Michigan, especially in Detroit. If
Michigan is going to increase sales
tax to seven percent, we need to
eliminate Michigan’s no-fault auto
insurance requirement.
— Lauren Richmond can be
reached at lerichmo@umich.edu.
LAUREN
RICHMOND
No more no-fault
Claire Bryan, Regan Detwiler, Devin Eggert, David Harris, Jordyn Kay, Aarica Marsh,
Victoria Noble, Michael Paul, Allison Raeck, Melissa Scholke, Michael Schramm,
Matthew Seligman, Linh Vu, Mary Kate Winn, Jenny Wang, Derek Wolfe
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
E-mail GabriElla at GabsmEy@umich.Edu
GABRIELLA MEYER
T
he song “Breakout” by OPM on “The
New Guy” soundtrack said it best:
“Don’t need no edu-
cation, already know Cali-
fornia’s a nation.” California
is a massive state. With 38.8
million residents, it is the
most populous state and
third-largest geographically
in the United States. It really
is a mini-nation within the
country. There was even a
proposal to split California
into six smaller states this
past year. It, of course, did
not even get on the ballot.
The point of this is to explain that Califor-
nia is a unique and diverse state. Drive east
through the extremely liberal Bay Area, and
you will soon end up in small rural towns
that are not much different than those in the
Midwest. Drive south and you will hit L.A.
and San Diego, made up of large populations
of Latin American Catholics and Hollywood
divas. The Bay Area has its own social norms,
demographics and political ideals that are
very different from the rest of California.
In the same way, so does Ann Arbor. When
I first started researching the University,
I came across a line that said: “Ann Arbor:
The Berkeley of the Midwest.” Ann Arbor
is a liberal hub in the middle of a conserva-
tive state. The actual University part of Ann
Arbor is populated with people from these
conservative areas. While they are young and
educated, which makes them more likely to
be Democratic, they still have the traditional
values of a conservative home, most impor-
tantly when it comes to marriage.
During my time at Michigan, I have noticed
a certain fixation on marriage that was com-
pletely foreign to me. While the average age
of marriage for women in California is only
0.4 years higher than in Michigan, (26.8 ver-
sus 26.4 years of age, respectively), I feel like
the discrepancy is much greater when I com-
pare my experiences in the Bay Area to that
26.4 in Michigan.
The Bay Area is a very career- and indi-
viduality-oriented place, and the idea of
following a guy instead of your career is on
par with being a Republican in terms of the
stigma attached to it. Marrying your college
or high-school sweetheart never seemed like
a feasible or desirable goal to me. My parents
are old, 60 and 65, and met each other well
into their 30s. My mom got married in black.
Many of my friends’ parents are divorced
and not looking for a second marriage. While
growing up in Palo Alto, these things just
seemed like the norm, but after moving to
Michigan, I was exposed to a very different
lifestyle and way of thinking.
The parents of my college friends are
much younger than my parents, almost 10
to 15 years. None are divorced, most mar-
ried their college partners and many started
having kids at an early age. The people I have
met in Michigan focus on the endurance of
their relationships. They wonder, “Could I
see myself marrying this person in 10 years?”
Marriage comes up 100 times more in my con-
versations here than at home. By my junior
year, it seemed like every one of my friends
was in a long-term relationship and discuss-
ing the future with their significant other.
The closest I’ve come to talking about mar-
riage was this past winter break in Palo Alto,
when I discussed an “alliance ceremony” with
my close friend and her boyfriend, as they
joked about having one instead of a wedding.
Many of my friends from California are in
some type of open relationship. Because many
of my friends go to school out of state, they
A marriage of values
live their lives four months at a time.
For the four months they are in the
same town as their significant other,
whether it is home or college, they
are monogamous, but as soon as they
are a plane ride away, the commit-
ment becomes more relaxed. They
will still Skype, text and visit each
other, but they also allow their part-
ners and themselves to have flings
with the people in their immediate
environment. They try to enjoy the
time they have with each other for
what it is without putting the added
pressure of “the future.”
While the future can be a scary
concept when in a relationship,
it can also be exciting and enjoy-
able to imagine. Planning a life
with the person you love can make
the future a destination instead
of an unknown. Michigan rela-
tionships understand this, while I
feel the relationships I have wit-
nessed in California overlook this
pleasant aspect.
But
long-distance
and
long-
term relationships are extremely
hard. I have seen them cause argu-
ments and sometimes ultimately
destroy the relationships. Those four
months away during summer are
a hard obstacle to overcome. But I
have also seen and experienced the
jealousy and insecurity that arises
from allowing someone you love
to have free reign for a majority of
a year.
I have had Michiganders tell me
they could see me never getting
married, living in a committed rela-
tionship but never committing to
something as traditional as a mar-
riage. This is inaccurate. While
having interesting life experiences
trumps finding someone to settle
down with for the next decade,
Northern Californians and Mid-
westerns both want to find some-
one cool with whom to hang out and
watch Netflix until we drop dead.
— Jesse Klein can be reached
at jekle@umich.edu.
JESSE
KLEIN
SEX.
DRUGS.
UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATION.
LET’S TALK.
Edit board: every Monday and Wednesday at 6 p.m. Email: opinion@michigandaily.com