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 

the University of Michigan since 1890.

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

