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

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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Wednesday, September 16, 2015

E

lisabeth Kübler-Ross’ 1969 
book “On Death and Dying” 
proposed a new and revo-

lutionary 
model 

for predicting the 
emotions 
associ-

ated with loss and 
tragedy in human 
beings — we know 
it today as the “five stages of grief.” 
Ross’s model has been modified since 
its original publication to include 
potential grief-causing life events less 
traumatic than losing a loved one. I 
suppose Ross didn’t expect that anoth-
er source of grief could eventually be 
freshman-year dorm assignments, of 
all things.

A common question among stu-

dents when socializing both in and 
outside of class begins with the ever-
popular “where are you living?” 
It’s a question that can turn into a 
moment of bonding or elecit a sigh of 
jelousy, especially when one’s living 
situation is completely out of their 
control, as is the case with freshmen 
and many sophomores.

Acclimating to college is arguably 

one of the biggest transitions we stu-
dents will face in our lives. We learn 
to become independent while find-
ing a happy medium between work 
and school. Our living situation is 
crucial to success on both sides of 
this balance. Ideally, we would want 
to both focus and relax, which is 
hard to do with a small room and 
person we’ve never met before. And 
with most students entering the 
housing system blindly, all we can do 
is hope and pray that we somehow 
end up with a carbon copy of our-
selves for a roommate. So, as we are 
forced to wait for contracts to come 
out, we do what any rational human 
being would do in our situation. We 
begin the paranoia.

Words that were once centered 

around things like “organized” 
and “clean” and “goes to bed at a 
respectable time” shift and morph 
into more realistic things like, “Will 
her boyfriend be a problem?” or “Is 
this girl a psychopath?” It’s a never-
ending cycle of unlikely situations 
that we use to torture ourselves just 
enough to prepare for the worst. 
Thus, housing becomes probably 
the most painful torture device in 
the dungeons of our mind.

At this point, I am not afraid to 

admit that the thought of ending up 
on North Campus kept me awake at 

night as soon as contracts began to 
be released. In possibly the biggest 
first-world problem ever phrased, 
I was worried about getting to the 
closest Starbucks without taking a 
bus to feed my late-night cravings. 
You heard me right. So I thanked 
whatever deity had taken pity on 
this anxiety-ridden college fresh-
man when the words “North Cam-
pus” did not appear on my housing 
contract. I began a happy dance, 
subsequently stopping dead in my 
tracks when a thought occurred — 
where on Earth was Mary Mark-
ley Hall? It was at that point I went 
through what I now refer to as “The 
Five Stages of Residence Hall Grief.”

The first stage was denial. I had 

looked up the residence hall in which I 
was to spend my first year of college in 
and I was in utter, complete denial. So 
much so that I refreshed the browser 
twice and read the assignment out 
loud just to make sure I wasn’t hal-
lucinating or having a nightmare or 
anything. It was insane and I was 
insane for acting like a spoiled child 
for those first few moments. I didn’t 
care that I was going to a top univer-
sity or that my roommate and I might 
immediately hit it off, as we eventu-
ally did, or even that I didn’t end up on 
North Campus because in my mind, 
I was even more isolated than North 
Campus would have put me. So my 
denial morphed into anger and I blew 
a fuse — a really big fuse.

To put it lightly, I was frustrated. 

To put it heavily, I was absolutely 
furious. At orientation, we were 
smothered with the lush, glimmer-
ing newness of East Quad Residence 
Hall and here I was, stuck in an older 
dorm that was both seemingly iso-
lated from the excitement of Central 
Campus life and full of cockroaches. 
I was angry when the showers were 
full, when the morning walk to class 
took 15 minutes and when I visited a 
dorm that was nicer than mine. Why 
me? No, seriously. Why me? Deep 
down, I knew I was overreacting, but 
at the moment, I really didn’t care. I 
just wanted that shiny, new drywall 
and those polished wood floors.

Bargaining, the second stage of 

grief, began when I first saw the 
cramped 10-by-12-foot room that 
would become my home for the next 
eight months. I subsequently lost 
whatever optimism I had recovered 
right there and then. Maybe I could 
switch? No big deal, problem solved. 

Except I couldn’t switch. With this 
realization began the self-blaming 
period. Maybe if I had been smart 
enough to make Honors, I could 
have lived in South Quad Residence 
Hall. If I had known I wanted to do 
language, I could have lived in East 
Quad. I was beginning to lose my 
anger, only to have it shift into blame.

Depression, the fourth stage, 

began immediately when my but-
terfly chair wouldn’t fit anywhere 
in the room. Something that was 
once again silly somehow released 
the frustration that had been build-
ing throughout the weeks before 
college. I had said goodbye to my 
family and said hello to an empty 
room, awaiting the arrival of my 
roommate in solitude as I half-
heartedly unpacked to the droning 
songs of Pandora.

Acceptance, the final stage, was 

the hardest and therefore came 
slowly, creeping up on the edge of my 
mind throughout the first few weeks 
until I couldn’t recall anything prior 
to the new happiness I had built for 
myself. This last stage became a hall 
full of wonderful girls; a fake speak-
easy in the lounge; watching the sea-
sons change outside my oversized 
window; falling asleep watching 
movies lit by a 13-inch screen and 
bagel runs on cold Sunday mornings. 
Acceptance began with friends and 
never ended.

The five stages of grief applied 

to my living situation in a big way. 
It enabled me to form an opinion 
and false idea of what my freshman 
year in Markley would be like before 
I had even moved in. In reality, 
acceptance was the only stage that 
mattered. The rest of the stages are 
faraway memories now, remnants of 
a time of weakness and selfishness 
that I can hardly even remember. 
We all hope to get that one dorm, 
that one room that we map out per-
fectly and mentally decorate, so 
when we end up with something 
completely different, it catches us 
off guard. The best thing to do is to 
grieve, to go through all the stages 
of grief until you get the negativity 
out of your system so you can finally 
accept your situation and learn to 
make the best of it. After all, you’re 
only a freshman once.

— Megan Mitchell can be 

reached at umeg@umich.edu.

Five stages of residence hall grief

Claire Bryan, Regan Detwiler, Ben Keller, Payton Luokkala, 

Aarica Marsh, Victoria Noble, Michael Paul, Anna Polumbo-
Levy, Allison Raeck, Melissa Scholke, Michael Schramm, Mary 

Kate Winn, Jenny Wang, Derek Wolfe

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

BRETT
GRAHAM

MEGAN
MITCHELL

GRACE
CAREY

Cupcakes, salad and balance

W

hile scrolling through 
Instagram a few weeks 
ago, 
envying 
those 

who already had 
returned to Ann 
Arbor 
before 

Welcome Week, I 
laughed at a pic-
ture of the words: 
“Some days you 
eat salads and go 
to the gym, some 
days you eat cup-
cakes and refuse 
to put on pants. 
It’s 
called 
bal-

ance.” Five minutes later, I received 
a text from my older sister with a 
screenshot of the same exact post, 
followed by a “hahahahahahahaha” 
and a couple of crying-from-laughter 
emojis. The reason we were laugh-
ing so hard? Those 24 words pretty 
much sum up everything that I can 
say about staying healthy in college.

In all seriousness, personal health 

— regarding physical activity and 
nutrition — is an area that I have 
grown into over time. As with many 
other people, I grew up athletic. 
From figure skating to 10 years of 
competitive gymnastics and a few 
short stints in ballet and diving, I 
spent anywhere from 10 to 20 hours 
per week in a gym. After high school, 
I rode my accelerated metabolism for 
at least a year before I felt any dif-
ferent. I’ve never trusted scales or 
counted calories because, for me, it is 
a lot more than how my clothes fit or 
what I see in the mirror or any num-
ber that represents how “healthy” I 
am. Instead, it is the feeling I get in 
the pit of my stomach after knowing I 
am not fueling my body in the correct 
way or moving enough to keep my 
muscles strong.

At first I wholeheartedly resent-

ed the idea of forming new eating 
habits, and maybe this was because 
my sister was overly strict about 
what she ate. Her habits made me 
believe the concept of a healthy 
diet involved things like cutting out 
entire food groups. At this point, 
she and I were on polar-opposite 
ends of the nutrition spectrum, and 
I believe that together, we helped 
each other meet in the middle. 
Eventually, I found my way back to 
a fitness routine that now keeps me 
excited to go back to the gym. Full 
disclosure: I had a giant bowl of mint 
chocolate chip ice cream for lunch 
today, so I cannot claim to have it 
completely figured out. No one does, 
but as a wise Instagram photo once 
said, “It’s called balance.”

Balance can be a tricky thing to 

find in college, especially at a uni-
versity as difficult as Michigan. 
Classes are tough, and finding a 
place to study during finals is even 
tougher. For a long time, I used the 
excuse that I didn’t have the time to 
exercise. Time to do anything other 
than eat, sleep and study was a pre-
cious resource that, when I found, I 
sometimes forgot what to do with. If 
I had time to exercise, didn’t I actu-
ally have the time to study more? 
Exercising must be a waste of that 
precious resource. And nutrition? 
How can I be expected to make 
healthy eating choices at 2 a.m., 
when I’m staring into the case at 
Bert’s, deciding between the double 
chocolate chip muffin and an apple? 
Muffins go better with coffee; that’s 
all I have to say about that.

The thing is, this all-or-nothing 

health and fitness attitude is not in 
anyone’s best interest. There’s a time 
for salads and there’s a time for cup-
cakes, we just have to be self-aware 
enough to know which time is which. 

It’s true, however, that a cupcake a 
day will certainly not keep the doc-
tor away. In order to physically and 
mentally stand up to the tasks pre-
sented in the classroom, steps toward 
a healthier lifestyle need to be taken 
outside of it.

A 2015 study conducted by Maite 

Pellicer-Chenoll et al. demonstrated 
that high-energy expenditure and 
good physical fitness of students was 
associated with low BMI and high 
academic performance. It is true, 
however, that better academic per-
formance may not be solely explained 
by physical activity and that there 
are other variables involved. One 
perspective is that attitude and moti-
vation toward physical activity also, 
in a larger sense, play a role in deter-
mining an individual’s outlook on 
academics. The catch is that physical 
activity can perpetuate this motiva-
tion, which, in turn, can lead to better 
academic performance.

Although scientific evidence can 

be reassuring, I believe that to see 
the positive results of healthy deci-
sions, we don’t even have to look as 
far as research. I recommend this: 
Instead of using your study break to 
watch reruns on Netflix, work out for 
an hour. Before you go for a third cup 
of coffee, try going to sleep and wak-
ing up an hour earlier to finish your 
paper. Take a few seconds to reflect 
on what your body is telling you, and 
compare it to how you’ve felt in the 
past. When are you more efficient? 
When do you feel less stressed? When 
do you feel happier about where you 
are academically, socially, mentally 
and physically? Maybe today it’s a 
cupcake, but tomorrow it’s salad and 
the gym. 

— Grace Carey can be reached 

at gecarey@umich.edu.

Good evening, nation

B

efore the finales of “Friends” and 
“Seinfeld,” of “Lost” and “How I 
Met Your Mother,” one of the biggest 

endings in television his-
tory had 50 million Ameri-
cans eagerly tuned in. In 
1992, ending 30 years in 
the spotlight as a cultural 
and comedic icon, the god-king of late night, 
Johnny Carson, sat on a stool and bid his audi-
ence “a very heartfelt goodnight.” Two weeks 
later, a charismatic Arkansas governor made 
an appearance on “The Arsenio Hall Show,” 
playing “Heartbreak Hotel” on the saxo-
phone on his way to becoming President Bill 
Clinton. It’s been almost a quarter-century, 
and the relationship between late-night tele-
vision and politics has never been the same.

Under Carson, “The Tonight Show” on NBC 

had always been an apolitical haven. Johnny 
religiously avoided inviting political figures 
onto his stage, mentioning his own ideologi-
cal stances or influencing his viewers in any 
way. This all changed with his successor, Jay 
Leno, who regularly hosted political figures 
during his tenure. At the turn of the century, 
the political gaffes of the Bush administra-
tion proved low-hanging fruit for nascent pro-
grams like “The Daily Show,” “Real Time with 
Bill Maher” and, later, “The Colbert Report.” 
David Letterman routinely discussed politics, 
especially during the Iraq War. Political satire 
was in its golden age, from Tina Fey’s impres-
sion of Sarah Palin on “Saturday Night Live” to 
President Obama’s frequent visits to late-night 
programs (nine as of March 2015).

For most current undergraduate students, 

the first election for which they fully under-
stood the circus that dominated news, conver-
sation and television was in 2008. For every 
election since, there has been one constant — 
skits, caricature, impressions and a never-end-
ing supply of mockery. Of the more than four 
million viewers who loyally tuned in to “The 
Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” Nielsen 
ratings show an audience that was consistently 
young and consistently male, which is a diffi-
cult-to-reach but influential demographic.

Last Tuesday marked the end to months of 

flux in late-night television, a changing of the 
guard. “The Late Show” on CBS has a famil-
iar face, but with a hint of uncertainty. Colbert 
has broken character, but is it forever? Does 
he have the same freedom for political evis-
ceration that he had on cable? Will he use it? 
Stewart and Colbert left us with Wilmore and 
Noah. Only Jimmy Kimmel seemed to stay in 
place, and his politics remain a mystery.

In the span of a few months, the late-night 

locker room has done a complete overhaul, 
sporting a new roster, one that is comparative-
ly vanilla when it comes to politics. Granted, 
a lot remains to be seen. But if the first three 
months of Larry Wilmore’s “The Nightly 
Show” is any indication, Comedy Central has 
lost two all-stars for a rookie and a wildcard.

Some have exaggerated the bond between 

millennial politics and television, referring 
to Jon Stewart as this generation’s Walter 
Cronkite, but that is a step too far. “The Daily 

Show” never claimed to be a source of news or 
tried to win the trust of its viewers; it simply 
acted as a compass. When something notable 
(or noticeably ridiculous) was going on in 
the world, Stewart, Colbert and Letterman 
pointed in its direction and laughed. Millen-
nials across the political spectrum could laugh 
with them, or at the very least appreciate their 
craft (which is not so much the case with John 
Oliver’s very loud and very liberal crusade on 
HBO).

So what does this mean for the nearly 80 

million millennials, nearly all of whom will 
be of voting age in 2016? For starters, take into 
account that according to the Pew Research 
Center, 50 percent of them consider them-
selves independents, compared to only 39 per-
cent of Generation X and 37 percent of Baby 
Boomers. Then, add the fact that 70 percent 
of millennial Facebook users read articles 
posted by other users on a regular basis and 42 
percent frequently post or share news stories 
themselves. Now, the curveball — less than a 
quarter of millennials actually vote.

If any one candidate were to motivate and 

capture this huge demographic at least in part, 
they would immediately be a contender for 
a major party’s nomination. But this will be 
difficult if late night doesn’t step up, if clips of 
tirades from Stewart, Letterman and Colbert 
(in character) are not being shared on the web. 
We can no longer expect to see headlines like 
“Watch Jon Stewart Eviscerate Fox News on 
Last Night’s Daily Show.” Americans cannot 
expect a political medium that a generation 
has known for all their lives be deprived of its 
politically charged founders with no effect.

Make no mistake, millennials will not be 

able to escape the 2016 presidential buzz. Twit-
ter will be taken over by every primary debate, 
candidates have invaded Snapchat and Hillary 
Clinton hit the whip and the nae nae on The 
Ellen DeGeneres Show just last week. Candi-
dates (and their campaign managers) are mak-
ing attempts to appeal to a young audience, but 
without familiar voices discussing the issues 
every night, will anyone really listen?

Entering 2016, look for the candidate who 

can replicate what late-night comedians did 
so well for more than a decade, exciting people 
about otherwise dry, lifeless politics. Look for 
the candidate who can rise above “Trumpma-
nia” and become a focal point in monologues 
from Conan and Kimmel.

Of course, there is the distinct possibility 

that without late night at the helm, millen-
nials twist away in the wind next year, that 
a 23-percent voter turnout in 2014 becomes 
20 percent or less in 2016. The much more 
interesting prospect, however, is that with-
out their political compass, millennials use 
every bit of their social media acumen, love 
of crowdfunding and demographic weight to 
shake things up and make this election year a 
dogfight for their attention.

Speaking as a millennial, that option 

sounds pretty good to me.

— Brett Graham can be reached 

at btgraham@umich.edu.

HAVE YOU EVER WRITTEN ANYTHING?

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Check out The Michigan Daily’s editorial board meetings. Every 

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affairs, and write editorials. E-mail tothedaily@michigandaily.

 

— President Barack Obama speaking at a town hall in Des Moines, 

Iowa, regarding political correctness on college campuses. 

“

NOTABLE QUOTABLE

Anybody who comes to speak to you 
and you disagree with, you should 

have an argument with them, but you 
shouldn’t silence them by saying you 
can’t come because I’m too sensitive 

to hear what you have to say.”

