A

s 
my 
college 
career 

draws 
to 
a 
close, 

I’ve spent some time 

reflecting 
on 
my 

experiences 
here. 

Looking 
back 
at 

the sheer volume of 
work I’ve done, the 
new things I’ve tried 
and the amount I’ve 
grown as a person over 
the past four years 
is 
simultaneously 

amazing 
and 

overwhelming. 
I’m 

proud of the things I’ve 
accomplished as a University 
of 
Michigan 
undergraduate, 

largely because they reflect 
the love I felt for (most of) the 
classes I took and activities I 
participated in.

But, at this point during my 

senior year of high school, I 
envisioned myself spending my 
Wednesday nights partying with 
fraternity men, not attending 
an informational session about 
graduate school fellowships and 
then coming home to write this 
column.

It’s not that I didn’t care 

about school, or really even that 
I was really very interested in 
partying (or fraternity men for 
that matter). Rather, it was just 
what I thought people were 
supposed to do in college. Most 
of the images I had seen of 
college — both on older friends’ 
social media accounts and in 
popular culture — involved 
stylish blonde women either 
wrapped around tall, tan men 
or huddled in massive groups of 
women laughing in Instagram-
worthy 
places. 
I 
imagined 

college 
through 
rose-tinted 

lenses adorned with pearls and 
bows. I didn’t realize that the 
ideas I had developed about how 
college women were “supposed” 
to look and act were not only 
unrealistic but, if left unchecked, 
could be detrimental to my long-
term goals.

Fortunately, 
that 
changed 

shortly after I arrived at the 
University. Older students on 

the Daily staff and 
in 
other 
student 

organizations 
during 
my 
first 

semester 
helped 

me 
get 
involved 

on 
campus 
in 

organizations that 
led me to discover 
deeper 
interests 

in things I ended 
up liking far more 
than the superficial. 

They gave me the courage to 
share my thoughts and opinions 
with the rest of campus through 
the Daily — something I’ve 
been doing ever since. In doing 
so, they taught me to value my 
own voice and to take myself 
seriously 
as 
someone 
who 

deserves to be heard.

I did end up joining a 

sorority 
as 
a 
sophomore 

— when I had personally 
matured enough and learned 
enough about myself and my 
personal priorities to pick an 
organization with ideals and 
women I respected, rather 
than 
just 
an 
aesthetically 

pleasing Tumblr page or an 
impressive 
social 
schedule. 

Through my sorority, I gained 
a community of women who 
support me when I need it and 
respect me for who I am.

Too 
frequently, 
we’re 

encouraged to be pretty faces 
for Instagram posts instead 
of 
strong 
people 
with 
the 

ability to make a real impact. 
Though these things aren’t 
mutually exclusive, living up 
to these outrageous standards 
impedes our efforts to excel in 
school and pursue the things 
we’re passionate about. In 
the workplace, especially in 
male-dominated fields, these 
pressures only intensify.

Yet, with the support of 

older students willing to act 

as my mentors, I learned to 
navigate the pressures and 
expectations 
of 
women 
in 

college and, later, in office 
environments. Many of these 
women were busy themselves, 
but still took the time to serve 
as resources for me as I began 
to get involved on campus, 
search for internships and 
apply to my current college, the 
Ford School of Public Policy.

At my internship this past 

summer, 
management-level 

female employees made an effort 
to mentor and advocate for 
lower-level female employees, 
including 
the 
interns. 
They 

helped me feel welcome at work, 
encouraged me to share my ideas 
and opinions in meetings and 
gave me opportunities to work 
on incredible projects.

Women face challenges at 

school and work that men often 
don’t, such as wage gaps and not 
being taken as seriously as their 
male counterparts. Big picture: 
building a society where women 
have the full opportunity to 
contribute all they can to our 
economy and government will 
require that we remove social, 
legal and economic barriers for 
women 
pursuing 
educational 

and occupational opportunities. 
Greater female representation in 
every arena — from government 
to engineering — can help make 
that happen. As it does, all 
women become better off.

But first, we need to help 

each other get there. From 
challenging 
the 
stereotypes 

that hold women back, to 
serving as resources for other 
women, to simply being real 
and honest with our friends and 
on social media, we can help 
make it easier for women to 
deploy their talents and efforts 
to improve society as a whole. 

C

urrently, 
there 
is 
a 

variety of undeniable 
signs 
cropping 
up 

around me that indicate I’m 
graduating, 
from 

the flood of emails 
in my inbox about 
commencement 
to 

the small mountain 
of coffee cups I have 
near my study spot 
from 
late 
nights 

with senior capstone 
projects. It would be 
hard to write off the 
amount of evidence 
sitting in front of 
me that I need to start 
preparing for college to be 
over. However, until recently, I 
was a master of denial; without 
a clear path in front of me for 
my post-grad steps, I just didn’t 
want to think about the future. 

It wasn’t until I was talking 

with my mom at the end of 
Spring Break that I knew I 
needed a better way to think 
about 
this 
upcoming 
life 

change. She pointed out that, 
while I can continue seeing 
graduation 
as 
seven 
long 

weeks away, or an entire half a 
semester away or even as being 
more than 1000 hours from 
now (a lifetime!), graduation is 
next month now — which is, in 
fact, not a lifetime. 

When I resumed breathing 

after that chilling realization, 
I tried to sort through some 
new coping mechanisms for 
tamping down the desire to dig 
my heels in harder against time. 
Ultimately, I’ve found that, 
above all else, the knowledge 
that time is completely relative 
has been a massive help in 
making my way through my 
final semester in a relatively 
calm way.

One of the hardest things to 

overcome in handling the fear 
that comes with graduating is 
a lack of concrete plans after 
getting kicked out of the dorms. 
This anxiety gets even worse 
when people around you do, 
in fact, have things figured out 

already, whether it’s grad school, 
a career or some turf picked out 
for 
panhandling. 
Considering 

the relativity of time can give a 

healthier perspective 
on this, though.

This 

understanding 
of 

the relativity of time 
comes from a couple 
places for me. First, 
a couple semesters 
ago, I took a course 
on rocket science 
(which does mean 
that I am officially 
a rocket scientist 

and get to pretend 

to be superior). While doing a 
refresher course on physics, 
we covered Einstein’s laws of 
motion and theory on general 
relativity, which show that 
time is relative. That is to 
say, bodies being acted upon 
by different levels of gravity 
will experience the passage 
of time differently.

The other classes I can point 

to where the relativity of time 
was discussed are my linguistics 
courses. It was pointed out that 
some languages, like Hopi, don’t 
conceptualize time in the same 
way that English does. Based on 
theories of linguistic relativity 
and, more specifically, Sapir-
Whorf’s hypothesis that our 
language shapes our experience 
of 
reality, 
this 
language 

difference has the implication 
that even our experience of time 
differs based on how we express 
it. 
Someone 
speaking 
Hopi 

instead of English might have a 
completely different perception 
of the passage of time.

In short, time is an illusion, 

changing based on how we 
think about it or what our 
frames 
of 
reference 
are 

compared to others’. What’s 
“slow” 
or 
“early” 
for 
an 

individual is completely open 
to interpretation in the grand 
scheme of things. 

While 
Einstein’s 
theories 

are usually applied to physical 
motion, and linguistics uses 

the idea of time as a tool for 
comparing worldviews, I find 
that these ideas can very easily 
be applied to dealing with the 
fear associated with being “on 
time” in life.

When I begin to compare my 

own progress to that of those 
around me, it’s easy for me to 
see how relative time is. More 
often than not, the timing of 
milestones and the general 
timelines that others operate 
on are different enough from 
my own that it’s pointless or 
even misleading to use them 
for myself.

Most notable for me was 

that many of my friends are 
in engineering fields, which 
began to hire months before 
any of the jobs I would be 
applying to. Seeing people 
around 
me 
settled 
with 

concrete 
plans 
made 
me 

more panicky than normal, 
until I recontextualized the 
timeframe. 
Their 
timelines 

are not my own, and I’m not 
running late or falling behind 
at all; I’m running on my 
own 
time, 
figuring 
things 

out and trying out avenues of 
possibility at my own speed.

While there are deadlines 

that I need to hit soon (I am 
more than aware that I need 
a job soon, don’t remind me), 
as soon as I stopped looking 
at what others were doing as 
a direct comparison to what I 
was doing, I felt infinitely more 
relaxed. My first post-grad job 
is probably not going to be my 
last, and I can take my time 
to build up to my dream job of 
being a football-playing queen 
in space.

So, while I am still hyper 

aware of the passage of time 
right now, and I’m still not 
exactly racing toward that 
finish line, I at least know that 
I have options, I have ideas 
and, more than anything, I 
have time.

C

onfession: I (probably) 
had norovirus.

Confession: I damned 

10 of my housemates to making 
offerings before our soon-to-be-
besmirched porcelain idols for 
two to three days.

Confession: I spent my 

precious few conscious 
hours 
binge-watching 

“Rick and Morty.” 

Despite 
not 
being 

made for Netflix, “Rick 
and 
Morty” 
is 
the 

perfect show to binge-
watch. The jokes are 
fast, the episodes are 
short, the animation is 
colorful and the premise 
is simple. The show has very 
loose continuity (and because 
inter-dimensional travel is a 
key plot device, I don’t think a 
viewer would have to watch the 
episodes in order to necessarily 
understand what’s going on).

But as I finished my latest 

binge-watching session, I had 
a bizarre realization: I didn’t 
have anyone to talk to about 
the show with. It’s not because 
the show is an empty calorie 
cartoon: “Rick and Morty” is 
unafraid to explore themes of 
existentialism 
and 
mortality 

alongside diverse topics such 
as feminism and imperialism 
(and do so coherently! It really 
is a testament to the sheer 
imagination of creators Dan 
Harmon and Justin Roiland). 

Upon some reflection, I think 

the biggest cause of this void was 
the way I consumed “Rick and 
Morty.” Instead of watching the 
show week-by-week, I watched 
the bulk of it at once on a sketchy 
Chinese website offering to sell 
me “Mail Enhancement Pills.” 
I indulged myself alone both 
spatially and temporally.

My memories of “Rick and 

Morty” don’t exist solely as 
a 
relationship 
between 
the 

program 
and 
me, 
they’re 

constructed by how I watched 
the show. Instead of watching 
it with a bunch of friends, I 
saw each episode in solitude. 
This has implications for how 

I interacted with 
it. 
According 
to 

Robert R. Provine, 
a 
neuroscientist 

and 
psychology 

professor 
at 
the 

University 
of 

Maryland, people 
laugh 
nearly 
30 

times more when 
they’re in a group 
than when they’re 
by 
themselves. 

The content may be the same for 
everyone, but how you engage 
with it changes depending on the 
individual. At the end of the day, 
I probably enjoyed the show less 
because of how I viewed it.

Our 
consumption 
has 

also 
become 
asynchronous. 

Television used to be a communal 
experience, even if you weren’t 
with anyone per se. The nation 
was tuned in to the same show 
each night. Cliffhangers had 
meaning. People could make 
predictions with each other 
while they waited with bated 
breath for the next episode. This 
doesn’t happen with shows that 
are available all at once, like 
“House of Cards.” The ebb and 
flow of the whole season doesn’t 
mean much if it’s all consumed 
in one week (or as is often the 
case, one night).

This phenomenon falls into a 

broader paradigm of the internet 
destroying synchronous rituals. 
Once again, we lose something 
tangible 
in 
our 
collective 

cultural 
consciousness. 

Memories are formed through 
repetition, and when we all 
devour a show like “House of 
Cards” in such a short time, we 
are more likely to forget the 

show’s content. It has become 
more difficult to mull over 
the show long after its time 
has passed.

I don’t want this column to 

be a simple polemic about how 
the internet is ruining society. 
There are historical analogues 
to this. Back in the ’90s, if you 
got into a TV show late, you 
would watch it on VHS after 
everyone else. However, VHS 
faced physical constraints on 
the number of episodes its 
viewers could access at a given 
time; viewers didn’t have access 
to every tape at once, and tapes 
held a limited amount of footage. 
But the accessibility of shows 
on streaming services — and 
the advent of shows released in 
bulk on those services — makes 
the phenomenon a much more 
common occurrence.

I don’t want to understate how 

awesome 
streaming 
services 

are; they let people watch shows 
when they want for them rather 
than forcing people to watch 
whatever is on. In addition 
to 
making 
television 
more 

convenient, people from all over 
the globe can enjoy “Rick and 
Morty.” Once again, this isn’t 
a totally unique process and 
there are additional important 
ways 
we 
can 
historicize 

this: Reading in the secular 
context has often been a solo 
endeavor. Book clubs are the 
exception, not the norm. But 
we do lose something when 
we watch a show all at once, 
not as individuals, but as a 
collective. That’s emblematic 
of what the internet does 
as a society: It empowers 
the individual but atrophies 
everything around them. 

Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4 — Friday, March 10, 2017

REBECCA LERNER

Managing Editor

420 Maynard St. 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

EMMA KINERY

Editor in Chief

ANNA POLUMBO-LEVY 

and REBECCA TARNOPOL 

Editorial Page Editors

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.

Carolyn Ayaub
Megan Burns

Samantha Goldstein

Caitlin Heenan
Jeremy Kaplan

Sarah Khan
Max Lubell

Alexis Megdanoff
Madeline Nowicki
Anna Polumbo-Levy 

Jason Rowland

Ali Safawi

Kevin Sweitzer

Rebecca Tarnopol

Stephanie Trierweiler

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

Consuming collective culture

ROLAND DAVIDSON | COLUMN

The illusion of time and comparisons

SARAH LEESON | COLUMN

Sarah Leeson can be reached at 

sleeson@umich.edu.

Roland Davidson can be reached at 

mhenryda@umich.edu.

SARAH 
LEESON

MICHELLE SHENG | CONTACT MICHELLE AT SHENGMI@UMICH.EDU

Women supporting women

VICTORIA NOBLE | COLUMN

Victoria Noble can be reached at 

vjnoble@umich.edu.

ROLAND 

DAVIDSON

CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONVERSATION

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Letters should be fewer than 300 words while op-eds should be 550 
to 850 words. Send the writer’s full name and University affiliation to 

tothedaily@michigandaily.com.

VICTORIA 

NOBLE

