We’re already moving full steam into the new semester, but I don’t think I’ve fully recovered from the previous one. Part of me wants to forge ahead and never look back at any part of 2020, but things don’t suddenly change when the clock strikes midnight, and the debris from the catastrophic year still lingers everywhere. It lingers in the unease and the discomfort of upending my first year of college. It lingers in my detached concept of home since we got sent back last March. And it lingers in my diminished sense of self caused by the agonizing purgatory that was quarantine. I know better than to think that the new year will change any of that, so here’s to looking back and finding comfort in the chaos of an otherwise cruel semester — to rediscovering what home feels like, above South University Avenue. As the last weeks of August approached, it was finally time to come back to Ann Arbor. It felt like coming back to life. After a six-month long haze, I was back to the most city- life experience my small suburban- upbringing self had known. And here I’d stay for the semester, in my room on the 16th floor of my apartment building. It was my cramped little space that allowed me to catch my breath for the first time in months. Things were different now. I was different. But the essence of my college coming-of-age was imminent. As the brilliant colors of the sunset faded into the first night of my post-quarantine freedom, I looked through my living room window to the street below. A line had begun to form outside of Brown Jug, and friends stumbled around, linked at the arms and masked up. That was the beginning of my infatuation with the eccentric character of South University Avenue. The semester would go on like this, and the weekend bustle would start as early as Wednesday, due to asynchronous schedules brought about by a new normal. 8 o’clock would bring the earliest sounds of soft laughter and music seeping through our windows, signifying the end of Zoom calls and the beginning of something more familiar. During a normal semester, I would be on my way to the UGLi for late hours of studying, but a long day of screens calls for more frequent breaks and new nightly routines. In time, my roommates and I took comfort in living vicariously through the people that walked down South U — it filled the void that came with missing out on what were supposed to be the best nights of our lives, in the name of public health safety. From above, we would drink along with the carousers, crafting the most ridiculous stories about those we saw and heard 16 floors down. Down there, that was Trish. With a skip in her step, she was on her way to meet up with the guy from class she kept pinned on her 11 a.m. Chemistry Zoom screen. She found home in romanticizing even the most reckless first dates. On nights when Pizza House take-out was calling my name, I’d stay outside a bit longer, taking in the spirited characters of the street. From the rare political bar fights to the two people waiting outside of Champs Liquor Store standing too close to be just friends, I found home within the strangers that roamed South U. And slowly but surely, the deep disquiet of the past six months started to fade. And when night turned to day, the sidewalks would populate with skateboard heads and students looking for a place to study. I’d peer down through my bedroom window, questioning the need for a sweatshirt in the early September morning. A woman running in shorts and a group of boys walking in t-shirts discouraged the extra layers as I got ready to make my own trek across campus. In those couple of seconds I spent gazing into the daily activities of people on that street, I felt comfort. I felt comfort in knowing that no matter how difficult the semester would get, we were in it together: me and my window view of this city and its people. And maybe that’s what coming home feels like. I remember the mess that was our first week of classes: from clashing Zoom calls in the living room to the dynamic sounds of the powerful Graduate Employees’ Organization strikes further down the street. It felt surreal and chaotic. That week stood as a painfully accurate precedent for the months to come, and as October turned into November, I promptly sensed the aftermath of an experimental semester gone wrong. But even in the chaos, I felt at peace in the home I had created. With the new lockdown order across campus, the street that once had so many stories to tell was empty, and my routine gaze down had lifted higher to the LED-lit living rooms and newly-decorated Christmas trees in the windows of the high-rises across from us. Every square was a different color; every square was a different story. Now, midterms and finals were upon us, and there was no time for idle people-watching. Nevertheless, as night time approached and lights flickered on, I was reminded of my pact with the view of South U. It’s hard to find what home is when you’re still caught in between who you are and who you’re becoming — when your concept of home continues to evolve as you do — and it’s even harder with the added uncertainty of the inexhaustible pandemic. Michigan in Color Iced Coffee, Four and Four I’ve always ordered an iced coffee, four and four. The sickly sweet drink has been my specialty since high school. It was a joke amongst anyone who knew me; they would pester me with well-meaning quips about the fact that every day, just like clockwork, I’d walk into class late with that predictable beverage in my hand. Even now, years after the fact, I can’t get myself to order anything else. I’ve always been a creature of habit. My interests, routines, favorite songs and foods remained stagnant as the years went on. I never saw a problem with it –– these things brought me comfort, and I indulged in them for so long that they started to become mine. In my mind, I was defined by my unwaveringly long hair, unchanging music taste and steadfast coffee order. But this past year, I’ve felt a gnawing, incessant need to change. The familiarity began to feel less like a comfortable security blanket and more like a suffocating character flaw. I was petrified that years had gone by and I’d been standing completely still. Perhaps this fear was rooted in the fact that lately, everything has been changing. With so many things out of our control –– a shut-down world, the loss of family members and friends, our compromised routines and sense of normalcy –– familiarity feels foreign. We cut our quarantine bangs, rearrange the furniture in our rooms and look for ways to reinvent and seize control over lives that suddenly feel a little less vibrant. I’m no different. Rather than embracing my penchant for consistency, I felt an urgent desire to change something, anything, about myself. So instead of shuffling through the same Taylor Swift album I’ve listened to since freshman year of high school, I forced myself to listen to experimental post-punk records. I started to never use the same car air freshener scent twice. I tried (and failed) every 15-day ab challenge, 15 times over. I took risks at the drive-thru, and feigned surprise when I hated the way that black coffee bitterly coated my tongue. My miniscule vies for spontaneity were rooted in this need to have changed in some way over the course of the past year. However, I’ve found that those small acts were disingenuous for me. The bizarre need to prove that I’ve evolved, as if such a feat is dictated by new hair or music, just convinced me that any of my “normals” made me boring and needed correcting. Even worse, it presupposed me as a static, two- dimensional creature, discrediting the real change I’d made –– the kind I couldn’t immediately see. That change, the gradual kind, sneaks up on you. I don’t think you realize it until it has already shifted your perspective and simply becomes you. For me, the change that I had been actively pursuing was happening all along, quietly and unsuspectingly. One day, that particular bad memory I could never speak about without crying no longer evoked tears when I told the story. One day, my friend off-handedly mentioned that she was so proud of how much I had matured, and that she’d noticed it over the past few months and never said anything. One day, the “end-of-the- world” embarrassing moments and heartbreaking rejections I thought I could never get over began to take up less space in my mind, until I didn’t think about them at all. I had never noticed or appreciated this kind of change, but it’d been happening all along. I think that the pressure to have a new, exciting version of yourself to parade doesn’t require compromising the things we define ourselves by now, in fear of being boring. In some ways, I think that we are a new, exciting version of ourselves every day. Time necessitates change, and this change shapes us whether we like it or not. The things we learn and the experiences that strengthen us culminate silently, even if your coffee order has never changed or you’ve had the same favorite song since middle school. I realize that now and can appreciate the growth that I’ve made when I wasn’t even looking. Today, I ordered an iced coffee, four and four. I never liked black coffee anyway. YASMINE SLIMANI MiC Columnist Semester above South U EASHETA SHAH MiC Columnist Notifications are ruining my life MARINA SUN MiC Columnist I have 997 unread emails. 188 texts to open. 2 Instagram direct messages about the latest viral food video. And I’m feeling overwhelmed. As the winter semester grinds to a start, I’ve realized that a malicious byproduct of virtual learning has emerged: notifications. Endless Facebook postings about club recruitment, classmates blurting their existential crisis in the 200+ person GroupMe, or automated Piazza Activity Digest emails –– I’m over it. And as a new semester welcomes an opportunity to start fresh, I’m coming in with a new perspective: Notifications are ruining my life. Notifications are skewing my self worth. I used to watch my Instagram like a hawk after posting a self- indulgent picture, dragging my finger down the screen to refresh the like count, and believing so intently that off-red digital hearts could quantify my popularity or impact my personal happiness. There was something terrifyingly instant about the way a two-sentence update could make me feel like a sudden sensation or an invisible nobody, and with each glance at my phone I felt an increasing sense of anxiety to keep momentum with an ever-moving online atmosphere. Notifications are cluttering my digital and mental clarity. Even before the fall semester had begun, my newly created university email inbox was inundated with a never-ending avalanche of notifications. “Join our Physical Activity Study,” “Alumni Association Welcomes You” and “MPrint Maintenance Tomorrow” were amongst the endless stream of messages that occupied my digital space, and the sheer volume of niche information often overshadowed a rare important update from a professor or recruiting opportunity. Checking my email became an unappealing chore, as my mental disorganization simultaneously worsened with each increase in unread messages. Notifications are overwhelming my daily schedule. I nervously refresh application portals or my email inbox for hours, burning precious time while awaiting news of a club acceptance or internship application decision. Hours have genuinely been wasted this way, as any thoughts of other priorities or personal nourishment are pushed aside in favor of capturing the exact moment an update rolls onto the screen. I depend on notifications for validation, let them control my moods and watch helplessly as my personal connections dwindle until all I am left with is my own anxiety –– and that has to stop. Notifications are ruining my life, so this semester I’m turning them off. The emails, the texts, and yes –– even the Bachelor Twitter updates. I’ve been prioritizing connecting to the wrong network for too long, losing focus on my mental health and the simple benefits of human communication. Now I check my phone when I want to. If something is urgent, people will call. Suddenly the tense feeling in my shoulders has eased, and I experience a rare moment of control. I don’t know how many emails I have. And the air is oddly quiet in the absence of a text vibration. Refreshingly, each step is fueled by a calmness and conviction to resist any urge to glance at my phone — I’ll check my Instagram direct messages later, after this walk. Revisiting Jonestown: What we can learn from the 1978 mass-murder suicide ANCHAL MALH MiC Columnist Content warning: this article discusses abuse and suicide. Growing up in New York City, my mother always tried her best to ensure that I felt connected to my heritage and the land my ancestors came from. This meant only having pepper-pot on Christmas Day, learning how to play cricket on the weekends and watching Indian movies every Saturday night. On Wednesday nights, after I had turned nine years old, she sat me down with a notebook and pen and began teaching me Guyanese history. Her eyes always lit up with pride as she educated me about the colors of Guyana’s flag and their symbolism: green for the beautiful forests that encompassed the region, white for the ever-flowing bodies of water, gold for the country’s abundance of minerals, black for the people’s perseverance to make Guyana a better country and red for the dynamic nature that holds together an independent nation. However, for this week’s history lesson, the dim light in the corner of our living room fell on her face, but the light in her eyes faded as she recalled the horrifying mass murder-suicide that occurred almost 43 years ago. We often say, “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid” to warn individuals not to blindly believe everything they hear. However, people may not know that this phrase stems from mass manipulation and false promises that ultimately led to more than 900 dead bodies abandoned in the rainforests of Guyana –– the largest loss of American civilian lives pre-9/11 (excluding natural disasters). Jim Jones was born on May 31, 1931, in Crete, Ind. He would go on to become a preacher at the Peoples Temple, an Evangelist group based in San Francisco. In the 1950s, Jones became a leader who promoted desegregation and racial equality. He eventually gained a large following of primarily elderly, Black women and children due to his charismatic personality and ideas that preyed on an audience seeking acceptance in society. “My life was in turmoil, I had a failed marriage and I was looking for a place to be political in a safer environment after a series of bad decisions,” Laura Kohl, a survivor of Jonestown, stated when questioned about why she felt a sense of comfort in the Peoples Temple. However, with Jones’s newfound fame as a preacher, he became increasingly paranoid of the American government’s scrutiny. Jones preached about creating a utopian socialist society located in the jungles of Guyana to his followers who, believing in this, donated their money to move to Guyana and create a community named Jonestown. His supporters believed they were going to be welcomed by the tall palm trees that graced the rainforests of Guyana. They believed the wide and bright green leaves would protect them from the injustices they were facing in America. However, when these followers arrived, they were met with small and shabby huts located on nutrient- deprived soil that was not sustainable for large groups. Their utopian socialist society resembled a prison camp. Survivors of Jonestown recall having to work long hours with minimal food while suffering abuse from Jones. He forced his followers to write him letters explaining their fears and past mistakes, and if he perceived that they “betrayed” him, Jones would divulge the information at weekly public meetings. “He started to alienate you from your families … destroy that family unit,” said Jonestown survivor Yulanda Williams. “So that then he could become the predator, but also the one who was the provider of every need that you required in life.” In addition, Jones would rehearse mass suicides in which followers were instructed to drink a beverage called Flavor-Aid, which was concocted by mixing a fruit-flavored powder with water, similar to Kool-Aid. Jones repeated this frequently as a test of their loyalty to ensure that on the day he officially decided to proceed with the previously mentioned murder- suicide, Jonestown would have no survivors. Friends and families of followers that went to Jonestown became concerned with the idea that their loved ones were being held against their will after receiving letters that they believed were not truly written with excitement and joy. Concerned with the complaints from relatives and from reports of horrendous living conditions at Jonestown, U.S. Representative Leo Ryan, D-Calif., wrote to the House of Foreign Affairs asking to make a visit to the Peoples Temple in Guyana. Initially, Jones refused to have Rep. Ryan as a guest but eventually allowed him to come. On Nov. 18, 1978, Rep. Ryan arrived on the Port Kaituma airstrip with several journalists and was allowed to visit the commune. During his visit, people in the commune told Rep. Ryan they wished to return home. Tension rose within the community as Jones became aware of this, so he decided to finally conduct the mass murder-suicide. As Rep. Ryan was on the Port Kaituma airstrip, he and several other journalists were shot by gunmen affiliated with the Peoples Temple. While Rep. Ryan was being attacked, followers at the commune were ordered to drink a grape-flavored punch laced with cyanide. After bodies dropped to the floor, Jones had his gunmen traverse the commune to ensure that all of his followers died. When examining bodies from Jonestown, inspectors discovered injections on many, affirming claims that those who played dead were later injected with lethal poison. Any remaining survivors were either asleep during the event, posed as a part of Rep. Ryan’s party or were sent by Jones to retrieve supplies or carry out negotiations with different nations. As we move forward and reflect on the events of Jonestown, we must be mindful of the people who lost their lives seeking a paradise and liberation from constricting societal bounds. We must respect the efforts of the journalists who accompanied Rep. Ryan and sought to unmask the ugly truths of Jonestown. Survivors of Jonestown are continuously reminded of the psychological harm and danger they faced, many feeling extreme guilt for making it out alive. Saying “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid” belittles the events of Jonestown and mocks the people who were victims of Jones’s terror. It reduces Guyana to a mere shell of a horrific legacy. When I think of Guyana, I hear the sound of Tassa drums ringing through the air on wedding days, signaling a time of joy and celebration in a neighborhood. I remember my summer visits to Guyana as a child, and I feel my bare feet touch the rocky ground, the clay-like soil seeping through my toes as I played hide and seek with my cousins. I see the cows roaming the neighborhood, heading towards the trenches to graze on the grass and sip water flowing through. I see the local shops that sell traditional Indian clothing, sarees and lenghas covered in small crystal diamonds with carefully hemmed neon flowers at the edge of each piece. But when the harmful idiom is said, it ceases the tropical breeze, dries out the water of my ancestor’s land, makes the once vibrant green leaves wilt in the sun and reduces Guyana to a mass graveyard. Read more at MichiganDaily.com Read more at MichiganDaily.com Design by Marina Sun 9 - Wednesday, February 10, 2021 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com “That change, the gradual kind, sneaks up on you. I don’t think you realize it until it has already shifted your perspective and simply becomes you. For me, the change that I had been actively pursuing was happening all along, quietly and unsuspectingly.”