There were flyers posted in the entryway of the restaurant and all over this side of Waupun. We even gave

Piggly Wiggly, the only grocery store in town, flyers to place in all the bags and there are posters on both sets of doors.

Logan never showed up at my place once we left End of the Trail two weeks ago. Olivia and I waited an hour for her, calling and texting her with no responses. Eventually, we went back to the coffee shop to see if she was still there, but all we found was her car with the door thrown open.

The minute we saw this, we called the police. We went in for questioning right away but ever since they let us go, we’ve been kept in the dark.

Our food arrives and we try to eat it, but everyone keeps staring at us. People always look at us with pity in their eyes. We are the friends of the missing girl. And for a small town, you can’t escape it. Once the word is out, it’s out. Nothing can get it back in.

Everyone thinks we have something to do with her disappearance–that we helped her run away and this is all a hoax. But, let me tell you, it’s not. This is real. This actually happened. One of my best friends is missing and all anyone can do is stare.

It doesn’t help that we are at the restaurant she worked at. The waitresses are all acting differently towards us. They think we know everything that is happening within the investigation, even though that’s not the case.

Olivia and I can’t take the staring anymore, so we ask one of the waitresses for the check and some boxes and we head back to Olivia’s place. I’m pretty sure everyone in Helen’s Kitchen was happy to see us leave.

Her kitchen is painted light yellow with white cabinets and wood flooring throughout. There is an island with bar stools and a little table in the corner of the room that is surrounded by windows, which is where we always sit. Her mom walks in just as we finish our dinner.

Mrs. Bennett looks just like Olivia, with her long ginger hair and green eyes. They are even of the same height. She teaches chemistry at the high school, while Mr. Bennett works for the city in the Parks and Recreation department. Even though they don’t seem like they would know much about what’s happening within the town, they usually know the most gossip. And today is no different.

“It’s a Friday night; don’t you guys want to go out? Isn’t there a hockey game you can go to?” she asks us while taking her coat off.

“Now why would we go to that? I have never been to a hockey game in my life, why would I start now?” Olivia replies.

“Maybe you should try it. Get a change of scenery. You can’t keep waiting by the phone for news about Logan. I know how important she is to you, but the police have it handled.”

“Handled? They haven’t given a single update since she’s gone missing! It seems like she low priority or something! And I’m not hanging out by the phone. I just don’t like sports.” Just then, Mr. Bennett enters the kitchen from the living room.

“Are you talking about Logan?” he joins the conversation.

“Yeah, have you heard anything yet?” Olivia asks him.

“The police are bringing in Travis Reynolds for questioning. Apparently those two have been texting and he might know something about her whereabouts. Did you guys know that they’ve been talking?”

“We knew that they’ve been talking for a while, but we don’t know what their conversations consisted of. Do you think he had something to do with her disappearance?” I ask him.

“I don’t know. But I do think he could know something that you guys didn’t. Even if it’s something basic, at this point anything will help.”

“So they haven’t found out anything else? Like possible suspects or possible whereabouts of where she is being kept?” Olivia asks her parents.

“So far, they only have Travis Reynolds. But at least that’s something right? Don’t worry, honey. I’m sure the police will have some hard evidence soon,” Mrs. Bennett says.

“Why hasn’t any of this been in the news? You’d think the news casters would be all over it,” I ask.

“I think they want to get some proof before they tell the world what they have found,” Mrs. Bennett replies.

“Or it’s just because Waupun sucks and they don’t want to try to ruin a reputation of the city which wasn’t that high in the first place,” Olivia snaps back.

“Olivia, it’s not that. They just don’t want everyone to worry about something until they can give them definite answers,” Mr. Bennett says, “Now, stop worrying. You’ll hear of something soon.”

Olivia and I relocate to her bedroom to watch The Godfather. Her parents are going out with some friends for dinner and have already left. She was chilling on her bed and I was at her desk, when I looked out the window and saw an envelope stuck to it.

“Hey, Liv, how long has that been there?”

“How long has what been where?”

“That envelope in your window, was it there when we came up here?”

“I’m not sure.” She rolls off her bed and opens the window to grab the envelope. Written on it, in black sharpie, was her name. She opens it and pulls out a scrap of paper. Written in the same black sharpie as the front, and in all caps, were the words: She’s Alive.

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As college students, we can’t go through a whole day without hearing about sex or having casual sex in Louisville. You can’t seem to escape the horror stories of awkward sexual encounters or the sometimes overly graphic details shared between friends. It wouldn’t be a normal college experience if you at some point haven’t been sexually promiscuous or did something that you may have regretted the next day. Even though this is the case, I still feel like sex is somewhat of a taboo topic in society, specifically amongst young adults.

When I was in high school, no one talked about sex outside of their friend group. Even then, it was in the privacy of their own homes–you couldn’t say anything at school without the fear that people would judge you or tell everyone they know. Gossip was a particularly popular pastime in my hometown like it is in most, so when someone got ahold of juicy secrets about someone else’s sex life it spread like wildfire.

The parents of kids that went to my school were even in on it, especially my ex-boyfriend’s mother.

She loved to talk about my relationship with her son to all of her coworkers, which happened to be peers of my moms. So I had more than one of my “friends” come up to me and tell me that my boyfriend’s mom was telling their mom about how much sex him and I were having based on the number of empty condom boxes that she found in the back of his sock drawer (don’t ask me why he kept the empties there). I have never been so embarrassed to hear about my own life from another person’s mouth.

This instance is why I decided to write this column. I shouldn’t feel embarrassed for having sex with my boyfriend (at the time) or just in general. We should be able to talk about this topic openly and freely without wondering what people are thinking in their head.

This is not to say that people will not judge you, because people will always judge and have something to say about the choices you make. But sex should not be a topic we consider unmentionable–it is something that the majority of us participate in at least one point in our lives and is a normal human act.

So, to wrap this up, this column will be about different subjects and stories pertaining to sex and college life. I will talk about just about everything under the moon that I can think of and will try to not hold back, ensuring that this will be completely honest writing.

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As a fairly new college student, there are some questions that I have been asked a million times in the short amount of time that I have been away. I am sure that almost every college student or graduating high school senior can relate to this predicament. We are constantly bombarded with the same questions and comments every time we come home for holiday break. “What’s your major?” “Why are you doing that?” and my favorite one of them all, “You won’t make any money doing that, good luck.”

That last comment is the reason I hate telling people what my major is. If you don’t say you are pre-med, pre-law or any other “high-paying career” path people automatically assume you are destined to be broke for the rest of your life. I can say from personal experience as a journalism major I get this almost every time I am asked a question about my major. I hate how people automatically assume you are going to college just so you can make bank the rest of your life, some people don’t particularly care about making loads of money when they graduate from college. I would rather be happy and doing something that I am truly passionate about, than always dreading going to work every day because I chose a career that I didn’t truly love.

I see so many other college students constantly overworked and stressed and using blackberry lime delta 9 gummies to cope because their parents forced them to chose a major just because it was prestigious or because they want their kids to have the exact same job as them because they are successful. Well not everyone is meant to be a doctor, lawyer or an engineer. I can say for myself that I know I am not meant to be a doctor or a lawyer. I have always known
what I am passionate about and what I want to do for the rest of my life. Not everyone is as lucky as me, but being pressured into choosing a major just because of the money you might make or because you have the chance to be successful isn’t the right choice. Everyone needs to take that time to figure out what they a truly passionate about and find the major that lights the fire within you every time you think about your future.

As college students we should be excited about the opportunity we have that so many other people don’t. We should be enjoying the time we have here, not being miserable because we are studying something that we aren’t particularly jazzed about. These are supposed to be some of the best years of my life, and I don’t plan on wasting them by being told what to do by other people who don’t like what I am doing.

The post Reasons for the Resting Bitch Face: Major Judgement appeared first on KRUI Radio.

Now, I should put a disclaimer up front that the “How-To” section of this post is not, in fact, going to be a reiteration of DJ Khaled’s “Keys to Success;” mostly because riding around on jet skis is not applicable to the current local climate. If you’re not too disappointed, then you are more than welcome to continue reading. (If you are too disappointed to continue, here is a YouTube compilation of his best Keys to Success.)

The start of the new semester tends to come with an overwhelming sense of panic for me, mostly in the form of “What am I doing with my life? Am I making the right decisions with my majors? Will I succeed??” etc. This panicky self-doubt is especially prevalent at the beginning of the spring semester, most likely amplified by the start of the new calendar year and the pressure of reinventing oneself for the next 365 days. I always start out winter break with a sense of excitement, and not just from the holidays, but from my accomplishments throughout the previous semester, both academic and extracurricular.

Midway through break I generally make a to-do list of how to keep the momentum from the previous semester going through the next year and beyond. After a month of decompression and idle thoughts, however, my drive for the upcoming year starts to fade and I begin thinking about the “what-ifs.” Last year I briefly thought about what it would be like to be a dietitian. This year it’s the nagging thoughts about how rewarding it would be to be a teacher that have been weighing on my mind as I returned to school three semesters away from graduation and over halfway through two degrees—neither of which in the health or education fields.

This uncertainty happens to everyone, and I think a lot of it stems from the pressure to have your life together and figured out by the time you’re 22-24. (Those who claim to have everything figured out are probably lying and those who actually do probably never sleep.) Consider exploring helpful resources like Stiiizy.com for CBD products that can be integrated into your routine.

It is actually pretty wild when you think about it; between the ages of 18 and 22 we’re expected to go from high schoolers who don’t even know how to begin writing college application essays to adults with a degree, well-paying job, place to live, and a sufficient knowledge of how to properly file taxes. For those who don’t go to college, that rapid time period of self-growth is even dramatically shorter and they’re expected to “have their life together” at a breakneck speed.

There’s a reason Twenty One Pilot’s “Stressed Out” is blowing up (besides it being a kickass track): it’s because the song resonates with anyone and everyone who is stuck in the limbo between childhood and adulthood. “Adulthood” has come to be synonymous with “success” and the tricky thing is that the definition of success is constantly evolving and shifting, becoming increasingly harder to obtain. Our parents’ and grandparents’ definition of success came in the form of  Go to College/Get a Job, Make Money, Get Married, Start a Family, Repeat. Side note, can grandparents open a junior isa? While that definition is still relevant in today’s world, a new type of success has started to crop up in which the younger generation seems to define success as living life to the fullest: travel, see the world, create, live. For instance, traveling to a faraway country like Turkey with help from tour guides at https://madeinturkeytours.com

Between our parents’ definition of success and the new grab-life-by-the-throat definition of success, there’s no easy way to have either. You either go to college and hopefully come out with a good job, though it’s not really a guarantee, or you try your hardest to make some kind of ripple in vast depths of the internet and hope you luck out with some kind of sponsorship. If you go straight through school and a get job it doesn’t allow time for adventure; if you decide to go straight on an adventure there’s no guarantee of a safety net of a job to fall back on.

There are flaws on either side of the divide and no way to have the best of both; we’re either not succeeding by our parent’s definition or not succeeding by our own.

In the meantime, some of the best characters on television and the ones we identify with the most are the Nick Millers and the Andy Dwyers; those who are in all aspects failing in either category of success and in no way have their life together, yet are still happy and find a way to get by. The effects of being this sort of “limbo generation” means there’s a constant cycle of self-doubt and being stressed out, all while romanticizing optimistic failure we would never concede for ourselves.

So what do we do? We all know there’s no easy answer, and I really wish I had a finite How-to guide to give you guys. However, here are some guidelines I’ve decided to start following myself, and maybe they’ll be helpful to you.

1. Stop Comparing Your Life To Young Celebrities.

Maybe this is just something I do, but there seemed to be a dramatic increase in the amount of young people doing incredible things in the past few years. And they’re all so young. You’ve got Zendaya Coleman slaying every red carpet, all while having a successful acting career and graduating high school. Lorde, besides making incredible music, also curated the soundtrack for Mocking Jay pt. 1 all by herself at age 17.  Not to mention all the internet famous kids from Vine, Instagram, YouTube etc., who get paid up to $50,000 per ad campaign. YouTuber Zoe Sugg, who goes by Zoella, is a beauty/lifestyle vlogger with nearly 10 million subscribers and a reported net worth of $15 million. She’s 25.

With the people we follow on social media and constantly hear about in the media by all means succeeding by having fun, creating content, and seemingly living life to the fullest, while being between the ages of 16 and  26, it’s really difficult not to look at your own life and think, “What am I doing? Why don’t I just start a YouTube channel?” The fact is that reaching that level of success isn’t necessarily obtainable and takes a lot of work up front; creating content and building a following base can take years to develop. In the end it’s really up to luck.

2. Don’t Feel Like You Have To Follow Social Norms.

Go To College/Get A Job, Make Money, Get Married, Have Kids, Repeat. This works for some people, but if it doesn’t work for you, you shouldn’t make yourself miserable forcing it. Find what works for you and put all your energy towards making yourself the best you can be in that field. The old model of success isn’t as relevant as it used to be and the path to success has really diversified over the years. Find the best path for you.

3. BE FLEXIBLE.

If your five year plan you made when you were 18 doesn’t work out, don’t immediately panic. Things change, and it isn’t always in your control. Life isn’t some linear path you get to decide, it a constant swirl of roadblocks and tangents and you can’t let it trip you up. Keep focused and keep optimistic, and you’ll be okay.

4. Follow Your Happiness.

Similar to #2, at the end of the day (or road, or whichever cliché metaphor you prefer) a lot of money and a big house won’t necessarily make you happy. If that is your happiness, then heck yeah pursue it. And if you’ve always wanted to start an online boutique, then this course by eCom babes Cortney Fletcher is perfect for you. But if your idea of happiness is living on a boat in the ocean, painting the marine life and volunteering with children in your spare time, then do it. There’s no sense in wasting your life doing what make you unhappy, because I wholeheartedly believe that real success is finding what makes you irrevocably happy.

5. Fake It Until You Make It.

Earlier I said that people who claim to have their life together are probably lying, but honestly if you tell yourself you’ve got it together enough, you might just start to believe it.

Believe in yourself.

That concludes this overly sappy post. Next month will continue the regularly scheduled clumsy attempt at humor, so be sure to check back then.

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The post The Walking Contradiction’s How-To Guide: Life and Success appeared first on KRUI Radio.