The arguments over Question 1 in Maine and federal funding of abortion in the House health care bill seemed to be more a clash of ideologies than a practical disagreement over the merits of either option. In both cases, one side was apparently motivated largely by religious convictions, and many are rightly considering whether this breaches the separation of church and state.

The American public sphere has become increasingly secular since 1947, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that allowing state funds to be used for transportation to religious schools violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The principle of the separation of church and state has been the primary support for the secularization movement, but some may be surprised this phrase is not anywhere in our Constitution.

Instead, it comes from an 1802 letter by President Thomas Jefferson, responding to a Baptist congregation in Connecticut, which feared the dominance of the Congregationalist church in their area would limit others’ religious freedoms. Jefferson assured them the First Amendment had built a “wall of separation between Church and State” that would protect their religious expression. He elaborated on his views later, in an 1808 letter to the Virginia Baptists, saying, “We have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving everyone to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries.”

Secularists are using Jefferson’s idea in a distinctly different manner these days, arguing that religious beliefs should have no part in shaping governmental policies, even in voting. I understand their position, but the fact is that everyone, religious or not, makes their decisions based on personal ideologies. The presumption is that viewpoints based off anything other then religion is inherently better than ones that are. What makes a person “bigoted” if their philosophy comes from faith in a sacred text, and “objective” if their philosophy comes from culture and personal preference?

There is no doubt few Founding Fathers would have asked the same question. Frank Lambert, who wrote a book in 2003 about their beliefs, found that more than 70 percent adhered to formal religions, mostly Protestant. And many of the greatest causes in our nation’s history, from most civil rights movements to the American Revolution itself, were largely motivated by religious figures and ideals. I doubt today’s outspoken secularists would be yelling for religious people to shut up if we were still fighting for women’s suffrage or the abolition of slavery.

We are a far cry from seeing those just causes today, as so many religious advocates are choosing to crusade for moral issues instead of social justice. There is good wisdom behind the separation of church and state — spiritual decisions were meant to be a personal choice. Even if a faith-based viewpoint on morality is the right one, it should not be forced on an unwilling people through legislation. If someone truly believes in their way, their aim should be to win the hearts and minds of the general population, not Congress.

Earlier believers excelled at this, but today’s religious representatives instead are resorting increasingly to subversive and deceptive campaigns to gain support for their agendas. In many cases, it is not the ideas religious people promote, but the methods they use to spread these ideas, that opponents find so disagreeable and offensive.

Valuable insight can be gained from religion, and it would be damaging to push for these views to be excluded from the public forum. However, for their part, religious people in the political arena should be as principled in their campaigns as God would have them be, and seek the support of the people in championing policies they truly believe will make the country better.

Tyler Francke thinks there is still too much injustice in the world for churches to pick homosexuals who want to get married as their main opponent.

I propose we reschedule school and work calendars to include holidays for this sort of natural event. In many ways, these days are better than celebrating people who may or may not have killed other people or holy days that not all of us partake in. There are no exclusions and no bad feelings associated with a natural phenomenon. There is no glorified violence. Isn’t this what indigenous people the world over did before we stole their holidays and relabeled them with religious names they had never heard of?

What if the university gave out free coffee because they knew everyone had been up late the night before, like they do during finals week? What if it were an official holiday every time it snowed for the first time, or every time a solstice rolled around?

I invited friends, but only one was willing to give up sleep. Another friend said he’d wake up at 2 a.m. and look out the window. I told him it doesn’t quite work like that. For a meteor shower, you have to be committed. You have to be prepared to see the best show of your life or just a few shooting stars here and there. It takes patience.

If I had been impatient or had valued sleep over experiencing natural phenomena in 2001, I would have missed one of the most amazing experiences of my entire life: sky-length meteors, sometimes two or three at a time, fireballs that exploded and left lasting colored streaks in the sky. I don’t remember what classes I was too tired for in the morning or what homework I was avoiding. You don’t remember the little things when a major event like that happens.

I am not a sports person, but when the 76ers made it to the NBA finals, I walked my dog in the evening and could hear shouts erupt from each house every time our team scored a goal. People invited each other over to watch the game, rooted for their team and cheered at every shot. Even I was excited, and I knew nothing about basketball. They say shared events are what make a community strong. I think Mother Nature could use a few more fans cheering for her.

There was a bit of a sporting event feel early Tuesday morning. From the field where we were watching the sky, my friend and I could hear people in the parking lot, exclaiming when they had seen one or cursing at what they had missed. I immediately felt a bond to them. We had something in common: We were rooting for the same team. Later, when I walked down the street alone, looking to the sky for a few extra sightings, I ran into two other people who were doing the same thing. We chatted. We stood in silence. We ooh-ed and ah-ed together. With such a great excuse to build community, we only wished more people could have been outside with us.

I wanted to be able to tell all my sleeping friends how many meteors they had missed, but I lost count the second I decided to keep track. We must have seen a good 50 or so in two hours. One even lit up the sky and left a trail, like Mother Nature’s homemade fireworks. People shouldn’t miss events like this. If enough of us get out there next year, we can show the university the day after the Leonids meteor shower should be declared an official holiday. I’d be all for exchanging it for Columbus Day, if that’s what it came to.

Anya Rose is a graduate ecology and environmental student.

I acknowledge the military can provide a place of belonging and purpose in life as well as some money, skills and training. But if you sign up for service in a time of war, odds are pretty high you’ll go to war. Remember, the ultimate purpose of the military is to fight wars, not to promise you college money, job training or leadership roles.

It might be nice to find a place of belonging and purpose elsewhere.

The reality of war is that you may be ordered — forced — to kill people you do not know. You may be killed or maimed. As a surviving combat veteran, you may experience emotional wounds that could interfere with relationships and employment, while also leading to a sense of isolation.

“I think [ROTC is] a good opportunity for students to experience what it’s like to be in the armed forces, plus it gives them an opportunity to become leaders,” said Thomas Conley, a junior here at the University of Maine, in Breau’s article.

Life in the military will take away your personal freedoms. Your superiors will take control of most aspects of your daily life. They will not only tell you when to eat, sleep and use the toilet, they will restrict your ability to form and maintain intimate relationships and take away most, and sometimes all, of your decision-making power.

Among the pro-war crowd, you’ll find an assortment of politicians, generals and corporate executives. The reasons they give for war have been democracy, freedom, justice and peace. In reality it is for contracts, market access, natural resources and power. After all, there’s no business like war business.

Think you won’t go to war? Others have thought that too. Since World War II, the military has been to Korea, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Lebanon, Grenada, Libya, Panama and, of course, Iraq and Afghanistan, with no end in sight and the possibility of more war elsewhere.

Our military is known to have invaded foreign countries to crush rebellions and help prop up pro-American regimes, often helping future dictators like Saddam Hussein, who collaborated with the CIA in 1963. The United States even sold weapons to Saddam in the ’80s in his campaign against Iran, only to later wage war against him.

In war it is hard to know the truth of it, and morality always ends where a gun begins.

If you’ve heard all this before and are still considering the military, do not make a hasty decision by enlisting the first time you see a recruiter. Get the facts. They are salesmen, and some have admitted to lying. Take a witness with you for help and to back you up. Talk with veterans. Consider your moral feelings about going to war and killing. Be sure to get any promises in writing, especially the enlistment agreement. Finally, explore all alternative options.

Until there is a U.S. Department of Peace, some alternatives are AmeriCorps and Peace Corps. Visit career centers as well as colleges where they will help you find aid.

In addition to all of this, one sure way to end wars is to stop supporting the system that allows them to continue. This means people have got to stop enlisting.

To current and prospective soldiers I ask you to not give yourselves to wars and violence or to superiors who tell you what to think and what to feel, who drill you, treat you like cattle and use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural conflicts. If you have, become a conscientious objector. Don’t be another statistic serving war profiteers. Look elsewhere for a better path in life.

Michael W. Gibson is a member of Maine Peace Action Committee.

Ross Wolland, vice president of Student Government Inc., says students have asked dining services for some time for debit and credit service on campus. Dining services has tried to accommodate them, Wolland said, but due to “software glitches” and issues with service providers, there have been delays.

This January, the era of taking $20 from the ATM to pay less than $2 for coffee is coming to an end.

“We agree [debit and credit service] would be a convenience,” said Janet Waldron, vice president of administration and finance.

According to Waldron, that’s why the Marketplace in the Union and Wells Commons will accept all major debit and credit cards starting in January. The service will expand to other venues from there.

“Students are shocked to arrive at UMaine and see that in the 21st century, we don’t have [debit/credit capabilities],” Wolland said. “I’m glad it’s finally here.”

What makes this development even better is that from what is known right now, this convenience won’t cost students, faculty, staff or visitors anything.

“We’re not anticipating an increase in price,” Waldron said.

Now is a time where most of the news coming from different corners of the administration involves budget cuts, layoffs and the death knell of academic programs. It’s refreshing to know that next semester, members of the University of Maine community will have their lives made a little bit easier by Dining Services.

The University of Maine should be a center of critical thinking. Mr. Warsame, author of the op-ed “Fort Hood is a great opportunity for anti-Muslim sentiment,” would do well to do more of it. That killings have been perpetrated in the name of Christianity and every other religion is not new, and it is not a crime to be Muslim in America.

Many thoughtful Americans have questions about Islam because it is unfamiliar. Perhaps Mr. Warsame could use the pages of your newspaper to enlighten us on the attitudes of Muslim Americans toward other religions or how some may pervert Islam to erroneously connect it to killing and mass suicide bombings. Or about what non-Muslim and Muslim American soldiers can do to protect our military bases.

German Americans and Japanese Americans can tell you that it has always been difficult for people of foreign origin to earn trust and respect, especially during wars against their countries. But there are Muslims in the American military doing just that right now.

We depend on those of you in academia to tell us something new, not recycle the animosities of the likes of Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck.

— Carroll Hoke

Thanks to UMaine hockey fans!

On behalf of the Maine Hockey team and coaching staff, I am writing to thank all the students who have attended our games this season.

The support of the fans has always been great here at University of Maine, but our student section in the balcony is what really makes the Alfond Arena’s atmosphere so unique and awesome. You lift us when we’re down and motivate us to fight through adversity. You build momentum for us when we’ve got the lead, and make it tough on our opponents.

After a couple tough seasons, players and coaches didn’t know what to expect this year from the Alfond crowd, but we have been blown away with the enthusiasm and vocal support from the students in the balcony this season.

As a result, our team has responded with a 3-1 start at home, with big wins over Michigan State, Vermont and Boston University. You have pulled us through some very close games and contributed greatly to these victories.

Thank you for standing behind our team when we need it most. We really appreciate it.

— Tim Whitehead, Head Coach of Men’s Hockey

Music-themed games are just for fun

Kegan Zema made unfounded claims about the games “DJ Hero,” “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band” in his piece, “The Beat Report: ‘DJ Hero’ set list kicks out the jams, makes DJs rock stars.”

As a musician, I am not threatened by “Guitar Hero” or “Rock Band,” nor are many other musicians I associate with. They aren’t a threat to my love of playing guitar because they are geared toward people who don’t have the money or time to learn how to play an instrument. It allows them to experience the feeling of a cheering crowd in their own living room. Learning to play an instrument is hard. Games like these allow someone to enjoy the idea of being a rock star or DJ without giving up months of their life.

If Zema had taken time to look at these games, he would have seen a wide variety of classic hits along with many current songs from new bands. This also includes a wide variety of genres not limited to classic rock or metal. Some bands with little to no recognition have been allowed access to a large listener base through these games. It isn’t just old dried classics from the ’60s and ’70s.

The article says “DJ Hero” provides “no transferable skills,” but it’s still more like the real thing than “Guitar Hero” or “Rock Band.” Most musicians acknowledge that these games help people improve rhythmic skill and demonstrate the difficulty of playing in unison with a band. Thinking fans of these games are trying to be a real band is silly. It’s a fun game, but they don’t have the time to learn how to play real guitar. Talented guitar players who try to play their own songs on “Rock Band” will find it a humbling experience. It’s this simplicity that is attractive.

It’s fine for someone to prefer “DJ Hero” because of musical preference. But making a claim that it has more up-to-date music or it resembles the real thing any more or less than it’s guitar-based counterparts is ignorant. All these games are intended merely for entertainment, not to teach musical skills.

— Evans Goff

Publishing write-ins undermines process

Last year, only 12 percent of the University of Maine voted in the Student Government election. This wouldn’t be quite as bad if 11 percent of those voters didn’t go to write-in votes. When is the last time a write-in vote ever won an election? Yet for some reason, students feel compelled to write in their friend’s name, some obscene comment or something just plain mean. Why do you think the few students who take the time to vote would do this? I’ll tell you why: Because The Maine Campus publishes all grossly inappropriate votes cast during Election Day.

This encourages students to cast a meaningless ballot, which could throw off a narrow election, as we had this year. It gives the students less of a voice. It is our right as American citizens and students at UMaine to choose who we want to represent us.

Publishing write-ins also allows students to write hateful messages that will appear in the next newspaper. Last year’s “Anyone but Ross” is just hateful. I’m sure Ross did not appreciate the negativity that those votes cast.

It’s kind of ironic that there are “Maine is not for haters” signs all around campus while our own paper is setting such a negative tone. The Maine Campus should not be taking the voice away from its people, much less tearing its students apart by publishing hateful words.

— Kaitlyn Burrell

Why call only iPhone users insufferable geeks? I believe BlackBerry, or “CrackBerry,” users were the first to hold that distinction. They’re the ones who live and die by push email, constantly checking what text messages they’ve received.

I don’t know why you are just targeting iPhone users when BlackBerry users would be more likely the leaders in the world of arrogance.

— Constable Odo

It’s like complaining about having a large phallus: Everyone wants one, but not everyone can have one. And when you whip it out, everyone goes “ooh” and “aah” at its splendor, so you feel somewhat smug about the whole thing.

So what’s the problem with having a big you-know-what?

— Sean

The Portland Phoenix’s Lance Tapley has been the only journalist to write regularly about the Maine State Prison in Warren for most of the decade. Maine isn’t listening.

The Maine State Prison has been accused of a wide range of human rights violations. Deane Brown, a prisoner and would-be whistleblower, was relocated to Maryland because he had information that made him “a threat to the facility,” wrote Tapley. Ryan Rideout, a 24-year-old mentally ill inmate, committed suicide. There are a score of other allegations.

Brown, 45, is serving a 59-year sentence for multiple burglaries. According to a complaint filed by his lawyer, the inmate befriended two journalists while imprisoned at Maine State Prison. One was Tapley and the other was Ron Huber, a Rockland radio personality. In October 2006, prison officials filed paperwork to monitor Brown’s calls to the two journalists. The next day, Warden Jeffrey Merrill told Brown in a letter that he was erasing their numbers from his approved call list, warning him not to disclose “confidential information.”

Brown was then linked shoddily to an escape attempt when an officer heard him say “an atomic bomb is about to hit the place.” This was on the same day of an interview with Tapley, meaning the bomb in question could easily have been a reference to information that would appear in Tapley’s article. Brown had never met the inmate accused of the escape attempt, the complaint says. With no evidence, Brown was placed in solitary confinement.

On Nov. 8 of the same year, the complaint says that a corrections official received a call from Merrill. In an e-mail, the official wrote, “I received a call from Warden Jeffrey Merrill … who indicated that it is very urgent that we transfer [Brown] today or tomorrow at the latest.”

Brown was transferred days later to a Maryland prison. His lawyer and power of attorney were not contacted. He has been effectively exiled away from his friends in Maine. Gov. John Baldacci has been written, according to Tapley and Huber, but has chosen not to act.

As bad as the Brown case is, the death of Ryan Rideout could be perhaps the largest case of abuse the prison has been involved in.

Rideout was a 24-year-old man with a history of severe mental illness. He told Renee Ordway of the Bangor Daily News from a jail cell that he had tried to kill himself 13 times since the age of 12 and had been diagnosed with many mental illnesses as well as placed on and off several medications throughout his life.

He was serving a 17-month sentence for burglary. He was hard to handle on the part of guards, so he was placed in the solitary confinement, super-maximum security wing. Even after his suicidal history, he was deemed to be not at risk, according to Merrill in a Rockland newspaper.

On Oct. 5, 2006, Rideout hung himself by tying a bed sheet to a sprinkler head, wrote Tapley. There have been allegations by fellow inmates that a guard taunted Rideout, urging him to commit suicide.

Why is a small arts and culture paper the only paper reporting on this? Tapley should be commended for his underrated journalism.

This problem is an inconvenient one — it involves people who have proven they can’t handle outside life. Still, a prison must treat inmates with care and respect. Prison is about rehabilitation, not just storage.

I call upon Maine’s Legislature to conduct thorough investigations into the above problems and into the conditions of the prison in general. At Maine State, 40 percent of prisoners take psychotropic medication, according to one of Tapley’s articles. Many do not belong in prison — they belong in a mental health facility, where they can be attended to by mental health professionals on a full-time basis.

Merrill resigned this August. We’ll never know if Tapley’s allegations of wrongdoing played a part in his decision to resign. The fact remains he went down in a firestorm of problems. If we are truly a state mindful of civil rights, all of us — from students to the legislature — must demand answers.

Michael Shepherd is a columnist for The Maine Campus.

For one, the iPhone’s appeal seems to be predicated on the fact that it’s so exclusive its owner should be showered in praise and admiration every time he or she whips it out. This may have been true when it was first released two years ago and there were still waiting lists to get one, but now everyone has one. So many people have them now that AT&T has been struggling to keep up with the resultant surge in bandwidth demand. Service has sometimes been close to unusable in densely populated areas.

And all of this Web traffic for what? Checking Facebook 15 or 20 more times a day? Don’t get me wrong; I’m not trying to sound like an old man overprotective of his lawn, but do we need to be so plugged in all the time? It seems self-evident that it would be better to actually spend time with someone, even for just a few minutes, than text them all day. This is simply the nature of evolving social customs, but no matter what you conclude, it’s hard to deny that the iPhone encourages constant use. I can hardly go three minutes without at least checking my e-mail, which the phone actually does for me, but I have to check manually “just in case.”

Apple likes to flaunt that the iPhone has several orders of magnitude more applications than competing smart phones, but that just means much more rubbish. For every genuinely useful app — and it’s exceedingly difficult to find a good example — there are thirty or so flaunting “bikini babes” or volunteering all your personal information so you can tend a small virtual garden. Finding useful apps requires sifting through a lot of trash on the App Store or using an outside Web site to find them for you. It’s a design flaw when you can’t use Apple’s downloading tool to find applications to download.

There is no legal alternative distribution method for applications, so developers are beholden to overbearing restrictions on what they may or may not do. The only way to circumvent Apple’s control — “jail-breaking” — is technically difficult, violates Apple and AT&T’s terms of service and has been known to turn the coolest phone ever into a useless brick. Apple’s intention is clearly to restrict the activities of both its users and developers.

Some of these problems are clearly not specific to the iPhone but to smart phones generally. All of them encourage persistent, all-day usage. All of them breed a sense of pretentiousness in their users, to some degree. But in terms of applications — Apple’s supposed advantage — competitors win the day. The Palm Pre supports Web-based third-party applications, and Adobe is actively developing Flash for Palm use, something the iPhone is often criticized for lacking. The signal-to-noise ratio in BlackBerry applications is seemingly much higher than the iPhone, and Motorola’s Droid and other Android-based phones are well positioned to challenge Apple’s market dominance.

In the end, what separates iPhone users from others is a pervasive sense of smug superiority. When someone has an iPhone, you will know it; they will ask you if you’d like to see their phone’s newest trick, latest app or simply bask in its splendor. What is forgotten is the iPhone is just the bastard child of a cell phone and laptop, and it doesn’t necessarily excel at either role. The next time you encounter an insufferable iPhone user, remind them they could have spent just as much money on an inexpensive cell phone and just about any netbook and doubled their versatility. Mention Linux for bonus points and watch their smiles fade into thinly-veiled contempt.

Andrew Catalina is a gigantic hypocrite for owning an iPhone.

The story was initially aired by the mainstream media with high publicity until it was known the hijacker was not a Muslim. Then coverage stopped.

No further speculation was made of his religious motivations or his radical associations. There are countless events of terrorism fueled by extreme ideology like this worldwide. As an American Muslim, it bothers me when people expect Muslims to condemn violent crimes perpetrated by other Muslims. Nobody expected Christians to condemn or even apologize for the Aeromexico hijacker, the murderer of Dr. George Tiller, the Holocaust Memorial shooter, the Oklahoma bomber or the Lord’s Resistance Army, which commits heinous atrocities in Uganda. The list goes on.

The reason no Christian is asked to speak to these issues is that it’s assumed that homicidal Christians are not representative of Christianity as a whole. Muslims aren’t afforded the same assumption.

Since 9/11 there has been almost no civility in the American public discourse when it comes to dealing with Muslim or Arab citizens. Muslim-bashers, waiting or praying for the next act of terror committed by a Muslim, come out of the woodwork as soon as tragedy strikes.

I’m sure we have not yet forgotten how many people questioned Barack Obama’s middle name (Hussein), his Muslim father and his childhood years spent in Indonesia. Despite making it abundantly clear he was a practicing Christian, many Americans still believe Obama is a Muslim. But there is a deeper question to be asked than about why so many Americans were obsessed with Obama’s religion.

When did it become a crime to be a Muslim in this country?

The American Family Association, a conservative Christian group, has posted an article on its Web site that argues the tragedy at Fort Hood was a reason to start banning Muslims from the Army. Bryan Fischer, director of issues analysis for the association, wrote the article.

“This is not Islamophobia, it is Islamo-realism,” Fischer wrote. “It is time to stop the practice of allowing Muslims to serve in the U.S. military.” The reason? “The more devout a Muslim is, the more of a threat he is to national security.”

It is outrageous some people were making it a big deal that Maj. Nidal Hasan, the alleged shooter at Fort Hood, said “Allahu akbar” before his rampage, as if that meant anything. A good friend of mine, a Marine veteran, told me that while deployed, he was instructed to start shooting if he heard certain keywords, such as “jihad.”

He explained to his superior that as a practicing Muslim, he would say the words “Allahu akbar” while running or training. These types of words are called “dhikr,” which loosely translates to “remembrance of God.”

Despite American Muslim communities unequivocally condemning the Fort Hood shooting as a horrible murderous act, Muslim-bashers increased their assault on Islam and its followers. That is because most fear mongers misunderstand the real strategies of our enemies. Terrorists first provoke their enemy, hoping they will retaliate against potential supporters. Terrorism is nothing more than provoking the enemy to act irrationally, the same exact type of irrationality exhibited by Brian Fischer, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and the like. They count on the anger, fear and prejudice of their enemy and want to cause a knee-jerk reaction to make people act in such as a way to validate whatever message they want to spread.

It is up to Americans of all faiths, or lack thereof, to stand together for the rights of all citizens against harmful stereotypes based on religion or race.

Ismail Warsame hates the double standard and the name calling that is based on the irrational fears of the unknown.

Upon graduating high school, students are faced with a question that is often not given the consideration it deserves: whether to go to college immediately. Taking time off before college is not what we are supposed to do.

But why are we rushing into college without any idea of what we want out of it? That’s what I asked myself after graduating high school. I didn’t know what I wanted out of college, and I didn’t want to pay thousands of dollars for uncertainty.

Then I heard about the gap year. It’s a time after high school and before college where we really aren’t tied down to a family or a job. For me, it was a time to get out of Maine and see the world. I set out on my own and traveled to Europe and Central America. For six months I worked on organic farms in exchange for food and a place to sleep. I met natives and fellow travelers, earned money to travel in between trips, kneaded bread for hours in France, became a pub-crawl guide in Amsterdam, prowled around a coffee farm with a machete, was immersed in the Spanish and French languages and woke up to howler monkeys in an eco-village. I saw the world. I lived.

When I deferred my acceptance to UMaine after high school, I thought I was taking a year off. In reality, I was taking a year on. Now that I’m back in academia, I am focused. I know what I want, who I am and why I’m here. I dare you to ask an incoming first year if they can say the same. I doubt many will give an answer that is backed by their heart.

Comfort zones are funny things. Once we learn how to be alone without being lonely, we are able to do great things. Taking time off to discover our independence is essential in self-discovery. Why are we rushing into college when the large majority of us aren’t ready for this independence?

It seems like America is behind the curve. Much of the world is already taking time off. In Sweden, the average first-year college student is 22 years old. What do they do during this time between high school and college? They earn money. They rest after 13 long years of school. They learn about themselves and what they want to be. They live their lives.

What’s the rush for college? Americans should be encouraged to chill out and take a year for themselves before diving into higher education. They’d learn about themselves and the world. Employers would be impressed by their worldliness, which would set them apart from the career competition. Perhaps most importantly, they’d come a lot closer to answering the eternal question: “What do I want to do with my life?”

We’ve all heard an older person say, “I wish I had seen more of the world when I was young.” Let’s learn a lesson from our elders; let’s see the world while we’re young. There are some amazing people outside of Orono, and I bet you aren’t too bad yourself. So go and find.

Mary Plaisted is a sophomore sustainable agriculture student.