Newspapers / Elon University Student Newspaper / Feb. 15, 2001, edition 1 / Page 10
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Page 10 OPINION Feb 15, 2001 " ^ 2001 ELECTIONS Candidate for 2001-02 Executive Vice President Alan Medeiros Medeiros is a history major Junior from Taunton, Mass. Medeiros is a Social Science representative for SGA, chairs the Judicial Comittee and sits on the Elections and Constitution Committee. He serves currently as the president of the Pre-Law Society and Historian for Pi Kappa Phi. Medeiros is also a former Managing Editor for The Pendulum. “I feel my experience and campus involvement have prepared me well for the job of Ex-VP and if elected, I hope to work to continue to improve SGA.” Email: medea8ffl@elcHiedu Next week... profiles on SGA Executive Treasurer and Secretary Candidates Student Experiences: Winter Canoeing and Literature Florida Everglades introduce student to nature and the idea of simplicity Canoeing and Literature was a class apart from the normal drudg ery of winter term classes. The class studeied several works by natural ist authors and then departed for the Florida Everglades where we would em bark upon an incredible canoe trip through the heart of the Everglades. Before the trip, myself and eight other students had estab lished goals for the trip. Some entered the trip expecting to learn, and some just wanted a new experience. My goal for the trip was to escape the horror that is Alamance County, North Carolina and enter a place where I could enjoy the beauty of nature. To some, an ideal vaca tion is sitting on a beach and read ing a book. To others a vacation might mean time for personal hob bies. Despite all the different inter pretations of a vacation, there is one thing all vacations have in common in their ability to remove people from the world they live in and let them experience that which makes them happy. My ideal vacation is one which allows me to experience something new or something of interest. Chas Lum The Pendulum Traveling down the Everglades gave me a chance to escape and learn more about myself, others, and the world around me. Experiences are important be cause they build the human intel lect. Once someone has traveled to a place and experienced a culture or an ecosystem, they are generally better off as human beings. For, it is the wisdom of expe rience which truly builds character. Through my beliefs and learning as an Environmental Studies Majorat Elon, I feel that by understanding what makes the natural world work, one can better appreciate it. I felt my vacation in the Ev erglades was a good one. The group worked well together. The majority of the students embraced the oppor tunity to learn better map-skills. By the end of the trip we were all able to navigate fairly well. The experi ence of being cast away in the Ever glades was both enlightening and relaxing. Another great feature of being in the glades was having the chance to observe the plethora of different plant and animal species. lieamed about the ecosystem and gained the experience of sur viving in nature by mostly my own free will. I was able to contemplate the readings which were assigned earlier in the term as well as keep a journal cataloging my own thoughts and experiences. I call this trip a vacation because I was able to es cape the stresses of life in a capital ist world. The trip allowed mt to escape and pursue a week in a land that I Chas Lum / The Pendulum Canoeing in the Everglades showed Lum a world of possibilities had never seen before. Living and camping on land and boat was a great experience for me. One expe rience that I will never forget was surviving on my own terms by my self on my “solo” and swimming with dolphins at dusk off the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. Despite inconsistencies within the Outward Bound program and the bad timing of often futile activities, the trip was mostly a posi tive experience for everyone. I have been on several adventure trips with different organizations and in my opinion Outward Bound could have done a much better job at treating the group like adults (to say the least). However, when reflecting on the trip and how it has affected my life, I often don’t realize how im portant eacapes from reality are until I am back in the role of a student striving for a degree and a future. Buddhist beliefs indicate that life is suffering. I feel that there are experi ences which can take humans out of their material world and into a world of utter simplicity. Perhaps the writer Henry David Thoreau says it best: “Simplicity, Simplicity, Sim plicity”.
Elon University Student Newspaper
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Feb. 15, 2001, edition 1
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