Overbooked and overbusy

Lindsey Treffry | blot
 
Meredith Metsker is a journalism major. A pep band and marching band member. An acapella-playing KUOI DJ. An editor and member of the Sigma Alpha Iota women’s musical fraternity. A 20-hour minimum, part-time education reporter at The Moscow-Pullman Daily News. She does yoga twice a week and goes to the gym a bit more. Currently on a co-ed basketball team, she plays intramural sports when she can.

Hayden Crosby | Blot
Busy-bee Meredith Metsker DJs
in the KUOI radio station studio.

“Sometimes, I regret that I fill up so much of my time,” Metsker said.

Her part-time job takes up most of her schedule, since the amount of tasks for a reporter constantly fluctuates.

“I like the busy life, I guess,” she said.

Sadie Grossbaum knows the story.

The outdoor recreation leadership major and psychology minor also serves as an ASUI Senator, a member of the Alcohol Task Force, an Outdoor Program staffer, a Free Thought Moscow member, and she dances her Wednesday nights away with the UI Swing Dance Club.

When Grossbaum made the switch from biochemisty to recreational leadership, it wasn’t to lighten her schedule.

“When I told (biochemistry students) I was changing my major, they said ‘So you’re giving up?’” she said. “I had a 4.0.”

Recreation is what Grossbaum likes.

“Since I’ve been in Moscow this semester, I haven’t spent a single weekend in Moscow,” the skier and hiker said.

But there are downsides to such a busy schedule.

Grossbaum noticed a decline in her personal health.

“I don’t have time to go to the gym,” she said. “I don’t have time for basic human needs. Sleep doesn’t come often.”

This year, Metsker finally realized she had overbooked her schedule.

“I have no time to take care of myself,” Metsker said. “I had to bail out on people … I hate being a flaky person.”

UI Psychologist and Professor Sharon Fritz said there are consequences to an overbooked schedule, including lack of sleep or poor eating habits that can lead to irritability or tensions in relationships. 

“Not taking care of yourself, not eating right, sleeping right, not engaging in physical activity — accumulatively, that will catch up with you,” Fritz said.

Stress can cause gastrointestinal problems, upset stomachs, back aches or headaches, she said.
“You’re worrying a lot, have racing thoughts, not being able to quiet the mind or turn it off emotionally,” Fritz said.

This matters now, Fritz said, because busy students are potentially establishing life-long patterns, just as she has in her life.

In college, Fritz wanted to do well academically. She had a part-time job, she volunteered, held internships, had a boyfriend, was part of sport clubs and wanted to get all As — 99s to be specific. Flash forward to last month and Fritz admitted to taking on more projects than she should have. 

“If we are busy now, the chances are we will be busy in the future,” she said. 

Being overloaded is something busy-bee Grossbaum notices in others, too.

“People should give 100 percent to one thing instead of 10 percent to 10 things,” she said. “Some people are so good at so many things.”

But, she said, the quality of work often suffers.

So if now is the time to adjust schedules, how can busy students learn to cut back?

“It’s easier to say ‘no’ if you understand what your priorities and goals are,” Fritz said. “It’s not saying ‘no,’ it’s saying ‘Yes’ to your priorities.” 

She suggests role-playing. Say “no.” Think of reasons ahead of time to say “no.” 

“I’d love to do that, but now isn’t a good time for me,” she said, for example.

If students juggle too much, they can’t do a good job, and that impacts how students see themselves, Fritz said. 

There is another side of the spectrum, though — lazy students. Students who say “no” to everything. Students who are barely involved in school itself.

“People who are involved in a club activity do better academically,” Grossbaum said. 

Fritz compares it to a bell curve.

“Too much stress interferes with our performance. But the same is true if we’re not stressed enough or not busy enough,” she said. “It’s hard for students to manage that. It changes every semester.”

With changing credit loads, classes and outside activities, each semester brings a different level of stress. Fritz emphasizes balance. 

“Being stressed enhances happiness, motivation and overall success,” she said, as opposed to a lack thereof.

Grossbaum said her outside activities and involvement in ASUI give her a sense of community that less-busy students may be missing out on.

“If you don’t have that, it can be detrimental to your academics,” she said.

And although Metsker is booked clear through her May graduation, she enjoys everything she does.

“Music is my stress relief, and KUOI goes along with that,” she said. “Music may not be applicable to my career as a journalist, but being able to juggle all these activities is invaluable.”

As seen in April issue of Blot Magazine.

Hope after the storm

Lindsey Treffry | blot

It’s on bumpers, buttons and stickers. It hangs from buildings and businesses, and is displayed in the University of Idaho Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender office. The rainbow flag is even tattooed on Julia Keleher’s arm.

Keleher, the UI LGBT Office and Programs Coordinator, got the tattoo at 19. 

“Our LGBT community back in the ‘70s … had the idea of pride,” she said. “It’s all about pride. It’s being proud of who you are.”

In 1978, the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Pride Parade commissioned artist Gilbert Baker to design a new symbol for its marches. Baker taught himself to sew and began crafting the banner. 

“The rainbow is a part of nature and you have to be in the right place to see it,” Baker told a CBS Chicago reporter in June 2012. “It’s beautiful, all of the colors, even the colors you can’t see that really fit us as a people because we are all of the colors ... all the genders, races and ages.”

Paige Davies, the AmeriCorps women’s mentoring, service learning and volunteer coordinator, said Baker probably chose rainbow colors because they are obnoxious.

“It’s in your face. There’s no hiding it,” she said. 

Davies’ interpretation has changed throughout the years.

“To me, now it’s annoying,” Davies said. “Everything has to be rainbow-colored.”

But Davies said the loud colors led her to Inland Oasis, a volunteer organization that serves LGBT communities.

“The logo had rainbow flag colors. Now it says ‘open, accepting, affirming,’ but it used to only have the rainbow,” Davies said. “I knew, then, that that was a place I could go. It was reassuring.”

She said it was just as reassuring to see rainbow flag stickers in UI professors’ offices — part of the UI Safe Zone project.

“They didn’t have to tell me that it was OK to be gay,” she said. “I just knew.”

Katie Noble, UI Women’s Center administrative assistant, said the flag represents a unity of all differences in the community.

“Before coming out, you’re hiding who you are. But with the flag, you’re not gonna hide from that anymore,” Noble said. “The flag is so vibrant and solid.”

And each vibrant color has a meaning.

Red means life. Orange, healing. Yellow, sunlight. Green, nature. Blue, harmony. And purple for spirit. 

The flag once had pink for sex, and turquoise for art or magic, but the colors were later dropped to simplify production.

“The flag is our connection to our history,” Keleher said. “There are symbols (like the flag) and it’s important in understanding where (they) come from.”

Noble said interpretations aren’t always positive.

“For those who are not supportive (of the LGBT community), they’re like ‘Oh, there’s another rainbow flag,’” she said. “There are two sides of it.”

Davies said she might understand why the rainbow was chosen.

“It’s happy, rich and full of life-colors,” she said. “It’s the hope after the storm.”

As seen in February issue of Blot Magazine.

Surviving death

Lindsey Treffry | blot

Everybody dies.

“Death sucks no matter what,” University of Idaho student Britnee Packwood said. “Death is the worst thing that is on this planet.”

Amrah Canul | Blot

Packwood knows death up close. She has since May 16, 2011.

“My dad was 61 when he passed away,” she said. “We knew we were gonna lose him earlier than a lot of other kids.”

Packwood was in eighth grade the first time her dad went to the hospital for a heart attack. Doctors estimated he had two years to live. The attack was followed by years of heart complications, more heart attacks and congestive heart failure. Her dad even had an attack in the left anterior descending artery, known as the Widow Maker.

Sharon Fritz, a licensed psychologist and professor, works at the UI Counseling Center and helps students deal with grief.

“At my age, you’re expecting to see friends sick and grandparents dying,” Fritz said. “You don’t expect it in the 18 to 25 group range, but I see it a lot. In my caseload, at least half a dozen a semester.”

Nationally, personal experience facing death is not uncommon among young people. According to National College Health Assessment surveys gathered in Fall 2011, 15.5 percent of students had experienced the death of a family member or friend. At UI, 15.8 percent of students have experienced the same.

In spring 2011, Packwood’s parents took a trip to Houston. One day, her dad wasn’t feeling well and called her from the hotel.

“I had probably had the weirdest conversation I had ever had with my father,” Packwood said.

Out of nowhere, he asked what she was going to do if they weren’t on the same “time zone clock” anymore.

“Who are we going to call all the time? … No matter who you are, where you are or what you’re doing, I’m always going to be with you,” he told her.

She didn’t think much of it.

“I thought he was doing his whole Dad thing,” Packwood said. “When they got back from Lewiston the next day, I called my mom to ask if their flight went OK. I heard him in the background. He said, ‘No I talked to her yesterday. Just make sure she knows I love her.’”

It was only a couple of hours later that her parents were in an ambulance to the hospital — for the last time. Packwood and her sister later followed.

“We said goodbye, kissed our dad and left,” she said.

Soon after, he passed.

The sisters had last heard that their dad was feeling better. Packwood’s mom returned home to bring them the news.

“We all come in the living room. And all she can say is ‘He’s gone,’” Packwood said. “She is blubbering. My sister starts screaming and bawling her eyes out. And I’m standing there holding a grown woman and a junior in high school in my arms and having them cry on my shoulder. I’m emotionless. I don’t know what to do. I’m more concerned with them instead of myself at the time.”

Fritz said the grieving process is complicated when a person knows they are dying and the end comes suddenly.

“People deal with it different ways when it comes,” Fritz said. “When it is sudden, they either didn’t have a chance to prepare for it or understand it. (It’s a sense of) lack of preparedness.”

In cases like Packwood’s, Fritz said the stages of grief are dragged out more.

“There is a sense of shock.” Fritz said. “It may take a longer time (to grieve). The peaks and valleys are more intense … more ebbs and flows.”

Packwood said knowing he would die soon was worse.

“To lose someone suddenly is awful. It’s terrible,” Packwood said. “But to have to see somebody in a prolonged state of deterioration and just losing it, I think it’s worse. A little piece of your soul gets eaten away, knowing there is nothing you can do.”

She helped her mom make phone calls to family members, and the next morning departed for a UI Conservation Social Sciences field studies trip.

In the Mammoth area of Yellowstone National Park, Packwood spotted a moose.

“I just sat on a rock next to it,” she said. “... I looked up and I was like, ‘OK, I’m gonna be OK. Things are gonna be fine.’ Maybe that was my moment of acceptance.”

The trip ended, she returned home and helped her mom with funeral home planning, transferring the body and figuring out funeral expenses.

“The weirdest thing for me was he was near his chair,” she said. “But he was in a really tiny box next to his chair. I thought, ‘So this is what’s left — a tiny little box of ashes.’”

Those ashes, later sealed in a vault, were surrounded by heirlooms that Packwood and her sister placed inside.

“There was a little wooden box in a bag and the bag wasn’t closed all the way,” she said. “I’m like putting stuff in there. I move the bag, and it’s closed but it wasn’t closed (all the way). I was like, ‘I have my father on my hands.’ I laughed. It was the first time I had truly laughed in such a long time … My sister and I were gut rolling.”

Packwood said returning to UI solidified her belief that her dad wanted the family to keep living.
“That was really when I accepted what it was for what it was,” she said. 

They buried him in a family plot in Montana, where Packwood was raised and where her parents met.

“And if there is a cool part to this, I’m pretty certain about this — at the exact time (of my dad’s death), the chime went off that a baby was born,” Packwood said. “My mom said ‘I didn’t have the heart to go down there, but if it’s a boy — oofh, those parents are going to need some help.’”

Packwood said the death of her father has opened her eyes and pushed her to live more.

“Don’t forget that there is always someone who has a shoulder,” she said. “Don’t forget that you need to do what you need to do for yourself and don’t forget to live. If you have to take a month to just let it all out, go for it. But go back to work. Go back to school. Go back to having girls’ night. Whatever it is. Normalcy, at first, (will) feel weird but it’ll get better.”

Fritz agreed.

“We tell our students to solicit support,” she said. “Death makes you depressed and you want to pull away. But you have to tell your friends, ‘I need you to call me, I need you to take me out.’”
Packwood said there isn’t an easy way to deal with death.

“It’s death. It happens,” she said. “You can’t revel in it and you can’t live in it … you can’t stay there forever. You gotta move on.” 

As seen in December 2012 issue of blot magazine.

Half-ass clone not half-assed

Lindsey Treffry | blot

This equine may be stubborn, but he’s not your average mule.

Utah Pioneer is a clone — an echo of his brother Idaho Gem and predecessor of his brother Idaho Star — born in 2003 as a product of University of Idaho and Utah State University research. He is the only clone still living on UI’s campus.

The mules were created to mirror Taz, an award-winning racing mule owned by Idaho businessman Don Jacklin, who partially funded the clone research.

“Jacklin wanted a clone as close to Taz as you could get,” said Bill Loftus, UI journalism professor and science writer.

Loftus said Utah began as a mare’s unfertilized egg.

Genetic material was removed from the egg, and mule fetus skin cells produced by Taz’s parents were inserted into the egg, placed in a dish and electrically shocked. Once the cells divided, the mule embryo was inserted into Idaho Rose, Utah’s surrogate mother. Nearly 360 days later, Utah was born.

But Utah and his brothers took more than five years to get right. Loftus said embryo transfers are difficult, especially when mares only produce one foal a year.

“(The embryo clones) didn’t have enough horsepower to follow through like a normal embryo would,” Loftus said.

After three years of trying, there had been no success.

So in order to “rev” up the embryos, UI researchers used a broth-like calcium substance. By 2002, Loftus said there had been three pregnancies within 90 days, although most pregnancies were lost at 60 days. Finally, researchers got just the right amount of calcium concentration and a mule was born the next year.

It was off to the races and training to be the next Taz began. Idaho Gem and Idaho Star won their first races in June 2006, while Utah was left in the dust after a training injury.

“The training method didn’t agree with his personality,” Loftus said.

Since the genetically-identical brothers were not equal athletes, the question of nature or nurture arose. Loftus said it is unclear whether Utah’s cloned DNA prevented his racing success or if the parenting of surrogate mother, Idaho Rose, made him a racing adversary.

“Utah Pioneer is ornery,” said Stacey Doumit, Horse Science and Management instructor. “Not all mules are like that.”

Doumit said Utah and Rose would have been together for three to six months during his infancy. Although she has not seen “learned meanness” in foals, she said foals mimic their mothers.
But just like humans, Doumit said each foal has its own personality.

Utah remains at pasture with four other horses and will remain a university attraction throughout his retirement.

Although racing didn’t turn out to be Utah’s gift, he is still a one-of-a … wait … three-of-a-kind mule.


Clone for the cure
Calcium research didn’t just jump-start embryo production, but was a main theme of the cloning process.

During the cloning, researcher Gordon Woods focused on the lack of cancer in horses. Loftus said prostate cancer is non-existent in stallions and skin cancer in white horses doesn’t metastasize. Woods found horses have one-third the calcium of humans, which is the fuel for cancer cells. Horses bodies have elevated amounts of cadmium, a calcium suppressor, and low quantities of calcium overall. Humans — especially those practicing the Western diet — are quite the opposite with high concentrations of calcium from diets full of dairy and red meat.

Humans may be far from being cloned, but cloning equines may be the right step toward human development.

As seen in April 2012 issue of blot.

Please, touch the art

Lindsey Treffry | blot

Jon Harty can’t keep his hands off art.

“Working with my hands was the main reason why I got into doing sculpture,” Harty said.

The 40-year-old University of Idaho graduate likes to play with clay, wood and metal.

Working with these materials has left Harty’s hands cracked and covered in calluses. Manual labor, splinters and sanding wood have reduced his fingernails to stubs.

“You want that dexterity and to be able to grab things and work with things,” Harty said. “My nails seem to be something I use a lot — scratching at things, pulling things, twisting a bolt or nut.”

Of his fingernails, his index and thumb are damaged the most. He said it is instinctual for him to use those fingers, which wears on the skin.

“My hands get tired and stiff,” he said. “The pain connects me to my work even more.”

The motion of turning a clay pot, Harty said, allows him to focus through discomfort.

“I get in there and do anything with it,” Harty said. “You can put your hands in it, squeeze it, hit it, throw it.”

As for sculpting with metal, Harty said there is still a connection between his hands and his work, despite the tool between them. He once produced a 5-foot-5-inch metal sculpture for people to walk through that ended in a 24-inch crawling hole. When he welds, he can see the form taking place — from the bead, to the color, to how it cools. 

But his most organic work grows from the relationship between art and people. 

“My interest is in the body,” Harty said. “How we interact within the environment — where we live, where we spend our work, our school or play or whatever — (and) how our bodies are connected to the environment.”

Harty’s installation, “Body Space,” stemmed from this idea. He said the sculptures focused on how personal space is not universally compatible.

Harty built three wooden boxes based on the physical dimensions of people he knew, including himself. The first box was based off a female friend with a small physical frame.

“I can’t fit in that box,” Harty said. “A lot (of people) can’t. Her space maybe isn’t always accessible to other people — and other people’s (spaces) are more accessible.”

The second box was inspired by a male friend with a larger frame, and the third was designed specifically for Harty, perfectly measured to accommodate only him in a sitting position.

Even though his sculptures are designed to portray personal space, Harty wants to ensure his art allows others to connect with it.

Harty showcased “Body Space” as part of the 2011 Moscow Artwalk.

“(Touch is) something that is taboo when you go into an art gallery,” Harty said. “‘Don’t touch the artwork.’”

But Harty said he wants to draw the viewer in more than a regular gallery does. He doesn’t want people to feel limited to looking, thinking and comprehending artwork.

“That’s more of a mental interaction,” he said. “I want something more physical.”

When he saw people touching his art and parents shutting kids’ fingers in the doors of his wooden work, Harty deemed his showcase a success. People were interacting.

“Open your mind a little bit and think about what you’re looking at a little bit more,” Harty said. “(Think) about what the artist is trying to get across to you.”

As seen in March issue of blot.