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Hilltopics | University Honors Program | Volume 15 Issue 3 | Summer 2018 Letter from the Editor: Choose Quality Destiny Rose Murphy Hello from the 2018 Summer Edition After all, in college everything is a first, go grocery shopping it’s super easy of Hilltopics! For those of you who which means mundane choices can to make the best possible decision are new readers (I’m looking at you, be absolutely terrifying. Consider the with little to no thought. You’ll be slightly-terrified new SMU Honors process of buying a tube of toothpaste amazed with the results. Even the student reading this at orientation) for the first time on your own: first smallest of changes in body soap or I’d like to provide a brief explanation. find a store (will you walk to it? Can trash can liner can vastly improve Hilltopics is SMU’s Honors magazine: you drive to it?), then figure out where your life and set you on a path to an independently funded, student-run the toothpaste is (why isn’t it in the becoming a much happier real-adult. publication dedicated to printing high- pharmacy section? It was always there quality material that students, alumni, at the Kroger at home!), then pick a More importantly, focusing on faculty, and staff alike actually want brand (you’ve gotten Colgate in the improving the quality of each part to read. The yearly summer edition is past, but Crest is cheaper, and you’re of your life will make you a more a conglomerate of previous years’ top broke, and do you really know if you questioning adult. If you’ve ever been hits curated by the upcoming year’s should get fluoride or not?), then frustrated at a parent or coworker new Editors in Chief. For this edition, check out (do you try self-checkout or for using an outdated, objectively the 2018-2019 Editors in Chief, Alex risk interacting with another human less effective tool (I don’t know, like McNamara and Drew Sneed, have being in a lane?), then leave and Bing), then you know what it’s like written abstracts for each featured piece find your way back without having a to wish someone was paying more outlining what made them choose that panic attack. That’s a dozen choices attention to improving the quality of piece over others. These abstracts are for that you’ve very possibly never had to their life. By getting into the habit you, new readers, so that you can get a make before, so of course you’re going of constant improvement now, you’re feel for the quality of work Hilltopics to be nervous, and it’s not your fault less likely to end up an old dog with wants from you. As you’ll soon discover, for buying the first toothpaste you see no new tricks. In this way, the habit- that level of quality is high; we’re not just so you can get out of there faster. setting period that we go through in looking for basketball game write-ups college can be incredibly useful to us, here. This is a place for something more. Unfortunately, the choices that we as can every drastic change that we make at the beginning of our adult face later in life. Each time we move, You don’t need to be a current student lives have a tendency to stick with start a new job, or end a relationship, to know that quality and college aren’t us forever. The groceries we buy, the we have the opportunity to rethink all usually synonymous. Popular media way we manage our calendars, and the choices we are currently making represents the college student as a creature the way we dress ourselves during out and to optimize for what we wish of cheap ramen noodles and dirty laundry, time at SMU become habits that will we were doing better. Choose high procrastination and bottom shelf liquor. subconsciously cement themselves quality in every instance that you Having been a student for three years for years to come, which, if we’re not can, and you will find yourself more now at the prestigious and, let’s be honest, careful, will turn us into 40-year-old confident in your decisions and your incredibly expensive Southern Methodist adults that still buy one-ply toilet life than you ever knew you wanted. University, I can confirm these stereotypes paper. The solution? When the terror to be true regardless of socioeconomic of infinite choice dies down (and it That means if you want to write for class. Somehow, even here, Pabst Blue will after a semester or two, I promise) Hilltopics, don’t do it because you Ribbon beer still appears in party coolers, start researching things from the think it’ll look good on a resume (it and oversized, free t-shirts atop Walmart ground up. Want to procrastinate on will) or in an interview (oh boy it sweatpants dominate as the class uniform a chore or an essay? Research that will) or because your family would for any courses starting before noon. toothpaste. Learn what fluoride does. like it (good God they’ll love it; Decide if minimizing plastic waste is they’ll share everything you write For the most part, I think we should be important to your toothpaste decision on Facebook and your grandma will forgiven for these stereotypical forays into and choose once and for all whether bring it up at Thanksgiving). Write the low-quality world of stolen Chipotle or not you want whitening power. Put for Hilltopics because you want to napkins and essays started and finished all the thought you can into that one put quality work out into the world. between the hours of 2:30am and 7:52am. tiny choice, so that the next time you Write for Hilltopics because you have 1 something important to say and you’re of what comes out of your pen. When upset no one else is saying it. Submit you’re done, email what you’ve made to comics, poems, and art to Alex and Drew [email protected] and arsneed@ that capture a feeling you’ve never seen smu.edu and maybe it’ll be printed in captured before. Sit at your desk in that an issue published during the semester, tiny dorm room and write and draw to or even next year for the incoming the very best of your ability and be proud first-years to read and be inspired by. That is, if it’s quality. How Freshmen See the University Curriculum Andrew Oh Self-Explanatory. -Alex 2 Drugs and the Arts: A Perfect Match? Kenny Martin In this article, Kenny makes the intriguing argument that drugs are best kept away from artists, and not because of any moral or ethical problem with drug use. -Drew As an artist, I must admit to feeling a Why not? All artists struggle to passive experiencer of art (whether certain amount of ambivalence toward perform or produce up to their own an audience member in a concert hall drugs. I’m speaking broadly here, not expectations; perhaps drugs hold or theatre, or an observer in a gallery, just about marijuana, the subject of this the key to a more relaxed, creative, or a reader of poetry) more keen or issue of Hilltopics, but also about alcohol, focused, and clear way of living, to a interested. There’s simply no getting LSD, cocaine, and all other substances more powerful artistic personality. around the hard work of art, no magic that Homo sapiens sapiens commonly pill with the power to make a miracle uses for recreational, mind-altering But, of course, not all artists agree. out of mediocrity. purposes. For it seems to me that art and The late Mark Strand, one of the great artists have a complicated, problematic, poets of the recent age, was once asked The key to art is the, as Keats says, and probably overblown relationship about artists using drugs to enhance “teeming brain” of the artist, along with drugs, one that’s fascinating but their work. I suspect many people with an audience willing to engage troubling at the same time. There’s the will identify with his response: “They with that brain via the artistic product stereotype of the genius, eccentric, mad interfere. I mean, if I’ve had a couple it produces. If drugs are involved, artist (à la Allen Ginsberg and the Beats) of drinks, I don’t feel like writing. I feel great; I suspect, however, that it will who heavily experiments with drugs as a like having another drink.” Moreover, prove, in the long run, even better if means of extended or heightened creative for every artist who has successfully they are not. For chemical-induced expression. The Beatles did it; recent used drugs as an artistic tool, there’s at highs will always fade … on the other discoveries suggest that Shakespeare least one who has fallen, tragically, to hand, the elation, understanding, and might have done it. Drugs play a the very real dangers of drug use. Bill transcendence produced by sound art fundamental role in hip-hop and rap Evans and John Coltrane, two of the are, like diamonds of the mind, forever. music (if not as a player in the creative most important musical geniuses ever, Ours is a world of several pleasures, process, then at least as subject matter), both died partially as a result of drug and none is less valid for being more and taking drugs has long been a part use (cocaine and heroin, respectively).

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