Reports are just coming in that the UC police shot and wounded a gunman on the UC Berkeley campus around 3 PM PST. Luckily they arrived at the scene before anyone else was hurt and assured students that the campus was once again, completely safe.

This is just another scary reminder that college students don’t live in the safe and secure bubble that we think we do. That somehow, on the same campus where we go to class, meet our friends for coffee in the student center, and lay out on the quad, are dangerous people with loaded weapons.

While this obviously isn’t an everyday occurrence, it is a good wake-up call for every student to remember that a college campus is just like the real world and it’s just as important as it is in the real world to stay aware of what’s happening around us and take the same precautions that we would take anywhere else.

J.R. speed-skated his way to my heart. OMG, did I just write that?

Half Filipino.
Half Polish.
One hundred percent heartthrob.

Let’s talk J.R. Celski.

He’s single, he’s 19-years old, and he’s an amazing short track speed skating sensation competing for Team USA in the Vancouver Olympics. And he’s officially your reason to tune in!

J.R. has been skating since he was a mere three years old when his parents gave him Playschool roller skates for his birthday (I can’t even remember what I got for my third birthday – cake, maybe?). Since then, he’s been dedicating his life to skating, but it wasn’t until he found out about speed skating on ice in 2002 that he realized this was a passion not to be joked around with. So he swapped his wheeled skates for some 17 ½ inch blades, moved from the roller rink to the ice rink, and thus began his journey to the Olympics. And boy, has it been quite an adventure.

J.R.’s hard work and focus has allowed him to win several medals, including a recent silver at the World Championships. Then, in September 2009, he finally got the opportunity he had been waiting for his whole life: a chance to compete in the Olympic trials. He was doing a phenomenal job and then, just like that, he slipped and slammed into the unforgiving wall surrounding the rink. The whole room was stunned into silence as blood gushed out of his left thigh, where his right skate blade had deeply immersed itself. Read More »