Making the Summit to Wellness

     Sagarmatha, Chomolungma, Qomolangma; these are but a few of the many names for the mountain that most westerners know as Everest. Standing at 29,029 feet, it's the tallest mountain in the world. And standing at 5'1 inches, Meghan Whiting (that's right, me) is going to climb it. Someday in the near but hopefully not too near future, I will be standing at Everest's summit, virtually "on top of the world."              

Andrew Peacock/Getty Images

     Now, I know this seems like another one of those adrenaline junkie fads, and it is to some degree. But let me back up a little and throw in some context.
     I got bored this summer, per usual, and needed a good book to get lost in and forget, even if just for a moment, that I was spending my two months of free time back home...in Coalgate, Oklahoma. Since Coalgate doesn't even own a Walmart, the biggest super center in the world, it definitely doesn't have the clientele to maintain a fully functioning (Starbucks included) Barnes & Noble. This is where I was forced to turn to my mom’s library, consisting almost entirely of books attempting to define "the meaning of life."    
     Somewhere amongst these spiritual manuals, I stumbled across Into Thin Air. It was one of those thick paperback copies where the writing is so small you have to go back and re-read at least five sentences on each page because you keep losing your place. Despite the not so appealing format, it was by far the most intriguing book on our what can only be described as "eclectic" shelves. So I went outside, got as comfortable as I could on a fishing net strung apart by two trees, aka a hammock, and began to read. Two days later I was reluctantly turning the last page, not wanting the world that I had immersed myself in for the past 72 hours slip away.
     When I finally forced myself to finish the last word, I closed the book and realized that I was the happiest I had been in over a year. For 20 months now, I have been recovering from a mono-like illness that literally turned my life upside down as I knew it. The virus went away after two painful weeks in bed, but the lingering effects manifested themselves in a syndrome know as Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, or POTS for short. Basically, my autonomic nervous system is a bit haywire and I get extremely fatigued with minimal exertion. So, the life I have been living since January 1st, 2013 is a far cry from the marathon runner I once was. As many times as I've cried aloud "why me,” getting so sick has probably been the single best thing that has happened to me in my now 21 and a half years of living. Prior to the illness, I was literally running my body into the ground in every way possible, and I think getting sick was its' way of shouting at me to stop.
     Okay, now back to Everest. I'm still nowhere near where I used to be in terms of energy and stamina, but I am finally beginning to see a light at the end of this seemingly endless tunnel. I truly believe that reading John Krakauer’s experience and becoming so fascinated in mountain climbing kick-started and further motivated me to getting well again. Summiting Everest will be the true mark of a full recovery for me, the adrenaline and bragging rights will just be an added plus.

A Journey to a Brighter Future      

     From West Africa’s Nigeria to the plains of Oklahoma, nursing student Jude Ulogo’s determination for higher education is nothing short of awe-inspiring.
     Ulogo’s journey to East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma, where he is studying nursing, was not an easy one. In fact, when Ulogo left Nigeria to come to the United States, he had no plans of becoming a nurse. But when he arrived in Houston, Texas, he learned that the job he had been doing back home, accounting, would be a hard task to continue in the states. Ulogo’s English wasn’t the clearest and U.S. accounting systems different from Nigeria’s immensely. Wondering what he could do to at least get a job, Ulogo gave pharmacy school a try next, but found that the school he was accepted into, Xavier University, was not taking students. Hurricane Katrina had caused major damage to the school, including destroying a quarter million dollar electron microscope, warping the entire gym floor and flooding the dormitories.
     This was but the tip of the ice burg for the disappointments and heartbreaks Ulogo would go through until finally landing in Ada. It has been his determination and unwavering love for his family that has kept him on this pursuit for a better future.        
    “Pharmacy school obviously wasn’t for me after the hurricane,” said Ulogo. “So I decide okay-let me go to nursing school.”
     While nursing school may be a non-traditional career for most men, for an African man like Ulogo, choosing a nursing career was completely in opposition of his culture.
     “In Africa, we have these kind of culture things,” said Ulogo. “They don’t want you to be a nurse as a male person. They feel like doing nursing is for females.”
     According to University of Manchester Professor Shula Marks, many men in Africa are taken by surprise to learn that there have always been men in nursing. In fact, in South Africa, male nurses were the sole caretakers for those working in the mines until women entered the workplace in the 1970’s. However, it seems that nursing is still a heavily gender stereotyped career, and even in the U.S. is still largely considered “women’s work.”
     Despite this cultural bias, Ulogo left Houston and headed north to Oklahoma’s East Central University, but this next move towards education was once again inhibited when his father became terminally ill with diabetes. Ulogo had to return to Nigeria to take care of his father, which was his first hands-on experience as a nurse. There, he helped by bringing and preparing the right foods for his father, and also helped with medication.
     After his father’s funeral, and due to the expenses of his father’s medications, Ulogo moved to Nevada where his wife was living to get a job because he is the “breadwinner” of his family.    
     With no setback being too big for Ulogo to overcome, he returned to East Central University and with the help of former advisors, was able to pick up where he had left off in Nevada. One of those advisors, Louann Evert, is amazed at how far Ulogo has come, and is willing to go, to become a nurse.        
     “Right now, he is fasting for 100 days,” said Evert. “It is his promise to his higher power to help get spiritual strength to be able to make it through school.”    
     Ulogo appreciates the educational opportunity he has found in the United States.    
     “That is why we are here,” said Ugolo about himself and others in similar situations. “To get ourselves more educated, more education, and to be financially okay to take care of our families back home.”

     Jude Ulogo talks about his journey from Nigeria to the United States, and his relentless pursuit of a higher education.
    While first giving pharmacy school a try, Ulogo was forced to change his career path when Hurricane Katrina destroyed Xavier University, the school he was planning on attending. This lead Ulogo to the path that he’s on today, taking classes to become a nurse at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma.
    What was once a heavily gender stereotyped career, it is not uncommon to see male nurses in the United States today. However, this is not the case for male nurses in Africa.
    According to University of Manchester Professor Shula Marks, many men in Africa are taken by surprise to learn that there have always been men in nursing. The fact still remains however, that men make up only a small percentage of the overall nursing population. In South Africa alone, a case study commissioned by the South African Department of Labour reported that only 7 percent of the nursing workforce are males.
    Despite the views towards nursing in his home country, Ulogo is proud of his future career.
    “Being a nurse in the United State, you have to study all night,” said Ulogo. “I am willing to do this because I want to be able to help people and give them the care they need back home.”
     Ulogo has a clear goal set for himself, and his determination to reach this goal is unwavering. He is certain that he will be able to use his career in nursing to give patients in Nigeria proper care, and will hopefully bring awareness of males in nursing home as well.

                                              Holocaust Survivor Speaks at OU 

     University of Oklahoma’s organization Students for Israel hosted the first annual Holocaust
remembrance event Thursday with Holocaust survivor Eva Unterman as the featured speaker.        
     Unterman was asked to speak in observance of Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day. This holiday is held every year on the 27th of April, which marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Yonatan Schmidt, the student organizer for the event, moved to the United States from Israel just over a year ago and was disappointed by the lack of commemoration for this holiday.
    “Back home, we have a ceremony every year with four to five thousand members of the community where I lived attending,” said Schmidt.
     This lead him to call his uncle who lived in Tulsa and spends his own money helping to educate teachers in Oklahoma about the Holocaust.
    “I knew that my uncle was good friends with Eva Unterman,” said Schmidt. “So I called him and met up with Eva to ask if she would speak at OU.”
     During the event, Unterman recalled by memory the story of her childhood. Where she spent four years in the Lodz Ghetto in Poland before being relocated to the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Dresden and finally Theresienstadt. While Unterman can seemingly remember even the smallest details of those years, from the black S.S. boots to the sound of the cattle car doors closing, her feelings towards the events that happened to her are vague to nonexistent.
    “The only way to describe that to this day was that i was numb, totally numb,” said Unterman after telling about her experience of being hidden in a dried out water well to avoid capture by the S.S. officers. “I remember it as clear in my mind as it could possibly be, but I don’t have any feelings about it, just numbness.”
     She also emphasized how dire the food situation was in the concentration camps, which lead to her story of the hardest day of her childhood. With a single bowl of broth made from beets, water and sparse chunks of potato a day, all of the prisoners were severely malnourished. That is why her grandmother volunteered to “mend socks” for some of the S.S. officers when they offered an extra slice of bread in return. However, “mending socks” was simply a facade, and when the volunteers were outside the officers shot them.
    “I know that my grandmother volunteered to get the extra slice of bread for me,” said Unterman. “Everyone always says the officers were just ‘following orders,’ but these officers had no orders to kill my grandmother. It was purely for entertainment.”
     Unterman has made it her lifelong mission to Holocaust education by telling her story to thousands of students, and will continue doing just this. OU Hillel and Sooners for Israel will also continue the event by cosponsoring speakers in the future.
    “This is just the first of many Holocaust remembrance events that we will have in the years to come,” said Schmidt. Eva Unterman talks about surviving the Holocaust. VIDEO: MEGHAN WHITING, Runtime: ;27

 

TV as the New Radio

     NPR’s News Applications Editor Brian Boyer is pioneering the way for a new era with TV acting as the new radio.
     Since 2007, NPR has been gathering popular musicians from around the world to perform in an intimate setting known as the “Tiny Desk Concerts.” The artists sing into a single microphone in front of an audience of NPR employees, and then the videos are posted online to YouTube. However, this year, you won’t have to go to the web to enjoy your favorite artists. You can simply turn on your TV and enjoy the music after downloading an application on your phone for Roku. With millions of views online, Boyer is hoping that the videos will be met with the same enthusiasm when put on TV.      
     Radio was the first device that allowed for mass communication. Today, however, radios in the home have become rare, and you are most likely to see them sitting on a shelf covered in dust with their days of playing music and news long gone. While radios may be outdated, the idea of sole sound is still very much in use. That’s because it allows for much more multi-tasking, which is great in a world that is continuously growing busier.
    “Audio is a medium that fits into peoples’ daily lives,” said Boyer.
     For NPR, who lives and breathes audio, what better way to market their “Tiny Desk Concerts” then to put them on a device that you’d be hard pressed not to find in an everyday household.  
    “There’s this box in everyone’s house, this TV, that’s totally good at playing audio and I don’t really have to put anything interesting on the screen,” said Boyer. “I feel like that’s the machine we need to infect with our work.”
     Boyer, who began his career at a software company in Chicago after studying computer science, had no plans of becoming a journalist (although he did work at his high school’s newspaper.) But his work in software was not fulfilling, which is how he stumbled across the idea of journalism.
     “At the end of the day, it was just soul sucking crap to work on. Making rich people more money,” said Boyer. “Thankfully, through good luck I came across a blog post on boingboing about Northwestern University giving scholarships to software developers to study journalism for a year.” 
     After graduation, Boyer went on to intern at ProPublica in New York and then spent three years at the Chicago Tribune working on their news applications team before finally landing where he is today at NPR, where he’s worked for almost two years.
     As for Boyer’s future, he is most excited about doing more with television, depending on whether or not the “Tiny Desk Concerts,” or what he calls “experiments,” are successful. And while his vision of what he’d like in his future doesn’t seem too clear, he’s confident that his talented teams are going to end up someplace “really cool” in the years to come. But for someone with a job like his, the future doesn’t need to be, and isn’t, written in stone.
     “There’s no obvious path for someone like me,” said Boyer. “I’m just enjoying the ride and we’ll see where it takes me."

Brian Boyer talks about the history of being a "data journalist." VIDEO: Meghan Whiting, runtime ;15

A Journey to a Brighter Future

     From West Africa’s Nigeria to the plains of Oklahoma, nursing student Jude Ulogo’s determination for higher education is nothing short of aw-inspiring. Ulogo’s journey to where he is now, studying nursing at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma, was not an easy one. In fact, when Ulogo left Nigeria to come to the United States, he had no plans of becoming a nurse. But when he arrived in Houston, he soon learned that accounting, the job he had been doing back home, would be hard to continue as his English wasn’t the clearest and the countries’ accounting systems differed almost entirely. Wondering what he could do to at least get a job, Ugolo gave pharmacy school a try only to find that the school he was accepted into in New Orleans could not take students due to Hurricane Katrina happening that same year. This was but the tip of the ice burg for the disappointments and heartbreaks Ugolo would go through until finally landing in Ada. It has been his determination and unwavering love for his family that has kept him on this pursuit for a better future.        
     Speaking with no signs of frustration, Ugolo said simply “Pharmacy school obviously wasn’t for me after the hurricane, so I decide okay, let me go to nursing school.”
     For those who have grown up in the United States, nursing school is considered very difficult, with many students being encouraged to pursue it in college, both males and females alike, for the job opportunities it will lead to down the road. This, however, is not the case for males pursing this career in Africa.
     “In Africa, we have these kind of culture things,” said Ugolo. “They don’t want you to be a nurse as a male person. They feel like doing nursing is for females.”
     In fact, according to an article by University of Manchester Professor Shula Marks, many men in Africa are taken by surprise to learn that there have always been men in nursing.
     Despite this cultural bias, Ugolo left Houston and headed north to Oklahoma’s East Central University, but this next move towards education was once again inhibited when his father became sick with diabetes and Ugolo had to go back to Nigeria to take care of him.
     “After funeral, I moved to Nevada where my wife was to get a job, because the medications for my father had cost a lot of money,” said Ugolo. “I am the breadwinner of my family, I have to take care of my younger ones.”
     It was in Nevada where Ugolo once again attempted to earn his degree in nursing. However, luck did not seem to be on his side when the school he was attending lost accreditation a semester before he was due to graduate. With no setback being too big for Ugolo to overcome, he returned to East Central University and with the help of former advisors, was able to pick up where he had left off in Nevada. One of those advisors, Louann Evert, is amazed at how far Ugolo has come, and is willing to go, to become a nurse.
     “Right now, He is fasting for 100 days,” said Evert. “He doesn’t eat all day until 6pm. It is his promise to his higher power to help get spiritual strength to be able to make it through school.”
     Ugolo doesn’t take the fact that he is able to get an education to become a nurse in the United States lightly. He appreciates the that he will be able to get a degree that in his own country is hard for men to get, because ultimately, he just wants to be able to help others and his family.
     “So that is why we are here,” said Ugolo on behalf of himself and others in similar situations. “To get ourselves more educated, more education, and to be financially okay to take care of our families back home.”

 Jude Ugolo begins by introducing himself, then explains how he got to Ada, Oklahoma to study nursing from Nigeria. He explained why he wants to become a nurse, while footage of him in lab giving patients eyedrops and medication. VIDEO: Meghan Whiting, runtime :49

    Festival Allows Students to Shine 

      Student’s at the University of Oklahoma’s Helmerich School of Drama were able to let their talents truly shine at the Faith Broome Young Playwright’s Festival this past Tuesday evening.
   
      The festival, which took place on campus in the Old Science Hall’s Lab Theater, changed things up this year. While the previous four years that the festival has taken place focused on the works of professional playwrights, this year, the plays presented were actually written, directed and acted by students.
   
      “We normally have a playwright come workshop a play with us,” said Kasey Weir, a junior acting major at OU who also acted in the festival. “For some reason that didn’t work out as we were hoping, so we decided to just have our own students write the plays and direct them.”

Actor Oliver Archibald and actress Kasey Weir during their play "The Life 
and Death of Milly and Milly"
PHOTO: Meghan Whiting

      Instead of a single play, this year’s Faith Broome Young Playwright’s Festival consisted of six, 10 minute plays that focused on the concept of change. For example, the play “Changing” by John Steele, Jr., focused on a newly married couple and their relationship, which began to slowly fall apart due to the demands and pressures to succeed in the workplace. Another play, “Always Another” by Terra Dray, focused first on three teenagers all struggling with loss, drugs and an alcoholic parent. At the end of the play it showed them a few years down the road in an AA meeting, as they had all learned this as a coping mechanism for their past.
   
       According to the Helmerich School of Drama’s catalogue website, “The school’s commitment to new works adds to the exciting atmosphere that permeates the student’s academic career.” This is why the Faith Broome Young Playwright’s Festival is so important, because it gives students the chance to share their hard work and talent with their community.
   
      "We’re the second oldest program in the country, so we have a lot of alumni,” said Dr. Judith Pender, the producer of the Faith Broome Young Playwright’s Festival. “The people who created the Yale School of Drama created ours.”

      While Oklahoma may not seem like the premier state to begin a career in acting, those at the Helmerich School of Drama are glad they found the school and are excited for the future. 

      “I had no where I wanted to go until I started looking into theater schools and found OU,” said Weir. “We have alumni everywhere so anywhere you go whether it be L.A., New York, Chicago or Dallas there’s people everywhere willing to help you get your foot in the door, which is really helpful since my ultimate goal is to be on Broadway...at least just once.”

AUDIO: Meghan Whiting, runtime ;17