People of UNF is a chronicle of students, faculty, university staff and visitors. The hope of this feature is to gain a closer look at those we see walking by us everyday, those we ignore and those we sometimes wish we knew better.
Photos by Kimberly Appleby
“We can’t really call ourselves a democracy and stuff like that, and that’s why it’s important to get people out of this demoralized state because once we get out of that, then we still all have our votes. We are still one person, one vote. That’s the beauty of democracy.”
“I had young parents, so I was at a bar with my parents when I was like 6 or 7 and they gave me a quarter to like, flip through the music at this crappy bar, and I was flipping through the records and saw a naked baby, and the album was Nevermind by Nirvana, and ever since then I’ve been a total music geek. I didn’t go to school for music because I didn’t learn how to play the guitar until I was like 18, but it’s definitely like the first love in my life, for sure.
It’s the first love in my life, so I definitely give it my time. It’s like a relationship, if you try to focus so much on the relationship that you overwhelm the other person, you don’t get as much out of it. It’s kind of weird to talk about music like that, but it’s like, I really have to listen a lot and like explore and not be so obsessed with it that I can’t grow in other areas of my life, so to me it’s like a relationship.”
“I use to be the type of person that was like ‘I am going to fix these problems on my own, I’m strong enough, I don’t need medication to help me.’ But then a doctor told me one time that she understood where I was coming from. But it wasn’t about me being weak. It’s about a chemical imbalance in your body, and sometimes your body just can’t produce the levels of serotonin necessary, and so you need medical help to give you a boost. And so, a lot of people think that because of medication, they are somehow weakened, and I don’t think that at all. I think that someone allowing themselves to acknowledge these different things actually makes you a stronger person. Because you’re fighting to get better, your admitting, ‘I have all of these things that I think are wrong, but here is what I can do to fix them.’”
“I guess the past two years I’ve grown tremendously in the amount of motivation that I’ve had for school. But it’s still not at the level that I want it to be, maybe it’s because I’m a bit of a perfectionist. But this year, I’ve just told myself that life, like you only get so much out of life and, some shorter than others. And I keep telling myself I want to spend time reading a book, I want to spend time in the practice room, I want to spent time playing piano, or running, or doing all of these things, and I don’t do them, and I just sit on the couch and watch Netflix. And I’m just like why am I doing that? If all of these things make me happy, why am I sitting here wishing I was doing them, why don’t I just go out and do them?”
“All I really want to do is just make sure whatever I’m doing is just bringing glory to God. Like I just want to be a light. And that’s really honestly, that’s my only goal, I just want to be a light and share Christ.”
“I have a 22 year old daughter, who has kind of been all over the place. She hasn’t started college yet, but I really try to use this. And my other two sons, I have an eleven year old and a four year old. So my eleven year old is coming up getting ready to enter middle school next year. So I really just try to show them that, if you work hard at whatever you want to do, you can do it. You don’t have to be the smartest, you can really just focus your energy and study, and you can be able to do it. Because if I can do it with everything on my plate, anyone can pretty much do it. You just have to believe in yourself enough to be able to do it.”
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