The last week of January was frenetic and haphazard, mirroring the bizarre weather. A week that started balmy and comfortable quickly turned frigid and miserable: We were inspired, then leveled and discouraged. We fought tears (which quickly froze on our faces), danced, and begged strangers for money. It’s as if the fates tried to cram as much as possible into what’s left of January, the “emo kid” of the months of the year.
It started out tastily enough: a pleasant 45 degrees accompanied the playful Dance Marathon Top Chef competition on Saturday. Amateur NU chefs used honey as their theme ingredient (one of the true Bear Necessities of life) and raised more than $1,000. Now that’s sweet.
But maybe not very healthy, though you shouldn’t worry: The Feinberg School of Medicine is working on research showing that stem cells might help unclog blocked arteries. The technology would speed up healing by improving blood flow. It’s too bad they didn’t make it in time for last week’s blood drive, when students were pumping their little hearts out to get the crimson tide flowing.
Speaking of health, tear-jerking cancer survivors came Monday to speak about the work of DM beneficiary Bear Necessities. It was a timely and necessary reminder that Dance Marathon is actually intended to help people, not just overshadow every other philanthrophic event ever hosted on campus. DM dancers couldn’t reflect for too long, though: There was that Thursday half-money deadline they probably forgot about.
Dancing for DM might have larger implications, but NU got its groove on for purely superficial thrills at Niteskool’s Girl Talk concert. The handling and planning of the concert got mixed reviews, but the masses seem to agree that Gregg Gillis is a baller. No doubt Girl Talk will be the featured artist on many students’ MySpace pages for weeks, until the song gets sadly “deleted by artist.” :(
Yet Northwestern does have other ways of fighting cancer besides dancing. University researchers are developing a new drug-delivery system that may help cancer patients by extracting sea sponges from the depths of the ocean to make better drugs, and are testing the effects of an anti-cancer drug on scleroderma. Deep-sea chemo? Groovy.
Now would be a good time to mention that you probably shouldn’t be reading this. Another Northwestern study has found that reading news online stresses out young adults because it only serves as a painful reminder of how miserable the world is. Need a respite from all that bad news? Check out our adorable new Cute Animal Blog. Nothing chases away the worries like furry baby creatures.