Thursday, April 29, 1982
Page 4
Daily Nebraskan
Editorial
Dead Week nothing but tired students, old coffee
- t- Mnh knHar thin Hnino cnmntKinn
Never has there been a name more inappropriate for a
time period than "Dead Week." The real Dead Weeks
came sometime in late February and early March; those
were the weeks when we were "just about ready to get
going" on those term papers and semester projects. It was
easy enough then to forego a night of research for the
quieter study of, say, the proper way to get beer cans out
of the plastic 6-pack binders.
But Dead Week this week? The only two things that
seem dead this week are the students staying up for late
study sessions and the coffee those students are drinking.
People who have been hibernating for three months
suddenly crop up in classes that long ago stopped leaving
empty chairs for them. Table space at Love Library
suddenly becomes a premium item, a commodity only ex
ceeded in value by the free services of a good typist.
Suddenly the rest of the world goes on the back burn
er. War in the Falkland Islands you say? Fine. Maybe it 11
Dark mood broken
by Happiness Man
Ah, melancholia and dread despair. They have me in
their icy grip again. Not for me the lukewarm emotions of
"depression," "sadness" or "being down in the mouth."
No. This is the real thing, a full-scale dark mood at its
blackest.
One takes a risk in putting this sort of thing down on
paper for the public to see. To be melancholy, especially
for no immediately perceptible reason, is just not done in
this world of perpetually smiling yellow buttons and cries
of "Have A Nice Day."
"Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you
cry alone," I mutter between clenched teeth as I walk
carelessly between moving cars in the hope that one of
Mary Louise
Knapp
them might relieve me of the tedious burden of remaining
alive. Unfortunately, I reach my destination unscathed.
"How are you today? Isn't the weather gorgeous!" A
carefree voice floats into my ear.
"I'm doing terribly, thank you. I think I might go jump
off a bridge," I reply.
"Oh, you don't really mean that," says my well-meaning
friend, slightly shocked. "Things could be worse, you
know."
"I doubt it, but thank you for your concern," I say,
refusing to be penetrated by her maddening cheerfulness.
"Well, just be that way and see if I care!" she says,
flouncing off in a flurry of sunshine and roses. Hmmmm, I
think, strange how she always said she'd be with me all
the way, come good or bad.
I proceed along the street, my annoyance with the
entire human and animal races growing with each passing
moment. Another nebulous form runs up to me and grabs
my coattails.
"Hey, cheer up! It can't be all that bad!" it shouts,
breathing unwanted happiness with every word.
"Yes, it can," I answer severely, plucking it off with all
the dignity I can muster. "Now will you go away and
leave me alone?"
"I'm only trying to help you," it says, its squishy,
ambiguous form attaching itself to my arm and exuding
an unpleasantly sweet odor. I reach for the Mace.
"Now, now, we mustn't get upset," it croons. "Getting
upset and depressed is bad for our sense of well-being, and
more importantly, it causes other people to be uncom
fortable." "Let 'em be uncomfortable, I'm miserable!" I shout,
turning to face my antagonist. It was, I discovered, a man
dressed in a yellow plastic suit, an enormous plastic globe
covering his head. His features consisted merely of two
bland black dots for eyes and a calm, smiling mouth
stretched across the face.
"Ye Gods! Who are you!" I exclaim.
"I'm Happiness Man, and I'm here to save the world
from the unhealthy influences of depression and depress
ed people," it says. "Obviously, you look like a person in
need of treatment for this unfortunate condition. Would
you please come along quietly?"
"I'm not going anywhere with you!" I say, struggling
to extricate myself from its grip.
"Now, now, let's not make a fuss," says Happiness
Man, dragging me with surprising strength away from the
street. "After rehabilitation, youU be an entirely different
person, able to see the world in a much better perspective.
Our Happiness-inducing drugs (and, for the recalcitrant),
our simple Happiness Brain Operations have saved many."
Ah, happiness and blessed peace of mind. Since my
three weeks at the Happiness Clinic, I have become an en
tirely different person . . .
be good for a term paper someday. Itll still be there a
couple of weeks from now it it s reaiiy a war worm wunr
ing about.
Should Dead Week be as all-consuming and important
as it is? Of course not, but that's what we make it. Sure,
there are things we have to get done by the end of the
semester, assignments that more than likely were assign
ed during the first days of class with the idea that we
would work on them as the semester progressed, during
our free time. If those assignments were really as import
ant to us as we make them out to be now, how could we
have avoided them for so long?
The magic word for this week then is "relax." Keep
working, because that's the only way youU make it
through this semester-ending crunch, but still relax. After
all, if you've waited this long to start whipping your
semester together, you've probably forfeited your best
effort anyway. We are at that point where getting some
thing done sounds much better than doing something
well.
Maybe next semester, if you have a next semester, will
be the one in which the projects get done on time, the
papers get handed in a week early, and all of those things
that happen in somebody else's dreams will finally come
together to make Dead Week a truly dead week. But prob
ably not. Chances are that the next Dead Week will very
much resemble this one; the ulcers that started to form
last semester and that are being aggravated this semester
will require treatment next semester.
It gets to be a cyclical deal. We put off the work until
we get jittery about it, then we get too jittery to study
and we put it off again, and so on right up to the all
nighter before the final exam.
This is as good a year as any to break the cycle. But if
it's too late to do anything about this semester except
finish it, that's okay. Just keep reminding yourself that
it'll be all over in a week.
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Military two-faced about wives
The story has a classic edge to it. A tale of Any wife
who was told and believed that her marriage was a
partnership. A tale of Anywife who later heard her "part
ner" swear in a divorce court that all the money he earned
was his, that she didn't deserve a nickel of it.
The only thing different about the current version is
that this time it's the military giving Up service in marri
age and disservice in divorce.
But let me go back a bit.
Almost a year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that
the prized military pension, the reward for 20 years of
Ellen Goodman
duty, could no longer be considered a part of family assets
to be divided up in case of divorce.
The Court said that Congress had intended military
pensions to go only to the person who was entitled. "The
plight of an ex-spouse of a retired service member is often
a serious one," the justices wrote, but unless the Congress
changes the law, the pension belonged to him (usually a
him) and him alone.
Since then, there have been no fewer than eight bills
filed in the Congress by bedfellows as strange as Sen.
Roger Jepsen, R-Iowa, and liberal Rep. Pat Schroeder, D
Colo. Next Friday, Jepsen will chair the fourth and last of
the Senate hearings on bills designed to provide more
protection for divorced military spouses.
But in step with our partnership fable, the opponents
of these bills are none other than the armed forces. The
brass from land, sea and air are expected to testify in full
combat gear.
These folk are part of the same organizations that write
endless odes to military wives in their Family Manuals. In
San Diego, even the grocery bags bear the message: "The
Navy Wife . . . The toughest job in the Navy! We want to
keep the good families in."
Furthermore any of these officers can, I am sure,
sympathetically list the special problems of the wives who
often hold these good families together.
At the lowest level, the pay scale makes it necessary for
most wives to work, and the mobility makes it impossible
for most of them to build a career. Only 13 percent ever
have their own pension plans. At the middle level there is
often an overt or subtle expectation for wives to do exten
sive volunteer work for the military. Indeed "wife grades"
often appear on their husbands' records.
Suzanne Davis, a longtime Navy wife and current head
of the National Military Wives Association puts in succinct
ly: "You can be asked not to work (in order to) support
your husband's career, asked to be sole nurturer of child
ren for long periods of time when your husband is away,
asked to live in some pretty unsavory places, asked to put
the military first ahead of yourself and your children.
Then at the end, if you're divorced, the military says you
have no right to any part of it. It's a slap in the face."
The Pentagon position is, need I tell you, slightly dif
ferent. The Department of Defense maintains that they
need this pension as a perk to keep re-enlistment up.
Citing some highly suspect figures - senators are still try
ing to find the source - they said thousands would drop
out before retirement if their pot of pension gold had to
be shared with ex-spouses.
But here, the military doesn't even have a grip on its
own self-interest. All the branches know that the key to
re-enlistment right now is the attitude of a spouse, not the
existence of an ex-spouse. It is the wife who cannot help
being affected by attitude portrayed in Divorce, Army
Style.
Rosemary Locke, legislative chair of NMWA, wife and
mother of career Navy man says, "There are so many
pressures now on the military family to get out. The
career army is a married army. About 75-to-80 percent of
those at the four-year level are married. What are they
going to say to women about the benefits of supporting
their husband's career?"
The former military partner doesn't just part with her
pension. The proposals before Congress also deal in one
way or another with her lost survivor and medical
benefits. But any bill that comes out of committee is
likely to at least give divorced army wives the same
pension rights as the foreign service or the civil service.
In the meantime, if you have the Pentagon for a part
ner, it's time to read the fine print on the military
marriage contract.
(c) 1982, The Boston Globe Newspaper Company
Washington Post Writers Group
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Unsigned editorials represent the policy of the spring
1982 Daily Nebraskan but do not necessarily reflect the
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