So, like, I totally have noticed something about, like, how people talk. You know?

It’s like they really don’t know what they’re, like, talking about. Or, like, using questions at the end of the sentence, you know what I mean?

These questions which lead others onto our own path of uncertainty, you know?

Because, like, no one likes to walk that road alone, right?

The “likes” and the “you knows” have been infesting our vocabulary for, like, a really long time.

But, you know, this isn’t just something I have noticed recently, you know what I mean?

I’m just allowing you into this conversation of certain uncertainty.

Because, you know, I totally don’t see why anyone would, like, listen to anyone who, I mean, totally, talked like this.

When did we become so totally, like, yeah? You know?

When did it become cool to sound like we have no idea what we’re talking about?

It seems as though we have lost our confidence in our own convictions.

The rampant disarticulation has been a viral epidemic, trumping the fake epidemic called Swine Flu.

It’s not like we don’t have anything to say.

This generation has plenty more to say with declarative sentences, because they, like, you know, declare stuff.

On campus alone, IUS students should be voicing their opinions about the quality of the school’s curriculum, the efficiency of the faculty offices and the disengaging actions of administration.

What about the smoking ban on campus?

The protesters last semester did not speak in “likes” and the “you know what I means.” They told you what they meant.

None of the rules and regulations in the policy end with “you know.”

Trust me.

We need to be ardent about questioning why budgets for student activities have been cut while tuition and enrollment are at an all-time high at IU Southeast.

When asked to evaluate our professors and classes, simply stating “totally great” is not enough compared to the honest and productive feedback we could be giving.

Trust me — they’ll listen if they can understand us.

We should be communicating our ideas because it is our responsibility to the campus.

Voicing our opinions has become our biggest responsibility in this time of our lives.

Creating our arguments and finding ourselves while at a university will make life easier when we begin our careers in that bigger world they’re always talking about in class.

One of the key abilities when looking for any career is the ability to communicate.

Whether it is a business major communicating during a meeting or even a journalist writing an article, you have to be able to speak during an interview like you know what you’re saying.

Speaking and creatively writing is not something that can be taken care of with a computer.

It is something that every employer is looking for in an employee.

When you have a conviction about something, speak, like, it.

Think about great speakers like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Abraham Lincoln.

I don’t recall Susan B. Anthony’s speech on women’s rights to vote in 1873 ambling on with “Women are, like, persons.”

I try to take as much responsibility as possible for what I say and write.

When I put my pen to blue-lined paper — or rather my fingers to the keyboard — I want to make you understand what I’m saying.

You know what I mean?

Too many times I have seen someone give up an argument on something they are passionate about because they didn’t know how to say what they wanted to.

Or lose a job because they just couldn’t step out of their own box and converse during an interview well enough.

I am guilty of being too passive in what I say, as well. I catch myself giving the communal “yeah” in agreement without contributing to the conversation. Instead of giving solid questions, I fall back on the easy reply of, “really?”

We have a responsibility to ourselves as well as others to be as clarifying as possible.

It’s impossible to build without communication.

Communicate with conviction. When speaking, speak with authority because we need to know.

Because it is not enough for us to question authority these days.

You have to speak up, too.

By JESSICA MEYER

Editor

jessmeye@umail.iu.edu