It’s a Sunday afternoon when my three roommates and I decide, like thousands before us, that the most productive use of our time as college students is to go out and watch a mindless superhero movie. We are heading to see “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” a movie I have already streamed online, yet still have the somewhat masochistic desire to subject myself to again.

We are in the William and Mary Hall lot, just about to get into the car, when two guys walking across the parking lot yell over, “Hey man, can you help us jump our car?” Turns out, they had been heading out to dinner with their girlfriends, only to find that their battery was dead. “Probably left on the lights,” they explained.

Despite some audible groans from the backseat — “Let’s just leave them,” someone suggests — I get in the car and pull it next to theirs. Worst case, we’d miss ‘Wolverine’ and our lives would probably be the better for it. But I was also oddly excited; I had never jumped a car, but surely that wouldn’t be a problem because it’s one of those things that people just do. You help a guy change a flat, and you help your neighbor change his oil. They are all car-related, and you do them now that you’re an adult. And that’s what adults do.

“You ever do this before?” he asks as I pull my car up.

“Nope,” I reply, not even feigning experience. He seems untroubled.

“Me neither.”

So what, we tell ourselves. So we don’t know exactly how cars work. How hard could it be to jump a car — we’re college students. So we blundered forward with blind conviction, temperaments both similar, I assume, to that of an overconfident bullfighter about to be skewered. It’s not until we are about to attach the cables when his friend speaks up. “Watch out. If you hook it up wrong, it could explode,” he tells us, earnestly. “It happened to my uncle once.” We freeze in our tracks and turn to face something so obviously outside our realm of experience. We just stare, barely fighting off the desire to slowly back away.

It’s exactly times like these that make you question why you thought you had the right to call yourself an adult. Because surely basic auto maintenance ought to be among the skills an actual adult possesses. Despite owning a selection of ties, of varying colors and widths; despite filing your taxes separately for the approximately $200 you earned as a camp counselor this summer; despite flossing on a near semi-regular basis, your previous claims to adulthood still seem entirely shallow — like using a Burger King crown as a claim to royalty.

But that college students could be caught so unaware seems to astound us the most. College is sold to you as the place where you prepare you for life, for the real world as high-school counselors always sternly stated. But the idea starts to form — despite having taken geology, philosophy, creative writing (surely a practical course-load if there ever were one) — that you couldn’t even survive the real world, much less anything with tangible responsibilities. You can recite the major themes in Alfred Tennyson’s “In Memoriam,” but can’t find a circuit breaker to save your life. You can derive an integral but you can’t drive a car with a manual transmission. And despite the debt that’s accruing every day — every hour, every second — in order to finance it, you’re suddenly faced with the possibility that your life has at some point taken a drastically wrong turn — as if you’ve steered your pastel-colored tricycle, streamers and all, straight onto the interstate.

“Um, you know what?” the first guy’s girlfriend interjects, breaking a pause so pregnant it may have had triplets. “I think I’m just going to call my dad and ask.” There’s an audible sigh of relief. Both girlfriends begin to dial.

We all try to multitask, simultaneously attaching the cables and tending to our bruised egos. So what if we have to call our parents every once in a while, we tell ourselves. It’s not like that means we’re not independent. We just need some help every now and again, that’s all. Come to think of it, that may be the most adult decision we can make. Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself.

__Kevin Mooney is a Confusion Corner columnist. He still hasn’t jumped a car, so if you see his car on the side of the road, pull over.__

One sculpture displays the rough physicality of Detroit architecture. The next, the delicate balance and relationship between a person and their shadow. Together, these works showcase the work of new visiting art faculty members Naomi Falk and Jayson Lowery in “Michigan Left”, an exhibit at Andrews Gallery. Falk and Lowery created the exhibit together in order to begin their teaching careers at the College of William and Mary with a display of their personal work.

The exhibit features both past and present works from the artists and is open to the public until Sept. 25. An opening reception will be held in the gallery on Sept. 3 to discusst he unique styles of Falk and Lowery. Their methods may be individual, but their work is unified through the title of the exhibit.

“Jayson’s work is different than mine, but we collaborated on how it was going to be installed,” Falk said. “The exhibit flows better if you have it planned together.”

Both sculptors use a variety of different media to create their pieces.

“Both Jayson and I are new faculty here, so it’s an exciting opportunity to come work here and to introduce ourselves with a show,” Falk said.

For Falk, the pieces on display demonstrate the relationships between people and the differences between physical and psychological states. She uses mostly everyday objects, including ceramics, paper and twine in her art.

“Some of the work on display is about social dynamics and social relationships,” Falk said. “How much do we encompass? It tends to psychologically extend beyond our physical presence, which is the general concept of my work.”

Lowery’s pieces are samples of his work from the past five to six years. His sculptures are a combination of steel, cast iron, bronze and stone. He also does outdoor exhibits, so many of the materials he uses are sturdier and less fluid those Falk might use.

“Several of the pieces in this show feature carved marble left in the closed form that I got it from,” Lowery said. “Some are carved into round forms you see in casting; some are architectural blocks.”

Many of Lowery’s sculptures are designed to represent large architectural structures in smaller form, such as skyscrapers in downtown Detroit.

“The block pieces are intentionally meant to represent architecture in Michigan and cities, or a built environment,” Lowery said.

Falk also examines architectural work through her art, but, according to her statement on her website, naomijfalk.com, she investigates how everyday objects and the spaces one inhabits become our life architecture. Her use of more delicate objects juxtaposes with Lowery’s solid and structural materials, creating a more fluid exhibit.

The title of the exhibit, “Michigan Left,” is significant to the artists because both recently moved from Michigan to teach here at the College.

“The title is a play on words because we are both from the Detroit area,” Falk said. “It is a term that we use to tell people to make a U-turn in Michigan.”

The focus of Falk’s pieces is on social dynamics and relationships. Many of the pieces demonstrate metaphors for different relationships. The first piece in the exhibit is entitled “Converse,” which carries a double meaning.

“‘Converse’ can be speaking to each other or ‘converse’ like people opposing each other,” Falk said. “My work has a layering of meaning all the way from the titles of things to the materials I use.”

Two of Falk’s exhibits are connected in a broader sense. One, entitled “Shadows” displays four large photos with a story connecting to her exhibit entitled “Holding My Breath,” a display of 1,000 paper lunch bags, each containing one breath.

“The story is pretty dark, but I think people could relate to it on a number of levels, from being abused to wanting to speak and not being able to,” Falk said. “I talk about holding my breath in the story, and that’s what I’m doing in the [lunch bag] piece — so I can literally hold my breath in my hand.”

In addition to opening this exhibit, both Lowery and Falk have begun teaching 3-D foundations at the College. Falk also serves as the gallery coordinator and 3-D technician.

“The full-time art faculty invite people to exhibit here, I just coordinate most everything outside of that,” Falk said of his new position.

As both begin instructing their respective classes, the new exhibit will allow them to demonstrate their work to the community as well as to their new students.

“It is an opportunity to show a grouping collection of two integrated bodies of work,” Lowery said.

On April 19, 2009, Kevin Dua ’09 led an effort to break the Guinness world record for the greatest number of people performing pop singer Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” dance.

But then, on June 25 — just over two months after the record was broken on the College of William and Mary campus — the King of Pop died.

“It was a very surreal moment,” Dua told The Flat Hat on June 26. “It’s still hard for me to know or understand how I’m supposed to feel.”

Two hundred and forty-two students, faculty and area residents participated in the record-breaking dance. The group smashed the previous record of 147 people dancing to Jackson’s 1984 hit.

Dua claims he has been imitating Jackson his entire life, and although Dua never attended a concert or met the singer, he said Jackson was important to him.

“It’s strange that this person, who was so distant, was essentially a big part of my life,” Dua said.

Unfortunately for Dua and the other dance participants, it’s possible the record could be broken soon. Almost immediately after Jackson’s death, various groups announced plans to break the newly made record — and it appears that a group in Mexico may just do so tomorrow, the date of Jackson’s funeral and what would have been the King of Pop’s 51st birthday.

The Associated Press has reported that over 10,000 people have signed up to break the “Thriller” dance record in Mexico City tomorrow.

Nevertheless, Dua said, the College’s record-breaking dance will remain special.

“Every time this record is broken, a lot of people will look upon it as a tribute, paying homage to Michael Jackson,” he said. “Someone pointed out to me that we can take credit for the fact that we broke the record; we were the last group to hold the title while he was alive.”

History professor Kimberly Phillips, an expert in black cultural and social history, said like Dua, she too had a longtime connection to the pop singer.

“I grew up with him, and then my children grew up with him,” she said. “When the news came out yesterday, both of my children stopped. They had no idea who Farrah Fawcett was … they both stopped to hear about Michael Jackson.”

Fawcett, an ’70s actress best known for her roles as one of the original Charlie’s Angels, died the same day at the age of 62.

Although known for his wildly popular music in the 1970s and 1980s, Jackson was known more recently for various controversies, including allegations of drug use and child abuse.

“What happened to him in the early part of this century, it was so tragic, it was so different from how he had represented himself and how we had perceived him for nearly three decades,” Phillips said. “That, I think, was so counter to how he had been. That’s why people paid attention. I think people were saddened by it, perplexed by it.”

Despite the negative press, Jackson remained popular with his fans. Phillips attributed his versatility to a “chameleon-like” ability to adapt and present himself in a new light.

“He was like a phoenix; he would rise up out of the ashes, and he literally would look different,” she said. “And we were fascinated by that.”

Phillips noted that, while it is too early to know how history will judge the King of Pop, his contributions to music marked a greater change in race relations in America.

“He had been such a catalyst in American music,” she said. “I think what people should remember him for is this remarkable shift in American popular culture. People should remember that he became popular at a moment when American racial politics were shifting, and shifting in ways we weren’t quite sure how it would happen.

“He was more than this crossover figure,” Phillips continued. “He was somebody that people of all races could embrace. He was a child, and he represented the best of what America could be and how we could sound. He gave us permission to think beyond our own prejudices and concerns and just glory in his ability.”