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A spirit that is not afraid

Luck Leaves Students Searching for Leprechaun

"Hearts, stars, and horseshoes, clovers, and blue moons, pots of gold, and rainbows, and me red balloons!"

Lucky the Leprechaun may have his lucky charms, but as the semester rolls on, many students are finding it increasingly difficult to tempt Lady Luck to stand by their sides.

"My luck has been awful this semester," said Courtney Labosky, senior in theater. "Things have just not worked out the way I had planned."

Even though things don't always go according to plan, many students think things can be done to change the fates and turn luck around.

"When I was in school, I had a lucky keychain that my dad gave me," said Erin McGrath, 2008 alumnae. "Whenever I brought it to a test or football game, everything always seemed to go smoother and be easier."

McGrath said she thinks the keychain is the reason she won a $50 gift card in a raffle this past summer.

Even though she said she knows it is silly to believe in things like good luck charms, she is not willing to take the chance of turning the fates against her.

"I remember one week when I thought I lost it, and I got in a car wreck and had my purse stolen at the bar before I found it behind my desk at my parent's house," McGrath said.

While some students turn to lucky charms for good fortune, others follow superstitious rituals to keep them feeling lucky.

Labosky said the theater has many superstitions that must be followed in order for a show to be a success.

One such superstition is that the theater is haunted by a ghost named Sydney.

"Before every show, the stage manager feeds him so that nothing will go wrong," Labosky said. "In the past, there has been three shows that I know of where the stage manager forgot to feed Sydney and bad things happened, so it is definitely something we believe in."

The bad things that happened include things catching on fire and stuff falling in the middle of a show.

Some students, however, don't believe in luck at all.

Jeff Hamilton, senior in biomedical sciences, said there isn't anything you can do to be lucky.

"I don't believe that there is anything like karma," Hamilton said. "I think that anything that happens happens, and you can't change it."

He said he doesn't carry any type of lucky charm and when it comes to superstition, he's just not buying it.

However, Richard Wiseman, author of the bestselling book, "The Luck Factor," says there is definitely something called luck.

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Wiseman, who has a doctorate in psychology from the University of Edinburgh, said in his book that there are four differences between the lives of lucky people and unlucky people.

He believes luck is more of a state of mind, with lucky people approaching life with positive expectations while unlucky people approach life with negative expectations.

Because of this, Wiseman believes luck has the power to alter a on'es life.

"Luck has the power to transform the improbable into the possible; to make the difference between life and death, reward and ruin, happiness and despair," according to his book.

Whether it is something real or just the work of an overactive imagination, many students are doing everything they can to turn luck in their favor this semester.


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