Thesis-beard Jason

Sitting cross-legged in a metal desk chair, Jason Woods tells me about his beard. It’s important. It’s motivation. It’s a work in progress, like the thesis he’s writing.

To me, it’s a scraggly collection of brown hair on a lean guy I met for the first time just five minutes ago. The Stillwater, Okla., graduate student is 24 with blue eyes and gray Puma sneakers. His beard makes him look like Shaggy from Scooby Doo.

“I’ve been working on it since February,” he says about the beard. “My girlfriend is a big fan.”

In his windowless, red-carpeted office in Lindley Hall, he yawns and tells me that a lot of guys promote their goals by not shaving. A beard is a constant reminder of something that needs to get done, like his geography thesis on Kansas City jazz.

“I apologize for being groggy,” he says. “I’ve been working on this all day. It’s all I ever do — my thesis. Some weeks I’m like, ‘I can’t take this.’”

He comically snaps forward, grabs his silver laptop and shakes the screen with both hands. “Why won’t you write yourself, thesis?” He grimaces at the screen for a moment, then laughs and leans back in the chair again.

Hilary, one of the five students that shares this tiny office, walks in and sits at the desk across from him. A few minutes earlier he jokingly told me Hilary always gives him shit about his beard, so I ask her about it.

“It’s catchy, but women don’t have equal rights in it,” she says. “I can’t have a thesis beard.”

“Maybe you can stop bathing,” he suggests.

“Thesis funk?” she asks, raising her eyebrows. He smiles.

“You got to have something to get through the thesis.”

He laughs. I laugh. We laugh. It seems appropriate. After all, I found Jason because he has my name. And if we share the same name, why shouldn’t we share a similar sense of humor?

Jayplay-reporter Jason

Hi. My name is Jason. Two syllables, five letters — short and simple. It’s printed on my driver’s license and written at the top of every paper I turn in. It’s how I introduce myself and how I sign my email. It’s my tag, my title, my designation. Not a flashy name like Joaquin or an admirably boyish one like Johnny. Just Jason.

It’s Greek in origin — think Jason and the Argonauts — and every baby-name Web site and book I’ve read says it means “healer,” which my mom likes. She wanted me to be a doctor. JAY-sen, or, as I have been called during sojourns in Costa Rica and Mexico, jay-SONE. A name that doesn’t lend itself easily to nicknames or rhyming (mason, basin and raisin, nonwithstanding).

Jason: The eleventh most popular baby name when I was born in 1984, according to the Social Security Administration. I was one of three Jasons in my third grade classroom. And, as curiosity compelled me to discover in January, one of 164 people named Jason at the University of Kansas this semester.

So, what’s in a name?

A lot.

Names can influence the way people perceive others. A study published in the Journal of Psychology in 1999 found that first names affect how attractive people are perceived to be. Study participants received full-face photos of males and females that identified each picture with an “attractive” name (examples of names used include Danielle and Alexander), an unattractive name (Tracey and Kenneth) or without any name. Then the participants rated each photo for physical attractiveness. The study found that names accounted for 6 percent of the variance in how participants rated the physical attractiveness of the people in the photos. Jason wasn’t in the mix of names studied.

And when I discovered that 164 other guys with my name were walking around campus, I was more interested in their personalities than in their attractiveness. Facebook only got me so far. I couldn’t meet all of them, so I picked about 25 that caught my interest. Soon I was sending emails and making awkward phone calls. “I know this is going to sound weird, but we have the same name . . .”

Cycling-enthusiast Jason

Jason Knight tugs down the collar of his grey Mountain Hardware vest to show me his slightly disjointed collarbone. “It’s gotten better,” he says. “It used to be more jagged.”

A chemistry graduate student from Shawnee, Okla., he’s fit, with trim brown hair and black-rimmed glasses. We’re sitting in Budig Hall while he explains the hazy details of the bike crash that broke his collar bone two years ago during a downhill sprint race.

“I remember going around the pile and a white bike pops out, and I t-bone it and the next thing I remember is staring at the sky,” he says. “When I woke up, the paramedics asked if anything hurt. I said, ‘My shoulder kind of hurts.’ They looked at it right there and said, ‘Oh yeah. That’s broke.’”

Jason is 27, married, and studies “in vivo analysis,” which he says involves monitoring how drugs get to where they’re supposed to go in organisms. Eventually, he wants to get into microchips.

He likes Lawrence well enough, but he misses Hideaway Pizza, his favorite place to eat back in Stillwater, Okla. He got his undergraduate degree at Stillwater’s Oklahoma State University. The slow drivers in Lawrence make him crazy. The roads here should have six lanes, he says with a laugh.

He’s currently spending 10 to 20 hours a week preparing for a five-day pro-amateur race in June. He has won a few smaller races, but he likes to think of himself as Mr. Consistent. “I don’t win much, but I’m always in the top three or top five.”

Jason owns five bikes: a race bike, a cross bike, a time-trial bike, a mountain bike and his favorite, a track bike. Track racing is like a cross between NASCAR and running track, except the bikes don’t have breaks and the course is steeply banked on all sides.

“It’s so pure,” he says. “It takes away so many of the variables. It’s the only time I’ve been in the zone. I don’t hear the people. I don’t see the people. It’s just what’s going on right around me. It’s like a high.”

Almost-married Jason

Jason Roe is 21 and engaged to be married in June, but right now he’s more focused on finishing his honors thesis about the 1918 influenza pandemic. His fiancée, Lindsey, and her mom are making all the wedding arrangements. “Basically, they tell me what they’re doing and I say OK. I go along with whatever they want,” he says.

We’re sitting at a round table in the Kansas Union early on a Friday morning. Roe is about 5-foot-10 and looks like a young Lance Armstrong. He’s got a nervous smile that fits his anxious laughter and boyish voice.

Jason grew up in Iola. As far as he knows, he’s the first person in his family named Jason. William and George are the traditional family names. He did know another Jason from his freshman English class, he says. Every time they saw each other they would say, ‘Hi Jason.’ ‘Hi. Jason.’ “We just got a kick out of that,” he says. “We would laugh really hard.”

He saw Lindsey for the first time at Mrs. E’s when they were freshmen. Jason tried to be cool. He casually checked her out from across the cafeteria. She never knew, he thought. Then, one day, a friend of Lindsey’s walked up and dropped a piece of paper in his lap. It had Lindsey’s name and phone number written on it. She knew. “I thought I was being subtle, but I guess it was obvious I was looking at her.”

After an awkward phone call and several dates, Jason and Lindsey became a couple. After their first summer together, Jason figured she was the one. “I love spending time with her,” he says. “Her personality ended up being what I hoped it would be. It’s just good luck, I guess.”

For the proposal, he took Lindsey to her favorite Swiss restaurant. Lindsey’s mom had said Jason should present the ring in some sort of chocolate dessert box, so he had the restaurant make a jewelry box out of chocolate. “It had colored flowers and all that stuff on it,” he says.

When they ordered dessert, he couldn’t stop laughing. A waiter presented the chocolate box to Lindsey, but somehow Jason ended up with it. He pulled out the ring, but before he could propose, she reached across the table, stuck her finger in the ring and said yes. “It’s not like I put it on her finger,” he jokes. “She was very anxious.”

Jason and Lindsey’s wedding will be in Kansas City on June 21.

The older, wiser Jason

Growing up, Jason Edwards, 44, had a small good-luck coin that President Harry Truman had given his brother when they lived in Independence, Mo. Jason’s mom was in the Crown Barber Shop while his older brother Josh got his hair cut. Along came President Truman. He walked in with his cane and took a seat, waiting for the next available chair. Then he turned to Mrs. Edwards and asked, “Is that your boy?”

“Yes,” she said.

“He is a fine-looking boy,” Truman said. Then he walked to Josh and handed him the coin.

The Edwardses framed the coin and hung it in the family room. Jason still has it. “My mom gave it to me because my brother isn’t as interested in that kind of stuff,” he says.

We’re standing in the cavernous main hall at the Dole Institute of Politics. Jason drove from Kansas City, where he works as senior coordinator for government relations in the office of external affairs at the University of Kansas Medical Campus. He’s been a presidential memorabilia enthusiast since his brother’s barbershop meeting.

He has seen nine of the 12 presidential libraries in the National Archives Presidential Library system — Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, the elder Bush and Clinton (he’s got Roosevelt, Hoover and Ford left). Bob Dole was never president, but Jason still wanted to see his institute. “It feels very similar to walking into a presidential library,” he says. “It kind of reminds me of a chapel.”

Rock star Jason

On the way to a concert in Florida, Jason Foster and his band, Sidewise, had to deal with a broken van — twice. The first time, a tire popped in east St. Louis. Then, somewhere near the Alabama-Florida line, the engine wouldn’t start. The AAA repairman showed up with a bowie knife. Not a wrench or a screwdriver, but a genuine frontier hunting weapon. “He goes, ‘Errrrr,’ and it worked, with just a knife,” Jason says, holding an imaginary bowie knife.

Born in Lincoln, Neb., and raised in Overland Park, Jason became a fan of alternative rock at an early age. He loved the band 311, which originated in Omaha. Wearing a grayish-brown v-neck and gray corduroy pants, he looks the part of a rocker. He’s 6-foot-1 and well-built — probably a product of his high school football days. He’s got medium-length, straight brown hair that sort of fans out in the back, and he’s a fast talker. “I’m the huge go-getter in the band,” he says. “It’s going to happen. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Sidewise plays a sort of progressive rock alternative music, Jason says, “kind of like Radiohead, or Yes, or Tool or maybe Incubus.” As a senior, he splits his time between five hours of anthropology courses at KU, 12 hours of audio engineering courses at Kansas City Kansas Community College and roughly 15 hours of band practice every week. Despite the long hours, he has no doubt that playing with Sidewise is what he wants to do. “This is what I want to do with my life,” he says. “One way or another it’s going to be music or anthropology. Right now the fire is burning for music and the hope is that we’re going to create something and make a mark.”

During the summer he’s moving into a three-bedroom house with five other band members to save money and make practicing easier. So far, Sidewise has taken small steps toward success, he says. The band has made two CDs and is working on a third. Two years ago they won a competition in Kansas City, and they’ve played at the Bottleneck and the Granada several times since then. Their next big gig is this summer at Wakarusa Music and Camping Festival at Clinton Lake, which will be a big accolade, Jason says.

He buzzes with energy as he tells me about sharing the stage, determination and making it big. Then he sits up and mentions what he considers to be one of the biggest threats to a band’s success: Girls. “The toughest thing to deal with is when one of the guys gets a new girlfriend and stops spending time on what’s important,” he says. “Girls can confuse you. They’re just trouble.”

“I have a girlfriend, though,” he adds. “She is really understanding.”

Presidential Jason

Jason Boots is handing everybody fliers. He strolls down the sidewalk near Stauffer-Flint Hall and approaches a group of people walking to class. Before he can say anything, though, they announce that they have already voted in the Student Senate elections.

“All four of you?” he asks.

“Yup,” they tell him.

“All right,” he says enthusiastically. “Enjoy the weather.”

In a red Ignite coalition t-shirt and khaki shorts, he’s tan from standing outside all day. His eyes look bloodshot, and his lean, 6-foot frame looks tired and at odds with the chipper greetings he bestows upon everyone who passes by. He estimates he has talked to about 75 people during the last three hours and that he has slept about 10 hours in the past week. It’s 3 p.m. on the Wednesday of election week. He’s the presidential candidate for his coalition, Ignite, and the polls close in one hour.

A junior from Plano, Texas, Jason says he “fell into” his decision to run for student body president. After senate elections last year, fellow student senators were telling him “Boots in ‘06.” He was apprehensive about the proposal. “I was like, ‘Hold on here. We’ve got a whole year ahead of us with this group,” he says.

But then more and more people told him he should do it. People liked his ability to work with students and administrators, he says. They liked his personality. He should do it. He should run for student body president. “Eventually, I said, ‘Okay. This is what I’m going to do.’”

He decided the most important issue was reconnecting with students, getting out among the masses more than just a few times a year. Student Senate has to get a holistic picture, he says. There are 500 student organizations and each one of them the best for its members. “That’s what we’re interested in,” he says. “If we can help them on a micro level instead of just a macro level, then we’ve done something for them.”

More people pass by and he follows. When he returns, he mentions that soliciting himself to unknown students isn’t his favorite part of campaigning. “I’m a pretty humble guy, so this doesn’t really jive with my personality,” he says. “Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad. Then, of course, you hear the horror stories about people getting spit on.”

As an engineering major, Jason doesn’t know if politics is in his future. He says he’s just trying to focus on what’s in front of him at the moment, which happens to be another passerby. He straightens up, walks onto the sidewalk and delivers his signature “Howdy.”

Jason won the position of student body president that evening with 53 percent of the votes.

Chasing Jasons

Of course, my search didn’t extend to every Jason at the University. Jason Swanson, for example, the senior quarterback who led the football team to 428 yards total offense in the Jayhawk’s first victory against Nebraska since 1968, was a prime candidate, but he never replied to my emails or phone calls. Then there are officers Jason White and Jason Felbush of the KU Public Safety office, whom I was eager to ask about the dangers of being a police officer. Here again, though, no replies. There are several law students named Jason, two guys named Jason Carter, a Jason from Houston, one from Monticello, N.Y., and another from Chicago.

I spoke with a Jason Murray, a Leawood senior who’s won theatre awards for lead roles in musicals like Crazy For You and Rock Chalk Revue. There is a Jason Shimanek, a pharmacy student and a self-described pseudo-vegetarian (he still eats fish). I found Jasons in just about every field of study, from civil engineering to theater and film. I found Jasons of different ethnicities, religions and political bents. In short, I found more guys who share my name than I could ever hope to know.

FAMOUS JASONS

Jason and the Argonauts (Mythical Greek hero)

Jason Voorhees (Deranged killer in the movie Friday the 13th)

Jason Alexander (Seinfeld, Pretty Woman)

Jason Gedrick (Murder One, The “hot car wash guy” on Ally McBeal)

Jason Giambi (New York Yankees first baseman and American League MVP in 2000)

Jason (A rocket developed by the U.S. Air Force for monitoring radiation in near earth space in 1958.)

Jason 1 (A satellite project launched in 2001 and developed jointly by NASA and CNES (France’s equivalent to NASA) to measure ocean surface topography.)

Jason Lee (My Name is Earl, Chasing Amy)

Jason Priestly (Beverly Hills 90210)

Jason Statham (Transporter, Snatch)

Jason Mraz (musician)

Jason Moran (jazz musician)

Jason Collett (musician)

Jason Carroll (CNN national correspondent)

Jason Biggs (American Pie)

Jason Connery (Shanghai Noon)

Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy in Harry Potter series)

Jason Schwartzman (Rushmore, I Heart Huckabees)

Jason Bateman (Arrested Development)

Jason Mewes (Jay in Clerks, Mallrats, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back)