Devil’s advocate
At the risk of accidentally infuriating a population of California taxpayers — or some other group of people that would be offended by a half-college-educated person’s opinion — I’ll try my best to stick to my biased agenda and veer away from the facts.
There’s a lot of controversy these days about what counts as a “real job,” and since I’m not being paid to drink four cups of coffee a day and go to half of my classes, I’ve tried to find other sources of income. While Davis offers many job opportunities, I’ve had a hard time figuring out how to save money when there are always fun things to spend it on, like textbooks and rent.
As this vicious cycle has continued for the past three years, I’ve realized there’s no real way to save your money from the greedy, clammy hands of the system we all got tricked into joining. The way I’ve combatted this is slightly unorthodox, but I promise it works: I claimed my soul back from the UC system, and you can, too.
The day I refused to conform to the UC system was the day the narrative switched. Freeing myself from the evil hands of Linda Katehi (if that reference even works), I weaseled my way out of this system and actually turned the tables.
What happened next is something that you guys probably couldn’t guess, so I’ll just tell you. Nothing changed, but at the same time, everything changed.
I’m still begrudgingly forced to buy overpriced textbooks and pay for rent that is only increasing because the UC system decided they wanted it to increase. But now I look at my situation positively.
What I realized is that I’m not doing any actual selling — I’m actually doing the buying. If I learned anything from my semester of high school economics and The Big Short, there’s such a thing as a buyer’s market, and we’re living in it. Consumers control the industry, or something like that, and that has gone straight to my ego. I control the UC system, and I will be respected as such.
So I urge you to keep doing what you’re doing because that’s never going to change. But do it with the mindset that you’re in control, and you’ll feel good about all the debt you’ve acquired because, in a way, you own the UC system.
Written by: Rosie Schwarz — rschwarz@ucdavis.edu
(This article is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and the names of “sources” are fictionalized.)
