Opinion

What little wisdom there is comes through experience of productive failure. Once you’ve screwed up enough, you might not know exactly what to do but at least you’ve learned to “fail better,” as Samuel Beckett put it. As a Ph.D. student, I might not be wildly successful or augustly ancient, but I’ve figured out how […]

People are different, and those differences are interesting. That’s what I’ve been trying to convey in my columns the past eight weeks. This column will cover issues that are more sensitive than usual, but it will still continue to explore how different American society is, and how other exchangees and I try to adapt to […]

Next Friday, Peter J. Shields Library will be filled to the brim with students celebrating their dead day. While the lack of classes in favor of study time is appreciated, the Saturday finals are not. For college students, Saturdays are sacred territory that shouldn’t be messed with. To take away a Saturday is to take […]

This past weekend, I deactivated my Facebook profile. Not because finals week is coming up — I’m not one of those people who quit social networking before major tests. Why give up my preferred method of distraction and primary means of procrastination? No, I was just tired of basically everything on my newsfeed. Social networking […]

During Memorial Day weekend, a large part of the student body takes a vacation from their usual lives and attempts to live a weekend in the life of a pirate, daring their bodies to fight off scurvy as they subsist off a combination of booze, burgers and sunlight. Since my attempt at surviving HB2K10 was […]

Vice Chancellor Fred Wood and Associate Vice Chancellor Griselda Castro, both of Student Affairs, will be leaving UC Davis at the end of this quarter. While they are not the only university employees leaving after what can generously be described as a tumultuous year for the campus administration, they are some of the most powerful. […]

The season finale of “Modern Family” threw me for a loop, y’all. Mitchell and Cameron tried so hard to adopt a baby/find a suitable surrogate/steal a child but inevitably gave up on expanding their brood for now after another failed attempt. That was nothing in comparison to the curveball at the end: Gloria, who spent […]

President Obama’s reelection campaign has made a strategic decision to focus on Mitt Romney’s business record at Bain Capital. The goal is to paint a picture of Romney’s past that is characterized by a willingness to shaft ordinary workers in pursuit of the biggest profit possible. In case you don’t know the details, Bain Capital […]

One of the biggest paradoxes in research is the perception of workload: I’m simultaneously always busy and always have free time. At any given moment I undoubtedly have work to do, but it can usually be put off until later. While a lot of this depends on your advisor and your research subject, it is […]

I find it crazy how Apple can come out with two commercials promoting the same service in pretty much the same way and knock it out of the park with one and make me throw my remote at the TV with the other. If you haven’t seen the commercials for Siri on the iPhone 4S, […]

I’ve written a lot about what it’s like being an international student in Davis, including the academic side. But I haven’t talked much about the practicalities of student living. So, how fun of a place is Davis from an outside perspective? In Lithuanian, we have these two words: “studijuoti” and “studentauti.”  Both describes the activity […]

The Labor Department recently released figures showing that record numbers of people aged 65 and older are still working jobs. With poverty rates for the elderly rising, many are holding onto their positions long past traditional retirement ages. Meanwhile, report after report confirms that Americans work longer hours than the rest of the developed world […]