Opinion

I estimate that 80 percent of you have no idea my Christmas started last night. I didn’t dig through a stocking for that trendy new piece of electronics or open a greeting card that sung to me. I’ve never tried eggnog and my grandma never bought me a sweater I felt was too itchy. I still don’t know what a partridge is, but I’m confident that if my true love really knew me, she wouldn’t waste her shekels getting me one. On my first day of Christmas, I played a lacrosse game at a community college.

Since this is my last column of the quarter, and perhaps the conclusion of my column writing career altogether, I want to leave you, the readers, with something special.

As finals roll around the corner, there are many things to consider and reflect on, such as the noble student.

A penthouse in Manhattan, an editor position at Vogue – just two of the wishes I’d make if a magic genie were to now suddenly appear. Oh, excuse the Aladdin reference; I’m writing this column from home and am sitting beside my baby sister, who is currently in a daze watching the Disney classic.

Through the last nine columns, I’ve written at length about your health – what you need to do, what you can try, what you shouldn’t do, how you can do this and avoid that, why you should be healthy at all. While I tried to err on the side of simplicity, some of the advice could get complicated, the details too difficult to recall weeks later. So you might have forgotten every tip I labored onto paper. I’m here to tell you this week that it’s okay. Lucky for the both of us, all the advice I could ever hope to impart, and the only advice you ever really needed, was discovered by a long-ago marginalized Greek philosopher.

The emergence and seeming dominance of cyberspace may have improved variety and access in the media. One can be tempted to use the overused adage “the more the merrier,” yeah? Well, my industry (newspapers) is anything but the merrier for it. Real hard news is taking a bludgeoning, continually. I daresay that as publishers’ worries about gloomy bottom lines and cost-cutting trump obligatory quality, we risk surrendering the traditional role of the fourth estate. It’s really sad.

There’s an old adage of government spending, often attributed to the late Sen. Everett Dirkson: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

On Jan. 4, ASUCD will open a new unit designed to help feed cash-strapped students.

We all know that fee hikes in the UC system are out of control. Last year’s 15 percent, plus another 15 percent on top of that, after multiplying, comes to a total percent increase of 32.25 percent. When the upcoming 8 percent increase takes effect, that will make a net increase of 42.83 percent since 2009, or nearly 43 percent.

Thanksgiving puts one in a pensive mood, and I’m sitting here contemplating what lies ahead in the world of weed.

As the winter season fast approaches in Davis, I set out in my imaginary car to find cafés and coffee shops that will take in a cold, miserable student such as myself. Of course, you already know of two popular coffee shops around town that many students go to – Starbucks, located in all four corners of Davis, and Peet’s Coffee & Tea, located downtown and in The Marketplace.

I regret to say that, for the first time in my brief college career, I’ve hit academic turbulence this quarter (I’m a junior). Like Hindenburg that came before me, my combustive nosedive is an indisputable tragedy and a source of great personal depression. My image as an immaculate human being — that is, me being flawless in all regards — will be forever tarnished hereafter.