As you note in your Career Spotlight article (Oct. 18, 2010), careers in marketing and public relations rely on proven strong writing skills.

In addition to the resources you mention, I would add the writing minor, which requires 20 units of advanced writing courses, including 4 units of a writing internship. Many minors do their internships in PR and marketing at sites ranging from Campus Recreation to Yolo County Visitors’ Bureau and varied local businesses and wineries.

The writing minor documents students’ writing skills and internships on their transcripts and often gleans letters of recommendation, along with practical experience and writing samples that help students just out of college to get jobs in the field.

More information on the writing minor is available at :

http://writing.ucdavis.edu/program-information/uwp_writing_minor/

GARY SUE GOODMAN

Writing Minor and Internship Faculty Advisor

University Writing Program

From 2004 through 2008 I was a member of the UC Davis mMen’s cCross cCountry team and its captain for the 2008 season. Amidst the debate related to student athletes and priority registration, I feel I can offer a few points in addition to those already being discussed.

First, I would like to point out that, increasingly, student athletes are financially subsidized by the university. As part of the transition to Division I that students (now alumni) voted for, this means that student athletes work for the university for all intents and purposes; what they do is their job, and the university allows them to schedule around their “shitty hours.”

Second, universities also have an incentive to protect their investment in student athletes. An inexpensive and indeed free way of doing so is by giving student athletes priority registration to fulfill the NCAA’s regulations. Those regulations, by the way, are far more strict than those applied by UC Davis in many cases. And if anything, the student population should hope athletes do well academically so that the university’s performance and the value of everyone’s degree don’t suffer due to the athletic program.

Third, I would argue that the impacts on the whole are minor and marginal. Of an undergraduate population well over 22,000, student athletes represent just under 5 percent. The problems with class registration are not the fault of a few hundred student athletes. Those problems lie in the administration’s decisions and in Sacramento’s lack of a budget.

Finally, on an individual level, when I registered ahead of other students I knew I was exercising a privilege, not a right. That recognition imbues a sense of responsibility to use the opportunity to its fullest extent. That is, to take the course seriously.

So really, priority registration for student athletes is chump change compared to how many kids get into classes who obviously don’t care and how many students get admitted into a system obviously not designed to serve so many.

A few extra lecturers probably wouldn’t hurt anybody.

K.C. CODY

Class of 2008

I would like to know more about the “current dichotomy in student politics between students majoring in social science, the humanities and the arts compared to students majoring in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields” mentioned in Brian Riley’s Monday column, “Let’s go horizontal.”

Does this dichotomy have to do with those biology, ecology, and engineering students I saw “baring” their frustration at a nude protest that made it on international news television? Are you referring to the many physics majors cheering on my advising professor, Markus Luty, as he gave the keen and motivating first speech on protecting public education at a large rally on the first day of instruction last year? Maybe the dichotomy is manifest in that loud group of students I saw injecting vigor into so many demonstrations in the last year?

You might get along with those math majors. Perhaps STEM students are less likely to drag along “9/11 TRUTH NOW” and “FUCK CITIGROUP” signs in protest against UC privatization, but I am inclined to believe that the alleged vast difference between STEM and humanities majors’ involvement is largely just false prejudice.

GREG ROBINSON

Senior, physics

Chancellor Katehi has made a commendable step to raise $1 billion in support for UC Davis through philanthropic donations.

The importance of funding higher education through economically difficult times is often overlooked. Education, for some odd reason, seems to be the first to be cut during recession.

Politicians don’t seem to realize the obvious, that training Americans for the jobs of tomorrow is the simple solution to reducing unemployment and the long-term solution to our macroeconomic problems. Unemployment rates of college graduates are a third the rate of high school dropouts and half the rate of high school graduates. Our other macroeconomic problems include the growing trade deficit with China funded by Chinese investment in the United States. While China will continue to develop its low-skilled labor force, it is impossible for Americans to compete for those low-skilled jobs.

We, Americans, must revert to what we do best. That is; we create new ideas and inventions. Our uniqueness lies in our ability to think outside the box and create high-skilled innovations. Funding education properly will put the right tools in the hands of the next generation of Americans to help us out of this economic mess.

NAZIR SAYED

Junior, economics

A current policy at UC Davis gives Intercollegiate Athletics Department (ICA) student athletes priority registration when they sign up for classes each quarter. However, it is unfair and unnecessary to allow student athletes and any other group, for that matter, this special treatment.

ICA athletes say that priority registration is necessary because they need to be able to organize their class schedules around practices, meetings and competitions. Early registration ensures that they will be able to get into classes that do not conflict with their team commitments.

But athletes are not the only students who balance classes with other activities and time commitments. Students who commute, have jobs or participate in other time-consuming activities would also benefit from registering early and getting into classes that best fit their schedules. They do not get priority registration. It is impossible for anyone to judge whether one student’s need for priority registration is more important than another’s, so choosing only a select few students is unreasonable.

Priority registration is also defended by many as an incentive for students to join ICA sports. Some believe that offering priority registration is necessary in order to convince promising athletes to commit to a team in addition to their academic responsibilities. However, a 2007 study by the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found that out of 70 highly ranked universities, 25 did not give priority registration to athletes. These 25 universities included such athletic powerhouses as University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, University of Nebraska and University of Michigan, which demonstrates that colleges can still maintain successful athletic programs without offering preferential treatment.

While student athletes do benefit from priority registration, there is no way to prove that they need it any more than any other students who balance classes with other activities. Priority registration should be based on class standing only to maintain fairness among all students.

At a meeting this week in San Francisco, the UC Board of Regents will vote on a plan to raise student fees by 8 percent.

The proposed $822 fee hike is an inappropriate and insulting solution to the university’s ongoing budget problems.

Students are already struggling under the huge burden of the 32 percent fee increase for this year. Many have had to take on additional employment, giving them less time to focus on their education. Some have chosen to leave UC or take as many classes as possible at the community college level, diminishing the learning experience. Vast numbers of students are taking on larger and larger loan burdens in order to pay for school.

UC President Mark Yudof has said the university does not take fee increases lightly. However, it’s getting harder and harder for even the most sympathetic student to believe him.

Last November, when the regents were voting on the 32 percent increase, all of the talk coming out of the Office of the President was that this was a time of shared pain and shared sacrifice. The message was that students weren’t the only ones hurting. All faculty and staff were subject to pay cuts up to 10 percent of their annual salary and each campus was cutting millions more out of their budgets.

It’s interesting how that message is nowhere to be found this fall. Faculty and staff are no longer subject to furloughs or pay cuts. Those ended this past summer. The “shared pain” concept has apparently been thrown out the window, and now it’s up to students to sacrifice.

A major feature in this round of fee hikes is that students with annual family incomes under $120,000 will be “protected” from this increase for at least a year. But even as the university tries to soften the blow for students, a look at the fine print reveals it’s more an attempt to save face than anything.

For example, for students whose families earn between $80,000 and $120,000 annually, the tuition-freeze only lasts for the next year. These students will have to pay this extra 8 percent a year later, plus whatever additional fee increases the regents approve between now and then. 

Furthermore, it’s misleading for university officials to claim that low-income students will not feel the impact of the fee increases. While it is true that financial aid covers fees for students with family incomes below $80,000, the fact is that much of UC financial aid is granted in the form of loans that must be repaid. So while low-income students may not be feeling the pain today or this year, they will certainly have large loan burdens that will be costing them for years to come. 

The regents desperately need to find a solution that doesn’t put the burden of the university’s budget problems on the very group that the university is supposed to be serving – students. We have already sacrificed so much, and to continue to ask for more is unfair and inappropriate.

Last week The Aggie ran a front-page story on another fee increase to hit the 40 percent mark set by the UC Regents. Amid all these fee increases, the incomes of middle-class Americans and those further south on the economic ladder, have flat-lined or shrunk. As Washington starts a path toward fiscal responsibility, reining in on so-called entitlement spending and cutting the deficit, we are going to see opportunity hurt, seriously. One phrase you are going to hear a lot in the coming weeks is “class warfare.”

Before I launch into this piece proper, let me send a shout out to all our veterans, belatedly. It is never too late to thank people who are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in protecting the American Dream, our liberty and the creature comforts we enjoy.

Back to Washington. As the Republicans and the Tea Party freshmen legislators take their new “mandate” on a test drive, expect to see a steep inclination, or at least the agitation, toward broad rhetorical, ideological stipulations such as “small government,” “less taxes,” “less spending” and the like. Specifics will be elusive. Democrats will still be fighting to save the “soul” of liberalism: they will be looking to do a purging of the leadership (Pelosi and company) that led to a shellacking result at the midterms. “Kentucky Derby” (horse racing) politics and the constant focus on one-uppers continue to preclude adult discourse on the country’s challenges in D.C.

The long-term trajectory of deficit spending has to be tackled. No doubt. We have to be very careful though, not to do so at the expense of opportunity and the American Dream for many of the have-nots, less well-off among us. Gunnar Mydral in his 1944 book An American Dilemma addresses caste and class and in a way that speaks to the pending dilemma brewing in Washington. Mydral indicates that the very bases of the forming of the United States – dissenting church and royal hierarchy, mode of independence from England and adoption of a democratic constitution – spurned the formation of “rigid class distinctions.” Mydral notes that while the American Creed “does not demand equality of economic and social rewards independent of an individuals luck, ability and push. It merely demands equality of opportunity.”

Elsewhere in An American Dilemma, Mydral invokes the evocative words of Abraham Lincoln that capture the American Dream concept: “I take it that it is best to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don’t believe the law should prevent them from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we don’t purpose any war on capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man to get rich with everybody else.” Precisely. That is the balance Washington has to strike, between free enterprise and opportunity.

I have chosen the historical context and time in the run up to the New Deal, because most of the entitlement programs about to be mounted on the chopping block were products of the Roosevelt New Deal era of liberalism. It must be stated that big business – the Trusts had to be busted, face on. The New Deal engendered our most enduring infrastructure and safety net programs like Social Security, which seniors enjoy today. It is debatably the New Deal also ensured a sustained middle class over the past half century. We don’t need market speculators to tell us that investment in education and research, infrastructure and particularly renewable energy is the only way we can stay competitive with what CNN’s Fareed Zakaria calls “The Rise of the Rest.”

We have had eight (a decade if you add Obama’s two years of Wall Street bailouts) years of “trickle down” economics that justified tax cuts for the rich. How is that working for ya, readers? Now, Obama’s bipartisan deficit commission has released a report that calls for a lot of sacrifice, of course more on the side of the working class. And all we are going to hear in the lame duck session of Congress is the voodoo economics of tax cuts and simultaneous deficit reduction to balance the budget. I guess “we” need to make sacrifices, huh? Just not at the top 2 percent whose incomes have markedly increased during these tough times.

Prospective Speaker Boehner touts his “humble beginnings” as evidence of the American Dream at work. Well, there are other even “humbler” Americans growing up in apartments and projects who want that exact same dream. The Statue of Liberty beckons the “wretched of all mankind” to come and seek opportunity and lift themselves by their bootstraps. Think of your education, readers, as those boots. No?

Reach FAYIA SELLU at fmsellu@ucdavis.edu.

We know food has a dominating effect on our body. This is why we talk of stomachs exploding, cookies going to thighs and beers expanding bellies. But for some reason, we don’t connect the same sort of food effect to our mind.

While you might feel guilty that the In-N-Out animal style fries you had for dinner will make you feel sick later, you still assume there’s a barrier between our food and our thought process. Those fries will make you feel sick, but they won’t alter your mind. Compare this to how you might think about alcohol. It’s pretty clear that drinking will temporarily change the way you think and behave. It might be that the buzz you get from drinking is fast acting.

Whatever the reason, it’s easy to forget that food has an effect. Our mind is a product of our brain, itself beholden to chemical reactions and input. For example, our mood is influenced, in part, by the function of three neurotransmitters: serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine. Each of the three is related to what we eat.

Norepinephrine and dopamine induce alertness in the brain. Serotonin levels, which increase with the consumption of foods high in carbs (pasta, candy and cereal, to name a few) has the opposite effect. Higher levels of serotonin lower anxiety, lead to drowsiness, and improve mood. Calm, sleepy and happy? This is the driving force behind that food coma you had this weekend. In other words, avoid meals dense with carbs if you need your brain running at full capacity.

Eating large meals that are high (the two usually go hand in hand) in fat also have the ability to induce sleepiness and sluggishness. Large meals call more blood to the stomach region and away from the brain. With less blood to your brain, your mind tends to move slower until the meal has been fully digested.

Dopamine and norepinephrine, which give you increased focus and concentration, are a little trickier. Scientists know that eating foods rich in protein somehow relates to our alertness. Either proteins work to block the production of serotonin, or something within protein directly produces dopamine and norepinephrine. Whatever the cause, consuming a protein source an hour or so before a study session or midterm helps.

Some foods have a more sinister effect on your mind. Scientists at the Scripps Research Institute designed a study to understand how junk food affects the brain. They took two groups of rats and offered the control group a relatively healthy diet rich in nutrients, but low in calories. The other rats ate as much processed food as they wanted -bacon, cheesecake, Ho Hos, etc. The second group quickly developed compulsive eating behaviors, and soon they ate twice as much food as the control group.

Five days into the study, the pleasure centers of the brain were less sensitive for the latter lab rats. They needed significantly more junk food to achieve the same level of pleasure they were reaching just five days earlier. The scientists noted the parallels between junk food and previous research on drug abuse. This reaction was no different from the heroin abuser who constantly requires a bigger hit to reach the same high.

Upon making this connection, the scientists upped the stakes by introducing an electrical shock. Both groups of rats would receive a tiny foot shock each time they consumed food. Rats in the control group who were not exposed to much junk food stopped eating. They did not enjoy food as much as they disliked the shock. Rats in the junk food group hardly stopped a beat. They continued to eat more and more junk food despite the shocks. At this point, pain was a distant concern compared to reaching their habituated high. The rats were addicts.

Food cannot just influence your mind; food can take over your mind. That’s a scary thought, isn’t it? Food can be responsible for a sour mood in the afternoon. Maybe your breakfast (or lack thereof) directly affected your performance on a midterm today. Hopefully, it’s a thought that changes the way you look at food. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, late night runs – these aren’t just things we put in our body for energy. There’s a popular saying: we are what we eat. I think it’s more specific than that. We think what we eat.

Eat a good meal an hour before contacting RAJIV NARAYAN at rrnarayan@ucdavis.edu so the message is decidedly positive.

Intrigue begins to slither down your spine. Their smile, their eyes, their laugh, their sexy ass in those jeans – all too tempting. Your heart begins to pound, your body is on fire, and your mouth is watering. Your only chance at quenching this insatiable thirst lies in their kiss, their touch, their body touching yours – no shoes, no shirt, all you need is just skin.

They come toward you in a sultry stride. As they get closer, you tremble in anticipation. They wrap their arms around your neck and caress the side of your face with theirs. After a slight lick on your ear that sends chills all over your body, they whisper what you’ve been waiting to hear this whole time: “Let’s just make out tonight, OK? I don’t really feel like having sex.”

Okay, maybe that’s not exactly what you wanted to hear. But as ridiculous as this sounds, people just don’t feel like having sex all the time. (And I’m sorry I got you all steamed up and let you down. Ladies, consider that Blue Balls 101.)

Take this lovely honeybee whothat recently sent me this e-mail:

Dear Mario,

My boyfriend is really pushing it with sex. He doesn’t seem to be happy unless I’m riding him cowgirl, just how he likes. I’m getting tired of it. Foreplay isn’t my strong suit, so my question: What kinds of things besides actual sex could my boyfriend and I do?

Done Saddling Up

Before I share some titillating substitutes for sex, let’s talk about foreplay. For starters, there is no clear-cut definition of the word. Trusty Wikipedia describes it as a “set of intimate psychological and physical acts between two or more people meant to create desire for sexual activity and sexual arousal.” I define it as anything I do to the hot dog before I decide to put it in my hot pair of buns.

Looking at the big picture, foreplay is sometimes regarded as a prime first step that stimulates and preps the body and mind to move through the phases of the sexual cycle. But if all you’re looking to do is get off, foreplay really doesn’t affect your ability to do so.

In a study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine in 2008, over 2,300 women were asked to detail their sex lives from duration of foreplay to likelihood of orgasm. Researchers examined the frequency of orgasm among these women in relation to foreplay and actual sex, discovering that the average length of foreplay and intercourse was 15.4 and 16.2 minutes, respectively. This evidence indicated that links between foreplay and orgasm were insignificant. Instead, longer intercourse is suggested for greater probability of orgasm for women.

Think of it this way: A lot of us skip the prologues to books we read. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to enjoy the ending, right? (And just so you know, those numbers are for European couples – we Americans only last about seven minutes. Doesn’t sound like heaven now that you know the Euros can do it longer, huh?)

But just because foreplay isn’t necessary to your climax, doesn’t mean it can’t be alluring and fun. In all honesty, when time permits, I tend to want to indulge more in the prologue before cracking open the novel that is raunchy sex. Sure, it may take longer to get to the epilogue, but I like getting creative during the waiting period.

Some ways to get creative are simple. Foreplay is about stumbling upon different things that feel good, figuring out new ways to make your partner squirm with pleasure and simply practicing more safe and relaxed sexual deeds.

Touching is big part of foreplay – whether you’re touching yourself (masturbation), touching each other (mutual masturbation), you name it! You can go for the obvious sexy parts or you can linger around elsewhere on the body. Massages are the perfect example.

Kissing also plays a hefty role. Deep, tongue kissing is powerful, but smooching on other parts of the body like your partner’s ears, neck, eyelids, shoulders, breasts, stomach, back and inner thighs can be extremely relaxing and pleasurable, too. And don’t be afraid to revisit a time of innocence – you know, PG-13 make-out sessions.

But in the end, foreplay is all about fun. It’s called foreplay, honeybees. So do just that – play around. Games are perfect in the bedroom, perhaps some role-playing or X-rated card games. If you’re not afraid of light S&M, blindfolds and handcuffs are the perfect knick-knacks. For your sweet tooth, use some chocolate or grab a can of whipped cream and have some fun licking it off your favorite part of your lover’s body. After all, as long as it’s okay with the both of you, no one ever said you can’t have sex and eat it, too.

MARIO LUGO was inspired by a song off Rihanna’s new album to write this column. If you wish to gab incessantly about how great of a record it was, or if you’ve got more sex questions, e-mail him at mlugo@ucdavis.edu.