When you apply to be a columnist at The Aggie, I believe there are two assumptions that you make about yourself: (1) that you know something that others don’t and (2) that whatever you know, you think it’s interesting enough to tell other people.

In fact, when you submit your application, you have to explain these exact assumptions. When I applied sophomore year, I wrote: “Things happen to me, usually lame things, and I learn from them … I just have stories and I like to tell them. That’s all” (my eloquence at the time just blows me away). Well three years and 82 columns later, I still haven’t the slightest idea about anything.

There are still plenty of things that baffle me: why it’s easier for a mediocre looking guy to be with an über hot girl, but not the other way around; why did Pasta? close at night because KetMoRee sucks so much wad; or why mean guys can lie to girls about anything except when it comes to saying “I love you” (and why for some reason, we should all appreciate that).

But I suppose that even though I know absolutely nothing (my parents would be so proud if they heard me say that after paying four years of tuition), there is no choice but to remain optimistic about everything. It’s tough out there in the “real world,” so be brave.

Be brave in life because I believe that no matter how pessimistic you want to be about the shit that doesn’t really matter, you at least have to hold some optimism when it comes to the big shtuff. And I’m not talking about because-you-never-know-when-you-might-die spiel, but because you really have no choice but to be hopeful. It’s the only way to ever stay sane.

Be brave when it comes to your choices and know that if it’s what you really want to do, then things should be all right (after all, who gets punished for following their passion? Unless the passion is to murder or to topple a regime, then I guess you’re out of luck). Whether you’re a liberal arts major who is finally giving into the worries of those around you (“What are you going to do with that? What sort of job could you find in this sort of economy?!”), or you’re a lucky but nervous bastard with a foreseeable successful future, everything will work out because it should.

Be brave when it comes to transitioning into something new. I was never a fan of the “things happen for a reason,” saying (it’s such a cop-out advice one liner and its utter non-profoundness only accomplishes a futile sense of circular reasoning), but if college taught me anything, it’s that change happens regardless and most of the time it will be okay, if not better. So ditch whatever is no good for you, brush off the dust and venture on.

And lastly, be brave when it comes to obtaining the ever-elusive l-o-v-e. If you ever hear about me after this column ends (best case scenario: I’m on a book cover or in a major newspaper/magazine; worst case scenario: my mug shot’s on the six o’clock news and I’m leading the cops through a car chase), hopefully I won’t be the awkward girl trying her best not to get noodles in her glasses while flirting. But if I’m still single, that’s okay too. Nine times out of 10, it’s better to be in the pleasure of your own company then with somebody who just doesn’t treat you right.

The way I see it, there’s not just one, but a handful of people who will go good with you (because looking for that one soul mate is statistically way too impossible and unappealing for me). You’ll be with many of them and during that time, you’ll learn a lot about what you want in another person, what you absolutely need in a relationship and what you can do without. Hopefully, you’ll end up with not the perfect, but the best one for you.

And if you think that there just isn’t anybody out there for you, riddle me this: Say you’re a lonely German boy, working on a boat, who enjoys magic and tigers … a lot. (I mean, those are some pretty specific interests). Not to mention, you’re gay. Now, you’d think that it’s pretty impossible to find anybody for you, but lo‘ and behold, you meet another lonely German homosexual boy, working on the same boat, who has the same love for magic and huge undomesticated cats as you.

You guys will fall in love and when you jokingly ask him, “Will you still love me even if my face is all mangled up?” (I know for sure that couples play this game) he will say yes and later mean it, because it’ll happen, and you guys will still be together. Therefore, if love can happen between Siegfried and Roy then damnit, it’s going to happen to you too. (Shit, please don’t let them separate because my one hopeful story will be completely worthless).

LYNN LA is sad because next week will be her last column ever. To make her feel better, e-mail her at ldla@ucdavis.edu or drop a line in person. She will anxiously be at the flagpole TOMORROW! at 4 p.m. to meet you guys.

If you’ve ever wondered how much any UC Davis employee makes, it’s your right to know. The California Public Records Act mandates it.

To view compensation information, one must go to Shields Library and go to the reserves desk. The data is available in three bound books as well as on CD. Books for each campus are available in one library on that campus.

Although we applaud UC’s attempts to make this information public, its efforts are lacking in one area: the Internet.

By keeping this data offline, UC makes it difficult to obtain. Only one person is able to look at the data at a time, and there is only one copy of this information for campuses with thousands of students, faculty and staff.

This is only the beginning of the problem. What if someone far away from any UC campus, in say Truckee or Salinas, wanted to see where their state tax dollars were going? They would have to drive hours to view this legally-mandated public information.

Additionally, publishing this information online, when already cataloged on CD, would save UC money in printing costs, and contribute to an image of transparency.

UC has stated two concerns preventing them from distributing the information further, said Paul Schwartz, director of internal communications for the UC Office of the President. The concerns are employee privacy and other institutions knowing what UC pays its staff.

Neither of these concerns are valid. Everyone on state payrolls, including UC employees, already have their compensation information posted on a public Sacramento Bee database. Second, if other universities cared enough to know how much UC pays, it is entirely conceivable that they may send an employee to the campus to view the information. Although we appreciate Schwartz’ concerns, they simply don’t seem to hold water.

Although the information is already available online through the aforementioned Sacramento Bee database, it would behoove UC to make it available in a more official capacity. Doing so would also allow UC to create pages justifying various levels of faculty and staff pay.

UC has done a commendable job by making this information available at all ten campuses. Why not publish the information online, and make it available to all Californians?

This year marked the second consecutive year in which Safeboats have had a presence at Lake Shasta during Memorial Day weekend.

Droves of college students make the holiday weekend an annual boozefest out on the lake, renting houseboats to do so. In an effort to minimize the effects of binge drinking, unprotected sex, dehydration and other obstacles drunk college students manage to create for themselves, the Safeboat is on hand to lend aid.

This is a fantastic idea. The ASUCD Senate allocated $1,372 to fund Safeboats this year, an increase of $572 from last year and it is still a fantastic idea. If it rose in cost, it would continue to be a fantastic idea.

ASUCD Senator Mo Torres agrees … kind of.

“I think it’s incredibly important that Safeboats have a presence at Houseboats,” he said. “Students should take initiative in ensuring the safety of all UC Davis students at such a potentially dangerous event.“

Indeed! Why, then, did he vote against the senate’s efforts to provide funding to Safeboats?

“With such a limited amount of money available in the senate reserves, I question the necessity to fund Safeboats when Houseboats is a party and nothing more … I can’t justify allocating such a great amount of money to something that is neither educational nor empowering to the campus community,” he said in an e-mail interview with The California Aggie.

Torres‘ concerns certainly bear consideration; the way in which ASUCD funds are spent should always be met with heavy scrutiny. It is imperative that student dollars be spent wisely.

This thinking however, is precisely why ASUCD should fund Safeboats. Providing emergency services and ensuring student safety are two areas discussed annually during ASUCD elections. Passing up a chance to actually provide such a service would be foolhardy.

Safeboats aided one Houseboat-goer with alcohol poisoning this weekend, almost certainly saving her life. Many others were provided with necessities such as bandages, condoms, sunscreen and water.

Students will rent houseboats and engage in dangerous activities regardless of whether or not ASUCD decides to help fund Safeboats. Getting drunk on a boat with hordes of others getting equally drunk might be a stupid idea, but the evidence suggests that people will continue to partake in the freshwater fun for years to come.

Given this, helping to provide emergency services to those involved is brilliant and is an example of tangible good. It has already made a positive impact on people’s lives.

It is our fervent hope that Safeboats can continue to count on ASUCD for funding in the future.

Learning to be accountable for your own actions is one of life’s greatest lessons. From a very young age we’re taught that when a problem arises as a result of our previous actions, it’s up to us to fix it.

While such an idealized view of personal responsibility looks great in children’s books or in an elementary school classroom, it’s honestly becoming harder and harder to find real world examples to support such a preposterous belief.

A perfect example of both the lack, and overwhelming presence, of this notion of accountability was exhibited last week during California’s special election.

Anyone that has followed this column closely over the last two years know that, deep down, I’m nothing more than an outspoken pessimist looking to take potshots at public officials, and so it makes sense that any discussion over a blatant lack of accountability would begin there.

In order to fully understand the failure in personal accountability I’m about to describe, we first have to rewind to last February, when Governor Schwarzenegger presented a budget that left California with a deficit that is currently being measured in the tens of billions. With this action, it appears that Governor Schwarzenegger and the state legislature took the first, and least helpful, step toward cleaning up their own mess – actually creating the mess.

Unfortunately for millions of Californians, our elected officials didn’t jump right to the task of finding a reasonable solution to the problem, instead choosing to let the whole mess fester and ferment until it was too large and disgusting of a problem to ignore any longer.

Arnie (Governor Schwarzenegger for those of you that find the nickname confusing) and the state legislature’s refusal to clean up after themselves brings us to the current situation, and was the driving motivation behind last week’s special election.

Despite claims that Propositions 1A-1F were geared toward finding the most reasonable solution to California’s budget woes, the reality of the situation was that our elected officials were all crossing their fingers in the hopes that California taxpayers wouldn’t mind giving them a free pass, and maybe even volunteer someone else to clean up the overwhelming mess that they had left behind.

While the idea of passing the burden of this budget deficit onto the public is deplorable in its own right, what makes matters even worse is that the legislative bundle consisting of Propositions 1A-1F equated to nothing more than ridiculously small Band-Aid being placed over the financial equivalent of shattered bones. Yes, even if all six of last week’s propositions were to have passed, California would still be facing an $8 billion budget deficit.

Taking all of this into account, you can probably guess where I’m going to find proof of an overwhelming presence of personal accountability in all of last week’s election news. Yes, once again, where vice can be found in our elected officials, virtue can be seen in the people they apparently represent.

Rather than be duped by an increase to the “Rainy Day” fund, or the allure of allowing the legislature to recklessly borrow in order to mend the damage to their budget, Californians insisted that government officials find a better way to clean up the trail of filth that this thrown together spending plan has left in its wake. In fact, of the six propositions on the table, the only one that was not denied by a ridiculous margin was Prop. 1F, a measure to prohibit salary increases for elected officials during budget deficit years.

While the actions of California’s voters during last week’s special election is cause for some degree of celebration, the unfortunate reality is that a solution to this budget fiasco must come from somewhere, and if history has shown us anything, that means that California’s student population will likely, once again, be tossed underneath the proverbial bus.

JAMES NOONAN only has one week left in his columnist career. Tell him what to write about at jjnoonan@ucdavis.edu. He probably won’t listen, but it’s worth a shot.

Every day we are bombarded with ambition-probing questions forcing us to think about our future lives in the “real” world. These questions are usually intended to be facilitators of harmless conversation, but they often cause us to develop misconceived notions of success.

Well, these questions can come in a variety of forms.

Children are often asked what they want to be when they grow up. For a child, replying is easy because the “real world” seems so far away that anything seems possible. Some kids want to be astronauts while others want to be firefighters or Barack Obama. Yours truly, for instance, wanted to be a “worker guy.“

Okay, so I wasn’t the most specific kid.

Fast forward a decade or so to college, where these ambition-probing questions tend to take the form of, “What’s your major?” immediately followed by (especially if you are in the College of Letters & Science) “That’s interesting. What do you plan to do with that?”

Umm, well … that’s a good question.

Actually, I was planning on using my degree to pull a Henry David Thoreau, swear off all worldly possessions and go live in the woods …

Okay, so maybe camping isn’t your thing, but when asked this question, people tend to pull one of the usual canned responses to hide the fact they really have no clue what they want to do with their lives.

If people always became what they told people they “wanted” to become, then nearly all Letters & Science kids would become lawyers, College of Biological Science kids would become doctors and all College of Engineering peeps would … well most of them are going to get frustrated and switch majors to Bio Sci, anyway, so I guess it doesn’t really matter what they say.

And seriously, people (especially you, Poli Sci majors), no matter how much it may impress your grandma, you can’t go around telling people you’re majoring in Pre-Law because it doesn’t exist at UC Davis and you know it.

At any rate, it may be all fun and games to tell people what you “plan” on doing with whatever dead-end degree you are working toward, but once you get to the point where you’re about to graduate it’s not so funny anymore. Now the question is: “What do you plan to do after you graduate?” Suddenly, the “real world” starts to seem a lot more … realer.

If you aren’t going directly to grad school, you will probably find yourself in quite the awkward position. Then you will say, “I’m taking a year off.”

As if grad school was the only thing capable of advancing your life’s narrative.

But then there are those who just want to get grad school “over with.” Well, this is jolly good if you actually know what you want to do with your life, but this is likely not the case if you are the average 20ish year old.

Although you may know what you should do, you don’t know what you want to do.

This brings us back to the idea of ambition-probing questions.

When are asked these questions, why do we feel the need to sometimes stretch the truth? More importantly, why do we even think we need to have an answer to these questions to begin with?

We answer ambition-probing questions the way in which we do because we want to be perceived as successful. We want others to look up at us and go, “golly, that person is going to be somebody. Look at them being all lawyery and doctery and stuff.“

It’s easy to lose sight of what life choices can actually make us happy when we get caught up trying to appease popular notions of success, which often equate one’s pay grade with their level of success. After all, money is the root of all … what was it again? Happiness? Oh, wait. I think it was something else.

What good is success without happiness? Driven by the notion that success inevitably leads to happiness, we try so hard to succeed because we want so badly to be happy.

But perhaps somewhere along the road of dodging ambition-probing questions we got it mixed up.

Maybe happiness doesn’t always follow success, but success always follows happiness.

Take a moment and imagine the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Ask yourself the greatest ambition-probing question of them all: What is it that makes you happy?

The answer to this question is probably what you should be doing with your life.

MIKE HOWER is still determined to become a “worker guy.” If you know any “worker guys” who can hook it up, contact him at mahower@ucdavis.edu.

Dear Super Senior,

I’ve been seeing a girl for a few months now, and just recently things have been starting to pick up. She’s a ton of fun to be around and fits perfectly into my life. Problem is, I’m leaving on a jet plane to Sumatra at the end of the quarter for a six month study abroad trip. I’m a committed guy, and I don’t want to give up on what’s turning out to be an awesome relationship, but I’ll be spending six months off the continent! What sage wisdom could you offer to a man in my predicament?

– Lucky in Love

First of all, congrats on finding someone who you dig enough to even consider a distance relationship with. That shit’s rare, which of course only makes your problem worse.

Think of what a hurricane does to two different plants in a field: a tree and a blade of grass. A tree is tall, proud and rigid, whereas a blade of grass is small, modest and flexible. When a hurricane roars through that field, the tree, tall, proud and rigid, is ripped limb from limb, uprooted and killed. But the blade of grass, small, modest and flexible, is left unharmed.

The lesson: don’t try to resist something you can’t possibly control. Instead, be flexible, and let things come as they will.

Be the blade of grass.

Anyway, here’s the deal: distance relationships are hard. And they’re hard not because of the things you know about them, but the things you don’t know.

Logistically, how will you stay in touch? Is there Internet? How often will you talk on the phone? Who pays for the long distance? What’s the time difference going to mean?

Emotionally, will you feel lonely? Will she be your one solid constant, your rock, during a time of intense tumult? And if so, what kind of rock will she be? Will she be the rock under which you take refuge, or the rock that weighs you down?

Sexually, do you think you’ll be tempted to cheat? What about her? Will she find comfort in the convenient? And what constitutes cheating, anyway?

Now, what’s funny is that the reason those questions are so hard to answer is the same reason you shouldn’t even try to answer them; they’re dependent on a huge number of variables that will undoubtedly change as things progress.

Which is why, for you specifically, I think you gotta go to Sumatra; the girl’s not going anywhere (and even if she does, that won’t matter), but this opportunity might not come again.

The reason I say it won’t matter if the girl falls for, say, your roommate, is that ultimately if she’s not willing or able (and conversely, if you’re not willing or able) to stick through six months of celibacy and 4 a.m. scheduled conversations, then it wasn’t going to work out anyway.

That is, if you really, truly want to stay together, then you’ll stay together.

Bottom line, don’t stress on it.

Be the blade of grass.

Dear Super Senior,

I have begun to frequent the Coho Salad Bar. They have many tasty toppings there, but some of my favorites, particularly artichoke hearts, have yet to make an appearance. Is there some way for me to contact the higher powers at the Coho and request some of this artichoke-y goodness?

Thank you, Wise One

– How Could They Be So Heartless?

Heartless! Well done.

Anyhow, there are multiple routes here.

First, write a note to “them.“ There’s a suggestion/comment box right next to the piano, with responses posted all around it. In fact, you should probably go read those suggestions anyway to see if your artichoke inquiry hasn’t already been answered.

Second, send an e-mail to “them.“ The Coho maintains an excellent website (coffeehouse.ucdavis.edu/) complete with menus, hours, prices and, you guessed it, a contact form. All they want is your name and your e-mail address, and you can tell them anything you want.

Third, make a phone call to “them.“ On that same contact form is a phone number. I haven’t called it, so I don’t know what it does, but my guess is that you’ll have the opportunity to speak to a voicemail box or to ask to be put through to a manager. In any case, it’s worth a try.

Fourth, send an e-mail to “a human being.“ One Sharon Coulson runs the show over at the Coho, and if you send her an e-mail (sacoulson@ucdavis.edu) she might be willing to consider an updated salad menu.

Also, ASUCD technically runs the Coho, so you could put in a line to President Joe Chatham or Vice President Chris Dietrich if you’re so inclined.

I doubt any of that will work, of course, since I’m old and have lost faith in the goodness of humanity. Your best bet is to actually find someone and corner them physically, because all the other modes of communication make you easy to ignore.

If that fails, just make a salad at home and save yourself some money.

K.C. CODY won’t be answering any of your questions in a column next week. But if you still want advice, fire away to kccody@ucdavis.edu.