The fifth-year senior and cross country team captain stands ready at the podium, speech in hand. Thirty teammates, their parents and coaches fill the tiny room at his final end-of-season banquet. Standing 5 feet 7 inches tall with a 28-inch waist, he is hardly an imposing figure. Yet the weight of his words and his deeds far surpass his physical presence, a fact not lost on those who have watched him over time.

The speech he is about to give was essentially written for him; not by another man, but by circumstance. It is thus in his capacity as a messenger that he speaks, if only to offer guidance to those who will find themselves at the same podium 12, 24 or however many months hence.

And so, after settling behind the microphone and fielding a few good natured heckles, the room quiets, and he begins to speak.…

“The following quote is from Taoist book I stumbled on recently, called The Scholar Warrior, and I really wish I’d found it sooner. Because I think this quote captures what we’re trying to accomplish as a program; the building of complete human beings.

“‘Skill is the essence of the Scholar Warrior. Such a person strives to develop a wide variety of talents to a degree greater than even a specialist in a particular field. Poet and boxer. Doctor and swordsman. Musician and knight. The Scholar Warrior uses each part of his or her overall ability to keep the whole in balance…. Uncertainty of the future inspires no fear: Whatever happens, the Scholar Warrior has the confidence to face it.‘

“Now, in looking back, there are a lot of things I could say. Of course, one of the most important things I’ve learned here is that just because I could say something doesn’t mean that I should. Although anyone who knows me is aware of the fact that, while I know this, I don’t always remember. So for a while I toyed with the idea of simply doing a dramatic reading of the lyrics to the Sinatra song ‘My Way‘ in order to convey my general sentiments while avoiding upsetting anyone else’s. But that simply would not do; anyone interested can go listen to the song, and rather than let someone else speak for me, in true form, I’ll do the talking.

“Every person, when faced with the end of a journey, must come to terms with the path he has followed. Usually, this results an attempt to justify his actions as a means of assuring himself that he chose the correct route, that his efforts over the span of his quest were not in vain, that the juice was worth the squeeze.

“So when it was my turn, I did the requisite reflecting and began my justification. This of course involved inflating the importance and magnitude of my accomplishments by two means.

“One; selectively pruning information to create a context in which it appears I have been successful. For example, I’m the first Aggie harrier to earn Big West All Conference honors. Never mind that this is only our second year in the conference.

“The second route; moving the goal posts to again create a context in which it appears that I have been successful. For example, having broken 24:30 for 8K is pretty good. Never mind that my original goal was to break 24:00.

“But in a results-based paradigm, this sort of shifting is about all I could do; the results had to be successful, so the context had to change.

“Yet the deeper implications of this justification became clearer when I considered that I wasn’t just trying to justify my path, I was trying to justify myself. And I realize now that whenever we define ourselves by any competitive enterprise or invest our self-worth in any measurable quantity, race times, GPA, money, whatever, we will find ourselves running away from the setting sun, forever chasing our own shadows. And shadows always win, as anyone who’s run the levees knows.

“This mandates that instead of chasing shadows and allowing them to lead our lives, it is vitally important that we define our endeavors, and never allow them to define us. Put another way: I realized that running is something K.C. Cody chooses to do; K.C. Cody is not something running allows to happen.

“And yes, I just referred to myself in the third person.

“So I came to an impasse. In thinking about this season, moving goal posts and inflating accomplishments, I could not get around the feeling that the past 12 months were a disappointment. And yet, when I thought back on my entire career in its totality, I found that this season was also the culmination of something that was not at all disappointing. It was the culmination of something that’s been dearer to me than anyone, including myself, can probably ever fully know.

“And that is not at all a disappointment.

“For we must all at some point come to grips with the fact that we’re not the best; that depending on the metric, we’re not even good; that no matter how you look at it, every competitive endeavor leaves room for improvement and is in therefore in some regard a failure.

“This speaks to a central truth of life: If you live for end results, you’re dead.

“Perfection is the death of all that is good. We can never be satisfied with what we have or be happy with our accomplishments if we hold ourselves to standards that cannot be attained. So it is of course the journey, the doing of the thing, the living itself, that brings rewards which are known only to their possessor and which by their very nature cannot be taken away.

“And in the past five years, I’ve done a lot of living. Some of it less than savory, though most of it better than I deserved.

“Through it all, if I may be cliché for a moment, the only constant was change. The transient nature of this sport and of life in general is abundantly clear to those who make it to this podium, myself especially. I’ve had four head coaches in five years here. Counting high school, I’ve had eight head coaches in nine years; and make that 10 coaches in the past 11 years if you include club running. This has forced me to become extremely self-reliant, more so than I am inclined to be naturally. While uncomfortable at times, this is ultimately a positive; I’ve had to grow up faster on an athletic level, an academic level and a personal level.

“And on that personal level, I’ve seen graduating class after graduating class come up here, say their piece and subsequently fade from our lives leaving no evidence of their presence except the evidence we ourselves have chosen to keep alive. Nothing, on its own, is permanent, and all things pass. That means, of course, that this too shall pass. That I too, shall pass.

“And so I do. My name will persist in this program for, at maximum, the next four to five years. After that, I will be a ghost; I leave no plaque on the wall, broke no records, claimed no victories.

“Thus, I find myself among a large, diverse group of people; those who came, who saw but who did not conquer. And that’s OK. Because those who live for their accomplishments and accomplish everything they set out to achieve, Michael Jordan, Brett Favre, and perhaps even Michael Phelps and Lance Armstrong, will sooner or later find that they have nothing left to live for, and dwell forever in their pasts without giving the experiences of the present their proper dues.

“So I depart from here gingerly making my way towards an inner peace. A peace with the knowledge that although I did not accomplish all my goals, athletic, academic or personal, I nevertheless leave here an unexceptional example of an exceptional breed of human being.

“I leave here an Aggie.

“And for that I am forever grateful.“

K.C. CODY regrets that he will miss the Track and Field Banquet this year, so hopefully this will suffice for his speech. All transitioning athletes, or competitors of any sort, can commiserate at kccody@ucdavis.edu.

Attending college is a gamble, and here in the UC system all of us are going for broke. The economy has slipped into a nuclear winter and the job markets we have to look forward to are chilly at best. A degree now means a lot less than it did in 1970. For many people, it seems a safer bet to drop out and learn to fix Cadillacs.

Still, we bravely fight on through midterms and finals, scoffing at naysayers while throwing ourselves face-first into the fractal and rapidly evolving world of academics. Dammit, we’re gonna learn us some books.

But there’s a thorn in our side. For the sixth time in seven years, UC administrators are bleeding us for just a little more by raising student fees 9.3 percent, or $662 per student per year. This totals a 107 percent raise in student fees in seven years.

For a pinch of salt on those cuts, at UC Davis we now face virtual expulsion for late registration payment and a $10 increase in already-infuriating TAPS parking tickets. These are symptoms of an endemic budget problem created by administrators with their priorities way out of whack.

Although we’re told that student fee increases are considered as a “last resort,“ the truth is that it’s standard operating procedure. When in doubt, they shake us down. Administrators, senior academics and senior managers (prettier words for “bureaucrats“) are the last to get squeezed.

A UC employee salary freeze is in effect, but that doesn’t apply to benefits and bonuses. Pay cuts for bureaucrats are being considered (wink wink) but to do that, the UC regents must declare a state of financial emergency. Six-hundred sixty-two dollars taken from thousands of students eating EasyMac dinners: acceptable. One less Audi for an administrator: EMERGENCY.

As I’m sure you’ve heard, newbie UC Chancellor Mark Yudof recently appointed new chancellors for UCD and UCSF, doling out massive pay raises to both in a time of economic upheaval. Linda Katehi (rollin‘ at $400,000 per annum) and Susan Desmond-Hellmann ($450,000) will be paid 27 and 12 percent more than the outgoing chancellors, just to say thanks. They also will receive travel, relocation and automobile benefits that most people don’t make in a year ($100,000 ).

Yudof can pick his teeth with those amounts, as he himself jumped from an annual compensation of $786,045 (the fourth highest-paid university president in the country) to $828,000 when he moved to the aptly named Golden State.

The only real defense I’ve heard for the insane price tag is that “administrators are the grease between the gears“ and keep the school running smoothly. First, I ask: Does this look smooth to you? Second, I’d like to point out that it is possible to over-lubricate a machine.

Right now, that administrative oil is sloughing out onto the more important moving parts, clogging vents, shorting circuits and lighting grease-fires. Paying such extortionate amounts to the people that recommend raising our fees is outright madness.

I’ve also heard that “administrative pay must remain competitive.“ This is bullshit. Hundreds of applicants line up for any UC opening. If applicants pass up a UC job for mere dollars and cents, they care more about money than education. Learning ain’t a business.

I recommend that officials get paid no more than $100,000, bonuses included. This is the criteria they themselves set for financial aid eligibility, so if that’s what a household needs to send a kid to a top-rate school without help, that’s all they deserve to earn.

So administrative premiums are going up when UC state funding is going down. Genius. This means that (1) more of our school’s expenditure is going to dubiously useful bureaucrats and (2) more of that money is coming from your pocket. “Students are continuing to pay more and get less,” said UCSF medicine professor Dr. Stan Glantz in an SF Chronicle interview.

Financial aid is augmented in the 2009-2010 budget plan, but I shouldn’t need to tell you that that just means debt.

It’s sick. From the UC’s own budget statement, 71 percent of revenue is spent on staff salaries and benefits while 20 percent is used for educational equipment and facilities. Administrative budgets are growing at three times the rate of instructional budgets.

You’re not alone. While the UC decision makers believe that the purpose of higher education is job security for millionaires, saner voices everywhere call for reform. Fee hike protests flare across the state from UCSD to SFSU. UC regents are being told they can’t hide from public opinion. Give them your voice as well.

“The high-fee, high-aid model is bad for students, bad for the UC and bad for the state,“ said UC Student Association head Lucero Chavez in an interview with the SF Chronicle. “This model is most harmful to middle-income students. It translates into more loan debt and a lot more work hours.“

Professor emeritus of physics at UC Berkeley Charles Schwartz has made it his personal mission to expose the financial fraud of the UC system at large. In mountains of papers, he accuses Yudof and crew of calculating false numbers to justify fee hikes and defend the supposed efficiency of administration. In an open letter to Yudof, Schwartz says management bureaucracy wastes over $600 million per year and devours profits from UC programs that could be shared.

Most astoundingly, Schwartz says that our undergraduate fees cover the entirety of our education and that cuts from the state budget impact only the faculty’s research program. This fee hike, then, is robbery.

Picture your education as a hoagie. As the sandwich comes your way, it passes through the hands of chancellors, vice chancellors, deans and assistants and every one of them takes a big messy bite out of it. Really, they’re giving it to this poor sandwich like it’s their job. You see the beautiful baguette shrink and shrink and shrink. Once it gets to you, you get crumbs.

And the bill.

CHEYA CARY is seeing Nine Inch Nails at Shoreline today. “You train us how to act/ You keep the fear intact/ The imminent attack/ Everything is right on track/ And we are LETTING you GET away … “

With pen and paper in hand, three students went to a bookstore on the Harvard University campus in the fall of 2007. They were there not to buy books, but to take down the ISBNs of textbooks being sold in the store. When they were asked to leave, they refused, and police were called to diffuse the situation.

The students were collecting ISBNs to put on a website they had created to make it easier for other students to find the cheapest textbooks online. The incident highlighted the struggle students face in trying to combat the high cost of textbooks, a problem that has been acknowledged by virtually everyone in the higher education world.

The UC Davis Financial Aid Department estimates that the annual cost of books and supplies for its students is $1,590. The Government Accountability Office says textbook prices have increased at double the rate of inflation in the past 20 years, and the textbook industry brings in over $6 billion in revenues per year.

These costs are often prohibitive, even for students who are attending community colleges where the cost of tuition and fees is dramatically less than at public and private universities.

In an effort to make higher education more affordable and accessible, Congress created new rules for college bookstores in the Higher Education Opportunity Act it passed last fall. While many of the details are still being worked out, one of the biggest changes is a requirement that college bookstores publish a list of the ISBNs and prices of all the textbooks and course materials it offers.

Ideally, this will open up the bookstore business and make it easier for students to comparison shop. It will also help prevent situations like the one at Harvard in 2007.

Whether the new regulation is at all successful in achieving these goals will not be known until it goes into effect in July 2010. At the very least, though, this is a step in the right direction and Congress should be recognized for paying attention to this issue.

Fortunately, the UC Davis Bookstore is taking further steps to make life easier for students. Book department manager Jason Lorgan told The California Aggie that by mid-summer, a feature will be added to SISWeb that will allow students to view and purchase required textbooks online.

As long as this information is accurate and up to date, this will probably be a very useful tool for those looking to save a few dollars without having to e-mail professors or trek to the bookstore to hunt down ISBNs.

It’s important to realize, however, that the ISBN regulations passed by Congress can only do so much. While information is good, it’s not going to be enough to solve this problem. All Americans deserve an affordable and accessible education, and the cost of textbooks should never interfere with that. It is up to leaders in Congress, in the public universities and in the textbook publishing industry to continue working on the affordability issue and ensure that this ideal is upheld.

Sometimes I’m not sure what I’m doing with my life. I’m not talking about one of those quarter-life crises that so many of you insist on having where you trip balls about what you’re gonna do for a living or something depressing like that. I’m sure some of you know what it’s like to be sitting in class and wondering why you’re getting an education at an accredited university when you could be cussing out paparazzi or taking a baseball bat to something expensive just because. Damn, it must feel good to be a rock star.

It takes a special kind of human being to get away with getting drunk and biting strangers on the leg in Swedish hotels. Some people are just destined from early on to lead lives of chaotic insanity. Like Anthony Kiedis, who lost his virginity at the age of 12 to his father’s 18-year-old girlfriend. With permission, of course. Mick Jagger also once stated that he did it at 12 with two girls in a garden shed.

Kids grow up fast.

Every once in a while these guys let the substance ruin their own concerts, but it usually makes for amusing results. Steven Tyler of Aerosmith once played a single song at a London concert, said, “Good night, Berlin,” fell into the orchestra pit, and passed out. An audience member had to fill in for Keith Moon when he passed out for the second time at a show. Liam Gallagher bailed on an MTV Unplugged set, got drunk and heckled his brother from the audience. Sometimes when he doesn’t like a question that someone asks him he just punches them in the face. Oasis generally likes to go around telling people that they’re “the best fookin’ band in the world.”

Some bands just like to wreck stuff. This obscure little band called The Who smashed 700 pounds worth of equipment per night onstage when they felt like it. Keith Moon, their drummer, had an intense passion for blowing up toilets in hotels. He also drove a car once into a swimming pool and made the limo drive all the way back to the hotel from the airport just so that he could throw a TV out the window. Aerosmith took this a step further; they actually brought extension cords so that they could keep the TV on as it was falling. Chainsaws also accompanied them on tour so that they could remodel their hotel rooms more easily. Nirvana is another band that liked to seek excuses to do their instruments in.

Rock stars probably take for granted the simple joy that is throwing a hissyfit. David Lee Roth once flipped a bitch when he found a brown M&M backstage. Apparently this was forbidden in Van Halen’s contract. After trashing a penthouse in Thailand, Billy Idol refused to leave and ended up being tied down to a stretcher before they deported his ass.

But then again, part of their appeal is their lack of caring. Angus Young has no qualms about admitting that every AC/DC album sounds the same when reporters ask him about it. When arrested for indecent exposure onstage at a concert, Jim Morrison just said that he wanted to see what it looked like in a spotlight.

Not everyone can get away with half the stuff that these guys can, though. Ray Davies allegedly tried to pull a Keith Moon and knock a beer bottle against the wall, but he somehow ended up knocking himself out instead. Unfortunately I suspect that’s something that would happen to me (see pepper spray incident).

Some things rock stars do are just downright weird. Everyone knows that Ozzy is messed up from years of snorting, smoking and shooting up everything in sight, but he also bit the head off a live bat in concert. Keith Richards admitted to snorting his father’s cremated ashes mixed in with some cocaine, saying he “couldn’t resist.”

Where rock stars turn their antics into art is where they come down momentarily from the shitshows that are their lives and write a gem like “Free Bird.” It’s not the hotel rooms they trash, but the music that ultimately immortalizes them. Since I don’t have an ounce of musical talent, I know I’ll be back in class on Monday living vicariously. Maybe someday I’ll get my shot.

MICHELLE RICK salutes those about to rock this weekend and reminds you that real rock stars wear sunblock. Send blackmail photos to marick@ucdavis.edu.

There is an increasing clamor for the bureaucratization of college education. For many, globalization reemphasizes the demand for technical expertise. To thrive in the current economic mode is to attain the very specific skill sets employers require – to the extent that “a humanities education,” as the New York Times reports, “may become “a great luxury that many cannot afford.” The oft-cited resolution is simply to shift the focus of college education to align with global economic patterns.

This approach ignores the fundamental premise of a college education.

Education is the empowerment of minds allied to active emotional maturation. At its essence, learning isn’t merely about the absorption of information. Instead, it is acquiring the ability to understand complexity, to map the details and networks in the grand scheme of order and articulate the resulting conclusions with flourish. It helps one think and reason through ambiguity.

In this respect, a diverse college education expands, not narrows, intellectual horizons. Utilized beneficially, individuals grow. Through an exposure not to a specific technical vocation, one gains the essential analytical skills and appreciative fervor for the canon of established knowledge – from Nietzsche’s existential nihilism to chaos theory to Modigliani-Miller’s powerful model of financial leverage. This diversity provides a perspective of independence.

One prevalent problem with this goal, including at UC Davis, is the tendency for students to skip the personal inquiry step for top grades. At college, one’s understanding is evaluated through the assignment of grades. Grades illustrate one’s ability to thrive in challenging subject materials while balancing the demands of professional growth, healthy emotional lives, personal relationships and continuous leadership opportunities. They indicate one’s ability to multitask under intense time pressure.

But too often students cram at the expense of focused and dedicated learning. Cramming is short-term, instant memorization frequently consequent of poor time management. At times, in the busy, distractive pacing of today’s society, cramming is unavoidable as it is necessary. But the potential for abuse is high, and frequenting this behavior as a general form of study misses the endeavor that goes into actual learning. This prevents active intellectual curiosity.

In this context, one’s focus is on the solutions, not the thought-process. This is a problem that must be resolved.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the second premise of a diverse college education is to help one integrate into institutionalized communal structures. As the New York Times columnist David Brooks describes the situation, “we are not defined by what we ask of life. We are defined by what life asks of us.” Precisely because society is organized around certain requisite norms and commonly agreed behavioral principles, one’s comprehension and practice of certain attitudes are essential. To succeed in society, one must acclimatize to the preset rules and precepts. Certain patterns of actions must be adhered to.

In this sense, college, by its very function of instruction, is responsible to provide a platform for the cultivation of mannerisms, etiquette, ethics and grace. Through a setting for character growth, one develops the ability to emote, to project passion and to express convictions. These skills are what define connections. A diverse education helps one train these soft skills.

A diverse college education, rather than specific technical development, helps one attain the height of human consciousness while adapting to the needs of society. It is to make or bring meaning to what can seem meaningless. The diversity promotes creativity, a willingness to look beyond the obvious, harnesses the power of imagination. In the end, thus, the clamor to design education to train specific technical skills comes at the great expense of many essential life skills.

ZACH HAN thinks college is the best experience … agree at zklhan@ucdavis.edu.

As an avid truth-seeker, it was hard for me to come to terms with my desire to keep myself ignorant to some things. I used to think that, given two equally capable individuals, the person with more true information can always do at least as good as the other person. And hence, one can only gain from having true information. I still believe this, however, there is one implicit assumption that makes this line of reason not true in all cases.

We are not perfectly rational agents; our mind isn’t stored in a vacuum, but in a highly irrational Homo sapien brain. There is some seemingly harmless information that, if known to people, would hurt them because they can’t turn off their bias impulses.

One piece of information I would never choose to know is my IQ score. I would also go as far as to say that most people don’t want to know theirs either.

At first, it seems silly to not want to know your IQ score. After all, the score will be the same whether I know it or not. Why should it change anything? Well, technically, it shouldn’t change anything – but it does.

Let’s first examine what the IQ test is and why it exists in the first place.

Basically, it’s a test that involves some mental tasks and your score is supposed to be consistent throughout your life. Overtime, the test-makers tweaked the test in order to make it more and more consistent. The more consistent the test is, the more it suggests that your genes and not the environment explain your score.

But even if a test is very consistent, it’s worthless unless you can make predictions out of it. A test that measures eye color is extremely consistent throughout one’s life, but I doubt it will make any non-trivial predictions. Turns out, however, that IQ tests actually do make interesting predictions. For example, the higher IQ one has, the more likely they will succeed in school or have higher paying jobs. Although the predictions are statistically significant, they are far from perfect.

The problem is not in the test itself, but in how we extrapolate the data. Our culture heavily attributes way more predictive power to IQ scores than it actually has – and this screws with our mind.

We assume that someone with a high IQ not only should be successful, but is successful. This makes high IQ people feel like they don’t need to try as hard to succeed and feel entitled. Conversely, average IQ people feel like they should stay away from cognitively taxing activities and may never reach their full potential.

Height and good hair also correlate with real-world success. But as a culture, we don’t overestimate the predictive power of these traits. I have never heard of someone fear they’re not going to make a lot of money because they’re short or balding. An even more obscure indicator of success is the number of books your parents own. But again, no one is ever affected by the knowledge of how many books their parents own.

I choose to not know my IQ because I will be negatively affected whether my IQ score turns out to be either higher or lower than I expect. I’ve been too brainwashed by society to not be affected by the results. I am best off not knowing my real limitations and that my success will be a function of my effort, not raw intelligence. Not only will this mindset make me live up to my potential, it keeps my sense of self-worth where it should be, not artificially inflated or deflated with knowledge of either a high or low IQ score.

IQ is not the only predictor-of-success that we over-assign predictive power to. In fact, most of them can’t be conveniently ignored like IQ scores. Some of these predictors include: GPA, scores on standardized tests, selectivity of school one is enrolled in and ethnicity, to name a few. Again, these are all good predictors-of-success, but they’re not as nearly accurate as we believe them to be.

Since our brainwashed minds aren’t capable of correctly analyzing this information about ourselves, we shouldn’t have our self-efficacy be determined by them. Instead, we should consider our level of effort as the variable that determines our success. I know I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t adopted this mindset.

LIOR GOTESMAN thinks you shouldn’t be ignorant to the fact that you can contact him at liorgott@gmail.com.