A fifth-year student’s academic reality

We’ve always been told that college will be the best four years of our lives. But what if those four years turned into five, or even six?

Fifth-year students, also known as “super seniors,” seem to be increasing in number every year. Students across UC Davis are choosing to extend their time as undergraduates depending on their academic goals, their extracurriculars and their future endeavors. Sara Sweeney, academic counselor for the College of Letters and Sciences (L&S), advises these students on a path that fits best for them.

“A lot of times I see [L&S] students […] looking for additional experiences like a second major, an additional minor, study abroad –– where that path is going to go [is student-led],” Sweeney said. “[Students] are used to high school where you were [there for] fours years and then you’re done. But at UC Davis […] you tell us when you’re done.”

Sweeney, a UC Davis alumna and former super senior herself, understands that academic, familial or financial pressures may make students feel pressured to complete their undergraduate education in four years. However, she emphasizes that a lot of students are open to the idea of staying longer.

“I encourage students to do what works for them –– no student’s path even in the same major is going to look the same […] just because there is so much variety and choice,” Sweeney said. “Of course, we want students to know about requirements, [but] figuring out that you can graduate every quarter, that you aren’t in a class of students moving all through the same thing, makes [it so that] they can kind of do [their] own thing, whatever that turns out to be.”

Fifth-year English and evolutionary anthropology double major Alyssa Hurst transferred to Davis after many years of community college and working full time.

“A lot of transfer students you may talk to say that Davis is [overwhelming and] that [they] want to get out as soon as possible –– and I sort of had the opposite reaction,” Hurst said. “Once I got used to it, I thought [that] there was so much good here. I wanted to do it all.”

Hurst decided to extend her education by two quarters in order to incorporate her many extracurriculars, including study abroad in Japan, anthropological field school, English critical honors program and applying to graduate school. She’ll be graduating from L&S this winter with no regrets.

“The decision to take a fifth year […] is really subjective –– basically, those really cool experiences I would have had to sacrifice to take classes,” Hurst said. “It makes sense for some people, and doesn’t make sense for others.”

As L&S caps students at 225 units for their entire undergraduate career, graduation is relatively straightforward, whether that be in three, four or five years.

“In L&S, [we try to] make sure that every student can graduate in the time that they want, but sometimes the time that they want is not four years,” Sweeney said. “If you start off [as] a physics major, there’s a plan; you’re going to get the classes and move through, [but] if you find out that you want to be a physics major in your third year, that might be a challenge. That’s what I kind of see, for L&S –– we experience that more than any other college.”

The College of Engineering makes it available for their students to graduate within four years plus a quarter and between 190 and 230 units on average, since there is no unit cap. Pam Kisting, academic program coordinator for mechanical and aerospace engineering, meets with fifth-year students for degree checks more often than an L&S advisor would.

“Maybe 30 to 40 percent of students continue on [to a fifth year],” Kisting said. “The majority of our students do probably get out in four, […] but we definitely have students that stay.”

Kisting explained that staying an extra year depends on whether the student wants to focus on real-world experiences like internships and “co-ops” (extended internships), or the 19 units of classes that a particular quarter holds.

“The reality is that what internship you have […] is going to be the most important factor to what job you get when you graduate, […] but that means that [a student is] going to strategically weigh staying longer,” Kisting said. “[And] here if you want to pick up a minor or double major, you’re basically guaranteeing yourself staying longer than four years –– if you’re okay with that, fine, but it you aren’t then you need to be very strategic with your planning.”

With a heavy workload, engineering students are advised to delegate their time efficiently in order to support a healthy GPA. Rosa Morales, a fourth-year mechanical and aerospace engineering double major, looks forward to her fifth year of focused work and leadership opportunities.

“I didn’t want to rush my double major [because] it could get pretty intense,” Morales said. “Now my fifth year will be pretty relaxed, and next year […] I can focus on my personal statements [and] getting good letters of recommendations –– it’ll open up my schedule so I can focus on getting into grad school.”

As a first generation college student and the current vice president of the Chicano and Latino Engineer and Scientists Society (CALESS), Morales credits the time she was able to focus on the club as a motivator for her future goals.

“There’s a lot of things that I’m learning being an officer that I wouldn’t have learned otherwise,” Morales said. “If I had been trying to get out of here in four years I probably wouldn’t have had the time to get so involved.”

With regard to her students’ success, Kisting wants to motivate engineers like Morales to go at their own pace, no matter what their academic plan may dictate.

“I want students […] where they can be academically successful,” Kisting said. “[But] there’s this bureaucratic side of higher education saying that you need to turn these kids out in four years. [But because of] the different accreditation process that we have to adhere to […] you have to have a solid curriculum that will prepare students for employment in the industry.”

Despite the pressures, Kisting hopes that it’s a student’s own personal choice that determines whether they stay for longer than the traditional four years.

“You gotta listen to your gut,” Kisting said. “If you’re okay with [it], we’re okay with it.”

Written by: Emilie DeFazio – features@theaggie.org

Students offer free services in the UC Davis Free & For Sale group on Facebook

Relaxing with Sensui

If ever in need of a massage after a stressful week of midterms, Sensui Tao is the man to visit. From a young age, one of Tao’s older sisters deemed him the family masseuse. Being the sixth youngest child, Tao massaged the rest of his siblings in various ways, such as stepping on their backs and using his elbows.

Tao took a break from massaging in high school, however, when his father passed away from liver cancer four years ago. Later on, he got back into the practice to take better care of his mom.

“[My dad] didn’t take a practical approach to his health,” Tao said. “You know, in terms of exercise, eating right, all the essentials that sustain a healthy body. He wasn’t doing that and that really hit me.”

A former undeclared major in the College of Biological Sciences at UC Davis, Tao withdrew from school and worked full-time for two years in the fields of pest control sciences and furniture. It was during those two years that he became immersed in massaging.

“I didn’t want the same thing to happen to my mom,” Tao said. “I did everything I could to upkeep her health like massaging her joints.”

In 2014, Tao returned to UC Davis as a philosophy and English double major hoping to go into law. At the same time, he started posting in the Free & For Sale group on Facebook to advertise his massage service. However, after seeing his sister come home after being negatively affected by her work as a lawyer, Tao decided that law wasn’t for him and recently withdrew from UC Davis once again.

“After a lot of thinking, a lot of practice and talking to family, clients, and a lot of friends, I decided to pursue Chinese medicine,” Tao said. “I’m trying to have this as a platform for something greater hopefully.”

Several weeks ago, Tao started taking classes at the Massage Institute in Downtown Davis and offers free massages to anyone who is interested. Sessions are typically an hour long and Tao goes to each client’s house for the massages.

“I’m really trying to get better,” Tao said. “Every body is different, every person has a different issue, like a different kind of pressure, tension, modality, different leverage that they need. I’m just getting a ton of experience this way.”

Tao also accepts donations which will help with gas and other minor expenses; by doing this, he said that people don’t expect to get a certain level of service. He also receives and utilizes  feedback from his clients.

“I look at it as a community building thing on the Free & For Sale page where I get to meet people and people get to meet me,” Tao said. “We try to figure out your issue together and then you tell me what’s not working and so that way I get to research something later to see if I could find a better method for next massage [session].”

Currently, Tao plans to graduate within the next three months from the Massage Institute and then move onto Chinese medicine school after working full time for a couple years. To graduate, Tao needs 500 hours of the curriculum as well as electives.  

“I’m trying to get into acupressure, more like the Eastern energy modalities whereas there’s also European, cranial sacral, sound healing, emotional healing — there’s a lot of things,” Tao said. “So I’m trying to specialize in something that’s already heading toward my field.”

What Tao enjoys most about his experience through offering free massages on the Free & For Sale page is the networking.

“You get to meet a lot of interesting people,” Tao said. “The fact that they are vulnerable enough to let you touch them and to gain that trust, it’s like we’re good friends after a couple sessions. Through that, I’ve been having people help me with word-of-mouth advertising.”

Tao said he has met people who hope to help him with future developments, such as a website or app for services.

“I’ve met a lot of good people,” Tao said. “They’re good at what they do and it’s like sharing that same drive towards something bigger than us.”

Jamming with Corbin

If you walked through the parking lot behind the Primero Grove Apartments last year, there’s a good chance you heard recent UC Davis graduate Corbin Gomez jamming with his guitar.

From age 4 to 11, Gomez played the piano, but he didn’t like it. Then at age 13, he switched to the guitar because of its portability. His father taught him how to play.

Gomez commuted to and from Davis starting Winter Quarter 2015. In order to avoid traffic, he would leave home early, arriving on campus around 7 a.m., and leave campus at 9 p.m. With his L permit, Gomez parked in Lot 22 behind the Primero Grove Apartments and would have two hours of free time. He started bringing his acoustic guitar with him to play before and in between classes. According to Gomez, a lot people passed through the parking lot and would hear him playing.

“I met so many people there,” Gomez said. “You play and all of a sudden there are people coming to you who are like, ‘Hey, can I try?’ and then they teach you things. I’ve learned so much from so many musicians here that I felt like maybe I should give back […] because I’ve learned so much. If I could teach one person at least one thing, then I’d be a very happy boy.”

It was 9 a.m. on a Wednesday morning in the library during the second week of Fall Quarter 2015 when he posted on the Facebook Free & For Sale group offering free guitar lessons.

“It was such an intense thing because it had a lot of support and interest,” Gomez said. “It kind of blew up. That’s why I remember the time because at 9 a.m. I posted it and by 9:05 a.m., I was pulling my hair out. I was so nervous because how was I going to organize everything?”

Gomez said that he only expected three or four people to be interested, but the number of people who reached out on Facebook was actually around 60 or 70. At first, he thought he would simply schedule with people through Facebook messaging, but when the messages overwhelmed him, he switched to Google Calendar.

“People could see what the open slots were,” Gomez said. “So pretty much from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. every single day, if there wasn’t a time where I was in class, that spot was open and people could sign up for it.”

Since Gomez commuted daily, he went to people’s apartments for lessons and would meet them anywhere.

“I also asked them what kind of stuff [they’re] interested in and what can I teach [them] that [they’d] actually be interested in,” Gomez said. “And also [about] the logistics like do they have a guitar and stuff like that.”

Instead of holding straightforward guitar lessons, Gomez wanted his lessons to be more community-oriented to spread music. To do so, those he tutored would have to pass on their favorite album in the form of a CD to the next student.

“The idea was that I would give the [person in] the first lesson that I had my favorite album, whatever album that was,” Gomez said. “I would give it to them on disc and they would give me an album that I would give to the next person.”

Although the CDs didn’t work as well as he originally imagined, the general idea still stuck and notes were passed on instead.

“I had them write a little cute message like ‘Keep on rocking!’ or whatever and then [without reading it], they would suggest songs and I’d give it to the next person,” Gomez said.

In total there were approximately 37 people that received lessons from Gomez, meaning 37 hours at 37 different apartments or houses that Gomez had to visit to complete his mission.

“[My mission was to make it] where they would be confident and able enough to go up to some random person they’ve never met before on the sidewalk and be able to hold their own,” Gomez said.

In addition, Gomez wanted to help people enjoy themselves while playing guitar, no matter their skill level.

“If I could just have them hold the guitar and just have them laugh at something they’re doing,” Gomez said. “I love music and if I could share that and make somebody happy with it, I’m very happy myself.”

Pictures with Ed

Recently, a few posts about free photo shoots on the Facebook Free & For Sale group have gained immense popularity. With over 1,000 combined likes on his posts, fourth-year managerial economics major Ed Ju has taken dozens of student’s photos over the past couple of weeks.

Ju became interested in photography after stumbling across The Stranger Project on Flickr, which inspired him to start his own project.

“It was a challenge for people all around the world to approach a stranger and ask them about their story and then photograph them,” Ju said. “I started that four years ago. At that time, I was terrified of people. I would be scared to order water from a waitress. I wanted to break out and be more sociable. My mom did photography so I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll use her camera.’”

Ju still remembers the first photograph for his own “Stranger Project.” Ju described the man he photographed at BART as a “guy with a great big orange beard.” Normally, he would never have approach a person like him, but his father encouraged him to do so.

“After that it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I did that!’” Ju said. “I looked down at my camera and was like, ‘Wow, I did it. This is so awesome.’ And I felt so proud of myself. And since then, I’ve just been doing it.”

Ju said that while he was afraid of strangers, he “fell in love” with people all around him.

“I fell in love with how everyone has their own stories and their own personalities,” Ju said. “Photographing them became a way where I could express myself in capturing someone.”

Ju originally wanted to hold photo shoots to fundraise for a mission trip to Mexico during spring break, but instead decided to use the photo shoots as an opportunity to enhance his photography skills.

“Students don’t really get many opportunities to capture moments, like the people that they love here, their roommates, their housemates, just like they’re best friends, you know?” Ju said. “Later down in life when they don’t have any good pictures, it’ll just be a memory. So I thought, ‘You know what? I’m just going to do this.’ Not because I’m trying to raise money, but just because give my fellow students a frozen moment in time that they could remember later on.”

However, Ju is still accepting donations since there’s a difference between shooting for free versus shooting for clients.

“[Students] are grateful that I’m doing this for them whereas [clients] expect like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m paying you for your time; you better do this right,’ which I’ve experienced before,” Ju said.

Though Ju wasn’t expecting many people to sign up for his photo shoots, with only two weeks having passed already, he already photographed approximately 80 to 100 students. With six-hour shifts and breaks in between, each person or group gets 15 minutes to take photos.

To check out Ed’s work, follow him on Instagram @iamedju or check out his Facebook.

“I love being a photographer because I feel like I get to be a part of [people’s] special relationships,” Ju said. “I get to capture this sliver of moment where they’re laughing and where they’re loving each other. And it’s like this frozen moment in time in our constantly busy world where they get to remember that [moment].”

Written by: Jacqueline Chu – features@theaggie.org

UC Davis experts discuss Zika virus and it’s recent outbreaks

On Feb. 1, The World Health Organization declared Zika virus a “public health emergency of international concern.” Zika virus is transmitted by the infected Aedes species mosquito, with recent outbreaks throughout the world having caused health officials to become alarmed. On Feb. 10, it was confirmed that a Yolo County resident tested positive for Zika virus.

The virus was first isolated in 1947, when the virus was found in the blood of a macaque monkey in Uganda. Since then, periodic outbreaks in humans has caused scientists to presume that the virus was transmitted between forest mosquitos and non human primates.

UC Davis experts spoke out about the virus to address the growing fear amongst Yolo county residents.

“The mosquito bridges between the monkey and the person,” said virologist in the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine’s Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology Lark Coffey.  “The virus replicated in a monkey and when it does that it makes high levels of virus in the blood so then when another feeding mosquito came they picked up the virus and [fed on a person].”

About 80 percent of people infected with the virus show no symptoms that would prompt them to visit the doctor.

“The remaining 20 percent would typically have something along the lines of a flu — illnesses like a fever or potentially a rash. Those are common symptoms of viral illness in general,” said Chris Barker, a researcher in the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine’s Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology.

According to The Washington Post, more than 4,000 cases of microcephaly in babies have been reported in Brazil since last fall. Microcephaly is a condition which results in physically smaller heads due to underdeveloped brains. Some attribute this to the outbreak of Zika virus.

“That’s what made so much news interest about Zika. The fact that it’s spreading into new places is really terrible,” Coffey said. “What has everyone so concerned is that when Zika got into Brazil at the very end of last year in the time between November 2015 and now, obstetricians started noting there was a higher incidence of microcephaly.”

According to Coffey, people made the association that Zika causes microcephaly. However, that assumption is not definitive.

“Just because it’s an association, doesn’t for sure mean its causal,” Coffey said. “There are a lot more studies that need to be done to actually prove that infection of the mother during pregnancy causes [the] small head in the baby.”

Zika virus may also be linked to Guillain-Barré syndrome, a neurological disease that can lead to the paralyzation of one’s body.

“It’s possible that Zika […] has always been causing this neurologic disease in adults and microcephaly in babies but we’ve just never seen it yet,” Coffey said. “Maybe what it took — really sadly — is that the virus had to get into enough people that we could see these effects that could happen, because the more people it infects the more of those minority cases you see.”

At the time being, there is no vaccine or treatment for Zika virus. According to former UC Davis professor in the Department of Entomology Thomas Scott, controlling mosquito populations and preventing human contact could be the current most feasible solution, including using insecticides to kill the mosquito.

“Some of the things you could do [to prevent getting the virus] would be to wear long pants and long sleeves — so a physical barrier,” Scott said. “How close you are to someone socially actually increases your risk of infection. The mosquitoes don’t fly very far they usually stay in the house where they emerged as an adult. It’s primarily people that are moving the virus around.”

There have been over 50 reported cases of Zika virus in the U.S., all of them as a result of international travel.

“Travelers are bringing Zika into the United States but that happens with all mosquito-borne viruses. People are great spreaders,” Coffey said. “What we’re worried about here is that [when] people [who have] a high level of [Zika] virus go outside and get fed on by the right mosquito vector, which can transmit to another host, they start a focal transmission cycle, and that’s what can lead to human outbreaks.”

Written by: Fatima Siddiqui – features@theaggie.org