Everybody poops. Everybody eats. Where you poop is a given. Where you eat when you’re sick of the Coffee House Paradox is a whole different story. If I had a dollar for every time my friends and I spent an hour deciding where to eat, I’d have a lot of dollars. The process is a hard one and it has nothing to do with not being able to pick a place. It has to do with picking from too many places. The indecisiveness of our particular group, and likely yours too, goes beyond the food. It includes what show to watch, what shirt to wear to a place no one will even see you, who showers first and how to punctuate a text to a girl who certainly won’t even notice. 

But the worst problem of all is the food. Each person has different cravings at different times. Each person has different levels of laziness at different times, making a block-long walk out of the question (we have a strong history of paying each other to pick up our food). I should speak for myself but it seems like a universal problem that a food consensus has never been reached immediately. Debates of these nature can get heated, turning the best of friends into the worst of Mexican vs. Burgers rivals. To counter this, a solution was formed by a good friend of mine. I certainly can’t promise it will fully ameliorate the situation, but it should be implemented into your life because it will at least cut the time down from the usual hour to about 51 minutes. 

Step 1: Make a “food list” in notes on your phone. The issue with our food list is that it is too long. Try to keep yours short when you make it, and try to keep a balance between being hungry enough to think of places, but not so hungry that you include Subway. Don’t do it. 

Step 2: Read the food list out loud when the meal is approaching. Make sure to start early because like mentioned above, this wont be an open and shut case. You and your friends will be able to cross some things off on the first run through and notice some things you are very into at the moment.

Step 3: Go around the room and let everyone state their top choice (or two or three). For your personal top choices make sure to account for distance, transportation method, price, portion size and drink options (if you haven’t used the Freestyle drink machine at Wing Stop and gotten a strawberry vanilla cherry Dr. Pepper, you haven’t lived).

Step 4: Vote. Everyone gets a say in this, and people should be allowed vetoes. The friend that is notorious for craving the same restaurant night after night should get a less weighted vote, because the Burgers and Brew diet isn’t a diet.

Step 5: Look at the menu. This process will also take a substantial amount of time, it may help to stream the menu on a TV or choose a respected delegate to read it out loud.

Step 6: Call in your order. No one likes to stand around at 3rd and U while they do God knows what instead of serving you. Come to the place a few minutes after they say to come because they are usually lying.

Step 7: Enjoy.

If you are still stuck on Step 1, here is a list of the less obvious, equally amazing gems to get you going.

1.  Zia’s Deli (3rd Street): To explain how good this place is, I will just say that I, a self-proclaimed food connoisseur, have eaten there so much they know my order. Make sure to get a cream soda and a bag of Sriracha chips.
2. The White Food Truck aka Shah’s Halal (The Silo or Mondavi): Get mix over rice with extra sauces. Be careful registering for classes around the silo though, this place is so good it will drain your bank account. I am living proof.
3. El burrito (E street): Make sure to go super late at night (sober or not). Get some fries with some meat from some pig. Get a water cup and fill it with the white salsa because you will use it all or you can pay your friend to drink it.
4. Burgers and Brew (3rd Street): Get anything you want but make the power move of getting specialty fries instead of regular fries. You’re going to need to eat this in two waves but it’s completely worth it.
5. Thai Canteen (E Street): Ask for the number 12; it’s green curry but instead of being poured over the rice, it’s cooked with it. There’s a ten-dollar card minimum so get some calamari or some beers or tip the nice lady you are annoying at 2 a.m.
6. Froggy’s (2nd Street): All of the burgers are incredible and I would go so far as to say it’s better than Burgers and Brew. I recommend the cajun and that you cover the fries with their special seasoning. Word of warning though, do not drink their water because it’s notoriously bad.
7. Taqueria Guadalajara (Anderson and Covell): Probably the closest thing to authentic Mexican food in Davis, Horchata and all.
8. Wingstop (G Street): Most underrated fries on the planet. Make one of your sauces Mango Habanero and all of your drinks crazy.
9. 3rd and U Cafe (see creative name): If they answer their phone – I personally recommend the buffalo chicken sandwich but you can do whatever you want. Keep in mind, however, this place is the classic example of the food not being ready when they say it is.
10. Fish’s Wild (2nd Street): If you’re as poor as I am, this is the place to go. Almost every day is a new five-dollar special and they put their water glasses in the fridge first.

The UCD Files is your weekly in depth look at our campus and the lifestyle that comes with it, featuring an occasional dropping of knowledge from a senior who has experienced it all.

 Feel free to send questions, comments, hate mail, or anything you would like to see in future articles to Adam Marx at almarx@ucdavis.edu.

Graphic by CA Aggie Graphic Design Team

Photo by CA Aggie Photo Team

We come to college to learn. That is our primary reason for being here. And by necessity, when we learn we also teach. Whether we’re telling our roommates something we found out in class or explaining a project to a parent, we teach the things we learn. What is important is that we teach those things in a way that will actually make an impact in others’ minds.

Over winter break, I spent time with a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. While I’ve found that many of my friends from high school have different ideologies after spreading out and making new friends, this specific friend and I still have a lot of the same ideas about social justice inequalities. It was refreshing to be able to talk to her and debate on issues we were educated about. Something else we both agreed on was how difficult it can be to explain these topics to someone who is not informed about them. If someone asked a question like, “Are there really inequalities in our society?” our initial reaction might be to scoff – which is wrong.

The unique thing about being in college is that we get to choose what we learn. So while I know a lot about themes in The Canterbury Tales and social problems in the United States, I know next to nothing about optimal foraging theory (but I can ask my roommate about it!). Other people are in the opposite of my position, so we have the opportunity to teach each other.

But what I’ve learned is that it can be difficult to explain things that come second-nature to you. It might be frustrating that someone else isn’t educated on the same topics as you. I feel like this is especially relevant to issues regarding our social world. The way we respect people based on who they are is something that comes up every day. Some people might have questions that you feel you’ve always known the answer to – What does transgender mean? Do women really face inequalities in the workplace?

And when you hear those questions, instead of getting frustrated, or thinking that they’re stupid, remember that you didn’t know the same things at some point. We aren’t born with this knowledge, and if we don’t take certain classes or attend presentations in college or talk to diverse groups of people, then we might not gain it. But we can help the cause and educate our friends and family! And if we do it in a way that accepts the fact that they aren’t aware of these things and that we’re happy to give them an answer, then they will remember that act of kindness and be more educated for good.

Teach with love and compassion — a rule one of my roommates told me (Gammad 2015). But if you can’t teach with love, at least teach with an open mind. The person who is asking you a question that you think is basic is even more knowledgeable about other topics you’re unclear on. So trade education for education! And be nice about it.

If you have something you want to teach us, email your submissions or questions to Melissa Dittrich, opinion@theaggie.org.

Graphic by Jennifer Wu

Everyone has had to watch films for class. I don’t care how great your TA was that quarter — they definitely showed you a clip of a movie in an attempt to illustrate the content at least once. Watching a movie in class is a rare but welcomed occurrence that we have often prayed for on days with substitute teachers or after reading the book in English classes. I can claim that I like to watch films in class to complete my understanding of a topic and to soak in information from all types of outlets. That may all be true, but I also just want a nap.

In elementary school, the big cart with the television on it was like a second teacher. A few times a week I would see the cart in the classroom and be introduced to new and exciting material by Bill Nye, Ms. Frizzle or the bill from “Schoolhouse Rock.” I was thankful that my teachers would be so generous as to give us an afternoon with my best friend (the TV), and thought that they were really looking into my interests when they showed us these videos.

Of course, my faith was shattered when I was forced to watch Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010) in my 10th grade English class. With no reason for why we were watching it, the entire class was ecstatic to not have to learn for a day and a half, until our teacher decided to play it again and again and again. For a full two weeks, all we did was watch Leonardo DiCaprio struggle with night terrors as we pondered exactly how our teacher had forged his teaching credential.

Since high school is the place where dreams die, whenever we watched movies in other classes during those two weeks, not only did we dread it, but we had to do classwork as well. “In this Ken Burns documentary, in what year did the Donner Party have their first taste of human flesh? Write a diary entry from the point of view of those being consumed.” We were either watching a movie for no reason, or doing a lot of work. Whether this was an attempt to educate us or to further expose real world disappointments, I will never know.

However, in college, you can actually major in watching movies, which is everyone’s dream if you’re being honest with yourself. To actually take a film studies course, and have film viewings once a week, you might start living your life as if it were a film adaptation of a John Steinbeck classic starring the late James Dean. Most people enjoy this opportunity, and for the movie buff it is a must-take course before you graduate. But, during the two hours a week you spend in the lecture hall (that is somehow much more uncomfortable than your average movie theater), people fall asleep, look up actors on IMDB, or even watch different TV shows on their phones. Few look like they are keeping up with every subtitle of that week’s foreign film, so if you actually enjoy the movie, your professor will see. That is, if they haven’t fallen asleep themselves.

Unfortunately, the movie experience while in a classroom setting can detract from whatever the audience originally thought of the film. In a film studies class, any written assignments given bad grades can dishearten Orson Welles’ biggest fans, if their analysis of Citizen Kane (1941) was too shallow for the professor’s standards. In a middle school science class, answering questions about every detail of a video might not allow the viewer to soak in information, and it will force them to only think of it as an extension of a lecture, rather than a new way of demonstrating how planes fly. Movies should be enjoyed by all, and sometimes academics can take that away from us against our will. That’s why it’s important to remember that, in an in-class film situation, the circumstances that we are in should not dictate how we see a type of media. Only the viewer’s own opinions should influence how a movie is perceived.

Even if you have to take notes, a movie in the middle of class can be a welcomed experience; if anything, you’ll enjoy the distraction. Whether it’s a break in your teacher’s lesson plan, a complete submission to the devilishly handsome work of Joseph Gordon Levitt’s character in Inception, or the non-literary subject of analysis for a humanities class, the movie experience in a classroom setting can be refreshing. If you have been disenchanted by a teacher’s reasons for showing a film, try and get that feeling back, the one you used to get when the teacher would turn off the lights and turn on that “Magic School Bus” episode about the digestive system.

Hey, can I borrow your notes? Bill Nye talks way too fast. Send them to me via Twitter (@emdefaz10) or by email at endefazio@ucdavis.edu.

Graphic by CA Aggie Graphic Design Team

Photo by CA Aggie Photo Team