Study Your Way

If someone had told 12 year old me that I would be getting my bachelor’s degree by writing essays on The Princess BrideSpider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, I would have been so excited and happy about future me that I would have burst and my brains would have leaked out of my collapsed form.

Fantasy bridge leading into a fantasy forest
Image by Larisa Koshkina on Pixabay.com

Okay, admittedly Spider-Verse hadn’t come out when I was 12, but that’s besides the point.

The point is, that in college you can legitimately study what you want to. The freedom is intoxicating.

There’s a couple roundups throughout your entry into college, and eventually they’re going to show you a long seemingly exhaustive list of Majors for you to choose from and ask you to tick a little box next to the discipline that you want to study.

For me, it felt like a massive decision, that thing that teachers had been building up to since third grade when I was first asked to think about my future. I was terrified of ticking the wrong box, falling down a path of misery, and one day waking up in a terrible office job that I would shake my fist at and whisper: “If only I had studied a different major.”

The truth of the matter, of course, is that there is no wrong major to study.

That’s it! For real! There’s no pressure!

To a certain extent, college is all about finding yourself and doing so through academics. General Education classes can be boring or seem unnecessary at times, but they are a great opportunity for testing the waters and seeing what you really jive with. Take a math class, a performance art, and a geography! You may take a shining to it without ever realizing it.

Quite literally, I decided that I wanted to study Communications because I liked to talk to people. I liked it, thought I was good at it, and I knew that I could be better at it. I hemmed and hawed about changing my major or exploring elsewhere for my first couple years, but then as we got further and further in the course, I found I got more and more interested in it!

I started to pick classes that interested me, and I got more and more narrowed into the field and genre of academia that I really loved.

Pegasus main frame, man in arch in the back
Image by Stefan Keller on Pixabay.com

Let’s be fair here, for these final papers, I didn’t write down “The Princess Bride is the best movie of all time” over and over until I had filled up 15 pages, I took what I had learned from my professors and textbooks and applied it to the things I loved.

If you look at good old Princess Bride from one angle, you can see how the representation of hypermasculine characters that had soft sides influenced what I perceived as my ideal gender performance. If you look at it another way and juxtapose it to more modern films like Spider-Verse, you can see how cultural ideals around relationships, identity, and classism have changed and altered one another according to each film’s respective era.

could have just written a paper on my gender development. And I could have just written a paper analyzing cultural ideals changing over time.

But would I have enjoyed that? Would I have cared? Would I have put even half as much effort into those papers than I did?

No. So I incorporated my favorite movies into the papers instead.

Did I know before going to college that I adored the theory of Walter Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm and Judith Butler’s concept of gender as performance?

Of course not.

I love stories, and I went to college specifically so I could advance my skills and be able to get jobs around the things that I love. I learned later about what I could dig into in school to better understand those stories and develop real-world skills to change and clarify my world views.

But I never lost that initial love and interest. So, today, I write my papers on the stories I love, and yet still prove that I’ve been paying attention for the last four years through that by talking about all the stuff I’ve learned.

I have friends and peers that are writing their final papers on non-traditional pregnancies in the TV show Friends, Shia LaBeouf’s performance art, the K-Pop industry, and first-generation college students representative of minority groups and their unique struggles.

Everyone is choosing things that they love, everyone is studying things that they love, and they’re proving that they can do a gosh-diddly-darn good job of it.

College is about a lot of things. Self-fulfillment is one of them. You don’t have to have a passion figured out, you just have to have an interest and a willingness to experiment, and soon you’ll be learning about what you love!

Vaccinated! Hallelujah! (Day trips you can do from Turlock!)

A post I’ve wanted to write literally since I got this job, but that I’ve been unable to do due to the nature of the current Unprecedented Times(patent pending) is the huge amount of day trips available for people that live in Turlock.

If you don’t know, Turlock, a medium sized city, is sometimes poo-pooed by its locals for being boring and having nothing to do in it. This is all about perspective, of course, and usually the people that will complain about that are people that grew up here and gained that High School Hometown Cynicism(patent pending) that so many of us have had.

But, it is true that all of the best things you can do in a day around here are just a day trip away. In fact, one of the biggest advantages about Turlock is the daytrips! When I talk to friends online or around the world and they ask where I am in California, I tell them that I’m a day trip away from skiing, the beach, Disneyland, and Yosemite.

My friends are usually pretty impressed with that, haha.

And now, at last, with the beautiful science juice of vaccination coursing through my veins, I can once again go on my beloved beloved day trips and introduce you to them with me! As the world is reopening, here’s three Covid-friendly day trips that you can go on basically this very weekend!

1. Oakland Zoo

Hear me out, you may think that Zoos are a place for infants and children… but when was the last time you actually went to a Zoo? Were you a child? Then friend, it’s time you go again.

Entrance of the Oakland Zoo with an ibex head to the left and african elephant head to the right

Giraffe

I dragged my sister to the Oakland Zoo, which neither of us had been to since Kindergarten, and let me tell you I have not experienced so much childish joy and imagination than we had that day.

Google told us that the average visit time was 3-4 hours, so when we were reaching up to the sixth hour of our trip and avoiding staff members as they tried to corral us stragglers out of the now closed park, we had gotten a time well worth our money.

Do you know how tall a giraffe is!?!?

No, honestly, ask yourself. Can you actually picture in your head how big a giraffe is? Can you see yourself standing next to something as tall as a building story that is alive?

If you can’t, then it’s time you visit the Zoo. From general amazement at giraffes to playing with the otters to a genuinely spiritual experience seeing California Condors which at one point had less than 22 living members of its species, it was a fantastic day that I’m so glad I got to appreciate as an adult.

Horizontally posing by a California Condor image
My sister posing in front of a life-sized California Condor wingspan. 9.5 feet!!

2. Pinecrest Lake – Cleo’s Bath

And to reverse things, here’s a place that my sister dragged me to.

Image of a serene lakeside, pine-tree forested mountains, and lots of rocks!

If you’re a local then you’ve been to Pinecrest Lake. It’s a beautiful and popular little recreation spot with boat and bike rentals that a lot of elementary schools will actually take their fifth and sixth graders up to and teach them about how to be ethical hikers. There’s a very easy lake trail that will take you around the entire lake, and it’s lovely and anyone can do it.

Also, if you’re in even just half-decent shape, you can divert up the lake path and go up to Cleo’s Bath.

Image overlooking the waterfall outwards. Pinecrest lake is in view in the very back.
If you look really closely you can see all the way down to Pinecrest Lake!

While the lake is lovely, it is very popular, a bit noisy, and sometimes hard to find a nice spot to chill in. Cleo’s Bath however, is a perfect and serene little waterfall and swimming area (when it’s not too cold!) that has way way way less people and can feel like you’re actually “out in nature”.

The trail is a little hard to follow (look for the faded blue arrows, stacked stones, and be ready to scramble up a couple rocks!) but when you get up to the top it’s so so worth it!

If you’ve been sitting at a desk for the last year, then stretch your legs, go up to Pinecrest, learn about the abandoned Steam Donkey, and scramble up to see the hidden waterfall!

3. Asilomar Beach

And here is where my sister and I have collectively dragged each other to.

Rocky Ocean with harbor seals sunbathing
Look closely to see Boberto and his friends!

Asilomar beach is my favorite beach of all time. A lot thanks to nostalgia, no doubt, but so much more so just because of the diverse experience the beach offers. When you get there, you can park directly next to the sand dunes, crawl down the staircase, and then to your left is a wide swath of sand that you can have your beautifully cliché long walk on the beach, and to your right is a big stretch of rocks that you can hop and go tide pooling on!

There’s not a more meditative experience I have been on in my life than grabbing a long sturdy stick and hopping from rock to rock, watching the hermit crabs, the anemones, the star fish, and then eventually getting to one secret rock I know of where there’s always at least one harbor seal, and if you’re lucky there’s dozens of them teaching their babies how to swim!

I’ve named one seal Boberto, and have had many conversations with him from a respectful distance. He’s very beautiful, and a great listener. You should go and try to safely and respectfully meet him too!

Conclusion

Turlock is great, I wouldn’t be writing this blog if it wasn’t, but one of the biggest advantages to it is the centralized location to other places! I’m so so happy to be able to go on these day trips again and you’ll be remiss if you don’t go out and try some of them yourself too!

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All images in this post are taken by me. Image of my sister is posted with her consent.

National Student Employee Appreciation Week!

Hello one and all and welcome to what is, (in maybe a case of self-aggrandizement) National Student Employee Appreciation Week!

White sign on red background with text: "We are hiring"
Image by Vishnu Vijayan on Pixabay.com

Stan State started participating in NSEA Week in 2019 and has decided that it is a worthy time and tradition to acknowledge and celebrate student employees and all the facets that they do to keep Stanislaus enriched and running smoothly. You can find out a bit more about the events and awards taking place here.

For my part, here’s my little two-cents on what it’s like to be a student employee myself, and how the existence of this job and others has enriched my life as a student and how there might be opportunities for you to participate in one too!

At my New Student Orientation, our campus ambassadors told us explicitly, for them, the best part about going to Stanislaus was being able to work here as well.

Being a college student is labor intensive. It always has been, and it always will be. College is a sort of training ground for your mind, the war camp that you go through before entering the battle of career-seeking, so all the work you go through and put into becoming your best you is not only intentional, but fundamental.

It does, however, make it really hard to find employers and jobs that are understanding of the semester-by-semester shifting schedule of a college student though. And while Stanislaus and the CSU system has implemented procedures to try and keep costs low, it’s undeniable that tuition is higher than ever before and not working for four years while you get a degree just simply isn’t an option for most people.

Enter: Student Assistants.

Familiarize yourself with this page. It shall be a blessing unto thee.

You know who does understand the ever-shifting schedules of college students? Colleges. You know who has employment opportunities specifically reserved for Stanislaus students and Stanislaus students alone? Stan State.

Being a Student Assistant at Stanislaus is an incredibly flexible experience, and that’s what you’re going to want and what you may need. It may not be enough to supplement an entire income, but it has the types of job positions that can be incorporated into an already busy or working schedule.

And, it’s a self-fulfilling sort of process. You go to school and develop relationships with some of your professors, find mentors, instructors, and people you’ll work with as a student. Those professors can be great references for applying to Student Assistant positions, and can sometimes be the ones to point out the student employment opportunities available to you in the first place. And then, the bosses and contacts you make as an assistant, can be even stronger references for you post-college!

And you’re getting paid for your labor! And you’re getting work experience!

It’s a win-win-win-win!

Plant growing out of steadily larger groupings of coins
Image by Nattanan on Pixabay.com

As I eek closer and closer to graduation, I’m made more and more aware of the hundreds if not infinite different plausible life paths my life (and my degree) can take me. So many of them are plain blank slates.

Would I be a good Rodeo Event Organizer? I have no idea! I’ve never tried even a little!

The best way to find out if you’re good at and if you want to do something is to simply get up and try to do that thing. Student Employee positions are a safe, profitable, and experiential way for you to try those things and get an early start on a better understanding of yourself and your life.

I highly consider looking into applying a position if you find one that suits you!

Is Titus what he seems????

Buckle up everyone, because I’m about to open up your eyes.

Titus. You know him. You love him.

Stanislaus's beloved mascot
Image from https://warriorathletics.com/sports/2015/8/12/GEN_0812150230.aspx?id=1045

Look at him, strong and muscular, proudly adorned in the wardrobe of a proper Spartan warrior, bringing cheer and joy to all those Stanislaus students at sporting events and club rushes and the like.

But doesn’t it seem strange that someone in the outfit and physique of a Spartan warrior is still alive and kicking in the modern day?

If the average lifespan of a human is somewhere below 100 years, and if the Roman/Byzantine empire fell in the mid 1400’s, then don’t you think it’s a tad bit strange that Titus still has his original mint condition uniform and cape?

Well, I have a theory.

One of the reasons why Roman mythology and culture is so connected to our own modern day thought, is that we have lots of surviving records of the Roman empire. They wrote down so much in fact, that their writings eventually sparked the Renaissance and the transition out of the Dark Ages when scholars studied ancient Roman texts and philosophies.

Latin characters inscribed in stone
Image by Greg Montani on Pixabay.com

But in a world where we have censuses, military movements, and philosophical thought all documented, there’s one particular group of people that just vanished into thin air, disappearing from all documentation.

Colloquially known as The Lost Roman Legion, “Legio novem Hispana” has over two hundred years of documentation to it. We know what battles it fought in, where they were during major military movements, and that it was an important facet to the Roman military, until the year Common Era 120, where they simply disappeared from the records with no explanation.

The Lost Roman Legion captured cultural consciousness in the 1950’s and scholars and fiction writers alike theorized on what could have happened to the illustrious legion. Were they defeated in the battles of Scotland? Did they defect as part of a crumbling infrastructure in the empire? Or did they learn to harness elemental forces and become wizards as is fictionalized in the 2006 fantasy series Codex Alera?

But if you ask me, I think they found the fountain of youth. They retired, spread out across the world, became mascots, and brought cheer to Stanislaus sporting events.

Is it so unlikely that Titus could be a secretly immortal being who has spent the last 19,000 years hopping around from college to college, acting as the heart of campus life, bringing joy and enthusiasm to young people’s learning minds from everywhere from The University of North Carolina to Michigan State to STANISLAUS???

And ask yourself this, have you ever truly seen Titus age?

Silhouette of a Spartan warrior overlooking a sunset
Image by mohamed Hassan on Pixabay.com

I can’t say much more without them catching on to me.

Keep your eyes and ears open, don’t let them feed you lies! We are college students! We exist for truth!

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(Tune in to KCSS 91.9fm for a chance of hearing me voice a thought piece along the same theme as this post!)