Pop Culture

What they don’t tell you after graduating college.

It’s been about 11 months since I graduated college…and let me tell you…life is so much different!

Let me explain!

In college you goto class 16 hours a week and depending on your major; you’re doing homework and studying 20-40 hours a week. You’re schedule is probably the most flexible it has ever been your entire life! I would consider myself a pretty average student however I reminisce on some college days where I went up to the Red hills of mariposa on a Thursday and the windy beaches of Santa Cruz on a Friday. I hiked Yosemite trails on a Wednesday and hosted movie nights on Mondays. But with those exciting moments of spontaneous Disneyland trips and spending a week intertwining my faith with immigration and poverty in Reno, Nevada, I’ve also had the most stressful years of my life.

What came with all of the excitement had been financial, spiritual emotional and mental problems that would stack on top of each other. I remember a stressful moment during my second semester of my freshmen year. The previous semester I had been placed on academic probation for reasons that i would take blame for. I was writing a 8 page paper for a class 99% of UCMerced would consider absolutely and utterly useless. I hadn’t slept for 60 hours due to the a final the day before and a writing final for a different class the day before that. I remember tears rolling down my cheeks as I typed sentence after sentence only to delete it because it didn’t make any sense(fatigue will do that to ya). I also had many club responsibilities that I had to put off only adding more stress knowing I was letting more people down. I had many more stressful events through college such as the death of my father my freshmen year, and nearly failing a crucial class my junior year because I was working two part time jobs at one point. The minute I was handed my diploma and began training for my new position in marketing and operations a few weeks after graduation, life completely shifted. Here’s what changed:

1. Vacation isn’t as long as when your in college

With most colleges, you will get a winter break that’s 2-4 weeks, a spring break that’s 1 week and a summer break that can be up to 3 months. In most jobs that require an undergraduate degree, you’re probably looking at 1 week to up to a month of vacation time. That’s if they offer it up at all!

2. Your schedule is most likely fixed

You’ll have the same schedule every week, probably a 9-5. In reality you’ll probably wake up either 7 or 8 to get ready and get home halfway past 5 or 6 dedicating and planning almost half of your day around your job. You’ll love Fridays and maybe dread Monday’s. You may be doing little going out on weekdays because you’ll be too exhausted.

3. … or it might even be worse

For some of you, you may need to deal with sporadic schedules where you have to head into work at 1 o clock in the morning because your oncall for the week. You may even be in a job where the 40 hour work week is a dream and you’re riddled with overtime. Let’s hope if that’s your situation that your hourly and not salary.

4. You might eat out a lot more

When your spending almost 10 to 11 hours working and getting ready for work, it doesn’t leave a whole lot of time to make something to eat. It might be easier to just grad a quick subway or mcdonalds during your break. Hey.. your making money now right?

5. … or you might eat out a lot less

You might be used to making your own meal plan. Working full time might actually help you get a more stable schedule to meal prep every night or morning.

6. You may have a lot more time to spend with friends or family

Now that you aren’t studying endlessly for midterms(that seem to start at the third week and continue without ceasing until the semesters over) anymore, you might fill that void with friends and family. You are now free to catch a movie after work on a Thursday with the fam or chug a couple beers with the bros on a taco Tuesday. Your freedom is back.

7. …or a lot less time to spend with family

For those who are less fortunate to land a job that sometimes likes to send work home with you, like myself, you may find yourself without free time at home. You’ll probably spend your free time finishing a project or preparing a presentation.

8. You’re in control of your own destiny

Ultimately, you control the reigns for your life now. You can decide to travel, invest in your hobby, start a business, find love, try to find a high paying job to make money, or better yet, a job that gives you meaning and purpose. No matter what you do, don’t forget…

You have to pay those student loans back.

Ideology

You Can Eat Their Chicken and Hate Them Too.

by Chukwuemeka Nwando

What’s crackalackin! So many of you who read this blog post (My first official) will be one of a few people:

Friends who support me in everything I do and Strangers who took a chance on some random guys post to see if it will pique their interest.

It’s important for all opinions to be heard no matter how stupid radical or dull it can be. It is also important for us to call out those stupid dull and radical opinions so that people understand that those ideas may be stupid dull and radical. My ideas may even be stupid dull and radical. Call me out on it so I may re-evaluate those ideas and see if your criticism is worth considering. But I do have one belief which I will unapologetically stand behind.

Nuance

I do believe in nuance. Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg made a statement on “the Breakfast club” on how he doesn’t agree with Chick-Fil-A’s beliefs yet he does agree that their chicken is bomb. Sometimes we abhor the idea of sharing something in common with someone whose beliefs we strongly disagree that we ignore what makes us similar.

Now I’m not saying that you if you choose to boycott Chick-fil-A due to their conservative Christian views then you’re in the wrong. You have the right and ability to mobilize and decide not to indulge in their succulent masterpiece we call chicken. (Honestly, chicken isn’t even the best type of meat, but they are on par with In n out and shake shack.) Now…I do believe that you should keep that same energy with major corporations such as Nestle and it’s subsidiaries as well as Walmart and any non-organic food item eaten. Here’s a list of some major companies and their human right violations they made against humanity.

Nestle-(Gerber, toll house, KitKat, Smarties, lean cuisine, Dreyer’s ice cream, Nesquik and more):

Nestle is the third largest buyer of cocoa supply from the Ivory Coast where 109000 child laborers are working in hazardous conditions. They also support the privatization of public water sources.

Coca Cola-(and all drinks under its brand)

Coca Cola has caused water shortages in thousands of communities in India, have gotten people killed for unionizing in Columbia, and also considered one of the most discriminatory companies in the world.

Chevron

In Nigeria, Chevron has hired private military personnel who at one point had fired live ammunition’s into the crowd. In 2004 they were facing a lawsuit because one of its subsidiaries was complicit in rape, summary execution, torture, forced labor and forced migration.

Walmart

Walmart is notorious for destroying local markets and small businesses. They have a long record of union busting, child labor, sex discrimination and forced overtime. They receive many of its supplies from sweatshop workers in China, Indonesia Bangladesh, Nicaragua and Swaziland.

Now, in no way am I trying to label all people as hypocrites. However, I do believe in nuance and the truth behind those nuances. You can like the services Coca Cola provides and believe that what they’re doing in Columbia is bad. Just like you can like Chick-Fil-A’s chicken and believe that what their underlying belief is hateful. Ultimately you have to decide whether you can separate the goods and services companies provide from the means of providing them or the stances a company takes. 

Ideology, Nuance

Love people for who they are, not if you agree with them.

Our generation is so passionate for the well being of our society that it is destroying that very society. This theory is something that came over me during a conversation with my girlfriend of 1 year. The first important note to understand is she absolutely hates talking about politics mainly for the reason that she despises confrontation whenever she believes I might have conflicting views with her.

That’s why I just trick her into talking about politics. (I’m such a bad partner!)

In this instant, we were driving to my place after a LIFE-group* and we randomly started talking about random statistics about miscarriages and babies and things such as that. Being the horrible partner that I am, I hit her with the politically charged question: are you pro-life or pro-choice. Okay, before we continue, you guys/gals have to understand how passionate this lady is about social justice issues such as racism and women’s rights but she is also deeply religious. she also knew that my views on different things seemed to be unpredictable so I answered hesitantly. She said she was pro-choice. I then asked her, “What do you think I am”

“Pro-Life,” she said knowing how deeply religious I was as well.

“What if I told you that I actually agree a hundred percent of the issues you’re concerned with but come to a different way to solve them.”

“Oh,” she responded. She then went on to talk about the things wrong with those who believe in the opposing views as her. As I was listening to her passionately go on about women’s rights I realized something groundbreaking.

We do not know the people we are talking about.

We go through society making judgments and accusations about the opposing belief. We will ridicule them through memes, attack them on social media, yell at them through protests, and sometimes hate those who have opposing opinions than us. But in all of that, we ignore that these are people who have lives and problems of their own. We ignore the problems they may have gone through in life and the decisions that may have led them to believe what they believe. This, by no means, is an excuse to justify and accept the behaviors of others but it allows us to want to understand who they are as a person and may even allow us to look past some of their contradicting beliefs and find out what things you may have in common. We need to love them for who they are, not for if they agree with us!
You’ll be surprised what a low-income rural living cis-gendered white male has in common with a middle-class urban living bi-sexual black female.

So next time you have the desire to yell at a member of a different party for their conflicting beliefs or tweeting at the troll comment someone left on your tweet, think to yourself. What brought this person to this point in his/her that they believe what they believe or said what they said. That little action of empathy may be the difference between blind hate and a simple difference of opinion.