Aug. 2018: How I Spent My Summer Vacation & Reflections on SFSU Financial Aid Debacle
https://www.simplertimeandplacethebesteraever.com/2018/08/
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How I Spent My Summer Vacation & Reflections on the SFSU Financial Aid Debacle
Hello People,
I have to admit, I am pleasantly surprised to see traffic picking-up on both the blog, especially the playlist or homepage, and my Linkedin page since walking with my Class of 2018 at ATT Park. Following commencement, I doubled down on on my nervous-Nellie-ism and decided to knock-out six of my remaining units before initiating the fun & games portfolio of my once envisioned or celebratory working summer. Consequently, the blog launched to compliment Simpler Time & Place...the Best Era Ever! half way through the second semester of the show is now entering a third semester of development.
Increasingly, improving my presence on social media going forward will now require posting to the blog as close to weekly as classes permit. In other words, now that Spring Semester 2018 with a full fifteen units, an internship at a local newspaper, and the holding down of both the political talk show, Juxtaposed, and Simpler Time & Place is behind us, it is time to turn my attention to finally being allowed to write more frequently & landing a job in Bay Area media.
Earning a 3.75 GPA ranking Spring Semester--making the President's List for a second time at SFSU--is just icing on the cake; literally, I have a nine more units and I am done!
Anyone out there try to take six units in an accelerated Summer Semester? It is not that I would advise against it if circumstances warrant or one wants to roll those dice, but it is rather...[cue violins!] brutal at almost fifty-eight; moreover, financial aid did the usual, "We don't know why you have not received your disbursement, Mr. Davis" act for the third time in what had now become five semesters; looking in the rear view mirror, it may have made more sense to leave this summer to work for the temp company in Oregon five weeks earlier, but this must be boring all of you!
Anyhow, classes ended on July 6th for the R-1 Summer Semester and having not been able to wring any more hours out of my usual twelve-to-fourteen hour days on campus--and yes, that includes eating, going pee-pee and BS-ing in the hallways or radio station--I was pounding-out sixteen to seventeen hour days and getting five hours of sleep six days a week with homework still in play after church on Sunday.
Semester complete, it was time to do battle with the bureaucratic buffoonery you fellow students know as the Financial Aid/Bursars/FAFSA Combine that loses--at least for four through seven weeks into the semester--thousands of SFSU student's financial aid disbursement [the portion that students get to live on and pay rent from] every semester.
...how does someone who can barely cobble together a quadratic equation despite taking Algebra-one three times know this or assume that thousands are victimized each semester? By talking to fellow BECA majors four through six weeks into our classes:
If there are 32,000 plus students at SFSU and only half get financial aid--truly a guess & this is why I never took Statistics--then if four or five classmates in a class of thirty-four students are left high and dry, that translates into potentially thousands;we are talking about real money here, people.
You do the math cause, I sure am hell am not about too, but potentially tens of millions are lost while earning interest, invested off-shore, or in some kind of slush fund/ derivative-thingy! Please, never get your financial planning from a failed Sacramento music jock or a BECA major who lives in a 10X5 storage facility, but something is way wrong with this picture, people.
Putting this issue to rest, it may not be just SFSU's malfeasance or lack of fiduciary duty as I hear the problem is systemic within the CSU statewide. However, that statement must be couched in the caveat that seems to always follow when asking people in the administration, bursars, or financial aid [off the record, of course] or at my local bank or credit union with the phrase, "...but I hear State [SFSU] is particularly worse" or words to that effect. Even if the problem originates in as much with the Student Loan Program, FAFSA, MAHALA or whomever that entity is that emails me at the beginning of the semester--nor can I remember the password for--somebody is raking-in some serious bank, NorthernCali Central Valley Speak aside!
Obviously, when congress created the student loan program by passage of the Higher Education Act (1965) the idea was not to hold back money intended for buying books, getting settled into housing, and purchasing the needed housewares--kitchen, laundry, and dorm room essentials--until the semester was almost half over; clearly, it was not the intent of congress that student--many on their own for the first time and far from their parent's home--be left homeless for weeks or couch surfing with virtual strangers or newly met fellow students in a huge metropolis fraught with crime, vice, feces, and mentally ill people stumbling or sprawled about; want to talk about putting people in harms way for sexual assault after all of the lecturing and hand-wringing the CSU system spends on time monitoring supposed adults sexual conduct? Student's living on campus can't consent as adults with any measurable alcohol in their system, but we put many students' safety in harms-way while damaging credit due to late car payments, possessions forever lost to auctioned-off storage areas, or any of a number of higher costs such as books once the used ones are gone, etc.
Not everyone has upper-middle-class parents to back-up the shortfall on short notice--especially first generation college-bound DACA Students that seem to be of such great caring and concern within the CSU system.
So, sitting with my thumb-up-my !*%$# until July 20th--accelerated Summer Semester ended July 6th--I did finally get the $2400.00 disbursement and left the following day on an AMTRAK train for Portland.
Shout-out to the Dean of Student Services for approving [and not having to be repaid] a HOPE Fund Grant of $800.00 and twenty meals at the dorm chow hall, but I much rather would have been working and recreating in Ore-E-Gun with my ex-honey and friends; hence, the only way I didn't lose where I live, all of my possessions, and continue to attend summer classes was due to the $800.00 grant during the some seven week delay in disbursement. It is not like I can pick-up the phone and lean on my Mom & Pops: currently, they both reside at the Sacramento Valley Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Dixon.
...actually, I have spot reserved there too!
Fast forward or once back in Oregon to the somewhat rural Western Washington County of Portland's Urban Growth Boundary [UGB] where I worked temp jobs for three weeks. First, I got the plumb assignment:
becoming a server at the International Pinot Noir Conference in McMinnville, Oregon, located just South of WA-CO in Yamhill County:
...I get paid to do this?
The three day weekend event really got pretty...well wine-ie the last night. Also, we were allowed to eat the Wild Spring Run Chinook Salmon, served on the final evening with all of the other side dishes from trendy Portland and legendary nearby coastal restaurants. Arguably [and for you Non-Oregonians,] it is better than Copper River [Alaskan and/or Bristol Bay] Salmon, and we had a choice of eight desserts...I had four of them!
Most wait-staff being students at the Linfield University based event, they rounded-up the half drank bottles--some approaching $40.00 plus, throwing a giant outside party in front of one of the dorm halls. A really cool couple I was hanging with & knowing I was Senior-Senior on Summer Break from SFSU, invited me to stay over at their apartment; late at night and thirty-some-miles away, this spared Virginia a ride to get me at well after the event ended at midnight. McMinville [or MAC as it is called] was the birthplace of the famous Pinot Noir grape.
Located in the SW corner of my congressional district, the Libertarian minded precinct had a high turnout of voters voting LP when I ran for the house. also, MAC is the site of the Ground Zero host and two decade acquaintance, Clyde Lewis' now 20th Annual UFOfest held at the infamous Oregon Hotel.
For $1399.00, attendees get three days of touring wineries, attending workshops located in the birthplace of Oregon's premier or signature vintage--all the while eating crab cakes, wild spring-run Chinook salmon, and fancy Portland boutique chocolate mousse and so on.
Something to be said for full employment and the booming economy because immediately after the wine conference, I was assigned to clean pipe for a solid week; Apparently, the largest Intel chip manufacturing plant in the world--Ronler Acres about a mile down the road from my former employer, 1360 KUIK Hilllsboro--is expanding rapidly and needed these pipes; the newly manufactured stainless steel pipes of varying diameters were to be wiped down with 90% alcohol to prep for welding once there; that is all we did.
http://exploreintel.com/ronleracres/photos
...fascinating Drake. It was quite boring work but the fellows I worked with and I told stories all day, took a few extra breaks as things got moved around on forklifts, and tried to beat the stifling late July heat and characteristically mid-summer PDX humidity with plenty of Gatorade swigging.
Does anyone see the irony in this? Hell, last summer I worked at the Montrovia Winery up there and that makes three summer jobs involving alcohol, yet no one can drink any of it!
Once the work was done, it seemed appropriate to hop-on a MAX Train to observe a downtown protest turned Portland Riot--just for old-times sake--three weeks ago last Saturday. Also planned for months was seeing my old friend, Ron Morse, from our old Home Hotel Days in our former stomping ground, Downtown Portland, was an easy call.
At forty dollar a week, the Home Hotel housed fifty or sixty folks in some forty rooms with two bathrooms of a couple of commodes and showers down the hall; recorded in photojournalism and writer's accounts [the management had a book published in the seventies of many of Downtown PDX SRO residents dating from the 1950s,] the infamous flophouse located at Third and Burnside was where I landed in 1992 when I pulled-up stakes in pursuit of my high flying radio career. Here is a picture of these street-denizens at the very beginning of my activist days:
It is so funny that the building that was on the top floor of that city block had not only been above the quirky Church of Elvis and the Anarchist collective that fueled the [first?] anarchist riots of 93, but now has tourists lined-up for half-a-block to try out some obscenely shaped Voodoo Donuts, a subsequent PDX landmark.
Needless to say, Ron and I reminisced about the rough & tumble times of being aging early-thirty- something hipsters taking in what was a wild ride setting-up events at the Waterfront, making friends at Portland's legendary Saturday Market just two blocks behind the "hotel" and the two of us--him from Southern and me from Northern California--calling ourselves refugees who "...fled tyranny and oppression in our 'homeland' in order to 'live in exile'" and enjoy all of the important civil liberties such as bottomless bars that Pornland had to offer!
Don't blame me--that is what the locals called it in the nineties as it was home to more adult businesses per capita than any other US city. Guess, things get boring with all that rain, right?
...Oh brother and what is with the conflicting messages there, Libra Boy? What is it...Peace or Revolution? Obviously, I was traumatized at the onset of my radicalization by the 1993 Waco Massacre and firebombing of a church on private property at the hands of the ATF, FBI, and all of the dead children gunned down trying to escape--caught on camera and revealed in this award winning documentary a few years later that I saw on opening night in PDX in the theater-plex that is within the building that Clyde Lewis' broadcast Ground Zero from: 1000 Broadway.
Anyhow, it was satisfying to final digitize or take smartphone and many iphone [this trip] pictures of many of my photo albums, memorabilia from my congressional run, and other mementos long since in-storage in the Mother Lode after many years of not being able to access them. Besides making some money and seeing my friends on this victory lap, the mission to access the story of my life and years of activism--for eventual merger with the launch of my talk career in the coming years--is crucial to branding a social media presence; moreover and in the short-term, having visual media of my growing-up in California will be a crucial accompaniment to the storytelling weekly on Simpler Time & Place:
Thus, allowing the listeners a richer visual texture and contextual realism as storytelling--not just of mine but guests and other's observations, historically. Hopefully, this makes for a brand applying my understanding of communication theory, best and ethical practices, and use of new tools for both research and my growing use of social media.
I know we have been a bit off topic, so I will wrap with the final leg of the trip: a visit to see my best friend from Columbia College who is now an EMT and maintenance guy for a snow park. Hang-on it gets better AND speaking of fire:
...CALFIRE converted the bottom of the slopes situated at 6300 ft. above sea level into a staging area/command center we called Fire Retardant Central. For better part of a week, three different kinds of helicopters came in, dropped what we came to call the "dongkler"into one of two 5000 Gl. tubs and then raced back-up the mountain to the area around Kennedy Meadows [NAME OF FIRE HERE]. Youn may recall an earlier blog post regarding the people and culture of those Calis' who chose to call the Mother Lode [The ML to locals] and the High Sierra.
Josh and Daniel--one of his first roommates at Columbia--live at the snow park and are undertaking remodeling during the off-season, living in what could really be considered a loft condo here for a few hundred a month; chip-off-the-old Uncle Drake Live on-site block, no? Josh is as close to the son or grandson I never had, and we had a great time knocking back some cold ones, BBQing large slabs of marinated meat, and hanging out with some good-old-boys from the valley who get away to their vacation homes.
Alright folks, we will be returning to regular programing now that I have picked-up some previously written stories from my years in the ML, digitized pictures to also be uploaded on the blog, and get ready to roll-out a new political talk show--wrapping up almost two semesters of co-hosting Juxtaposed with Christopher Robin on KSFS.
We will have some themed shows like one-hit wonders, feminist singers of the seventies, songs with hidden and not so hidden drug themes, and--since it was such a success last semester--world's greatest masturbation songs of all-time!
...as long as the are from the mid-sixties through nineteen eighty, I will play 'em.
Drake
Posted by Drake McDonald Davis on August 22, 2018 No comments:
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Drake Davis is a 6th Generation [Paternal/5th Maternal] Californian who graduated from San Francisco State University in December of 2018. Currently, Davis is about to launch a career in voice-over having over 5.5 years on-air over two decades in Sacramento & Portland, OR; better yet, Davis was there with four additional years in live performance at the birth of Disco and height of the Roller Disco Era in Sac. Poised to go far and in possession of the coveted SFSU Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts [BECA] Degree, Davis can be be harnessed to make money for your media outfit.
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Drake Davis is a 6th Generation [Paternal/5th Maternal] Californian who graduated from San Francisco State University in December of 2018. Currently, Davis is about to launch a career in voice-over having over 5.5 years on-air over two decades in Sacramento & Portland, OR; better yet, Davis was there with four additional years in live performance at the birth of Disco and height of the Roller Disco Era in Sac. Poised to go far and in possession of the coveted SFSU Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts [BECA] Degree, Davis can be be harnessed to make money for your media outfit.
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