By Tiffany Lee

Accompanied by a six-digit price tag and constant parental nagging, undergraduate education must be important.  And yet, these first four years of “adult” life, the next big step, the taste of upper education, don’t guarantee a job, let alone a high paying one.  This lack of profit begs the question: How much does college actually matter?

The average starting salary right out of high school is around $30 thousand.  Not bad, but nearly impossible to live on in the Silicon Valley.  A bachelor’s degree adds on average around $15 thousand, which still doesn’t meet the estimated $64 thousand minimum requirement to live in the valley.  However, these numbers don’t account for the fact that other than the first job, all other jobs are based on previous work experience, not which college you went to.  But just based on money, college matters as much as $15 thousand does.

Excluding computer engineers, people straight out of college tend to struggle when finding a job.  If and when they do, only 27% get one related to their major, according to the Washington Post.  So college does matter about 27% of the time, and as much as $15 thousand does.

So far we’ve calculated how much undergraduate education matters, but we haven’t accounted for its irrelevance compared to graduate school.  For many careers, especially those in the medicinal field, undergraduate school is just the preliminary round.  Graduate school is where you actually get education relevant to your future job.  Neurosurgeons learn how to perform on the brain, and medical students participate in clinical rotations to gain real-world experience.

Disregarding graduate school, the biggest determinant of college value isn’t jobs, or even money.  What matters most is what others think of you.  Parents need to be able to brag about their children’s acceptance to Ivy League schools.  Friends need to hide uncontrollable rushes of envy as their peers display famed letters of acceptance to Harvard.  Relatives who have spent lifetimes asking college-related questions, waiting with baited breath for your answer, need to feel a mix of shock, joy, amazement and jealousy that their kids aren’t you when you finally manage to get accepted into a high ranked school.

So yes, college really does matter.  Sure, it matters 27% of the time and as much as $15 thousand, but most importantly, it increases your chances of feeling some sense of superiority.  You can finally say you’re better than all of your friends.  You can finally name-drop your school into any and every conversation.  The academic elitism given by four years of finding new ways to hide alcohol is truly priceless.

By Walt Leung

In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue—so the rhyme goes.  Most students in the United States know that Columbus was actually searching for India when he stumbled upon the Americas.  Some know that Columbus landed on San Salvador and never even touched North America.  But nearly none know that the people he labelled as “Indians” were actually Tainos.

From childhood, we have always visualized Columbus in a positive light; we see him as an explorer, courageously venturing into the unknown.  We learn about Columbus as the spearhead of the age of exploration, the discoverer of the Americas.  However, history books never shed light on his greed and abuse.  There is never information about his enslavement of the Tainos upon arrival, his insistence on their conversion to Christianity, his introduction of new diseases to the Americas.  We never learn about the massive suffering he inflicted upon the Native Americans.

The extent of Columbus’s damage to the native population has never been accurately documented.  Although we may be committing the butterfly effect fallacy to solely blame Columbus for the near-eradication of the entire Native American population, the death of nearly 250,000 Tainos within the first half-century upon his landing in present-day San Salvador can certainly be attributed to his brutish attitudes toward the natives.  The Atlantic Slave Trade that occurred in the early days of American colonization has another name, perhaps one with a deeper connotation: the Columbian Exchange.  Named after Columbus, who pioneered this triangular trade, the Columbian Exchange introduced not only food, culture and animals, but also slavery and death.

For a country that has been so progressive in championing civil liberties, LGBT rights and gender equality, the United States of America has largely ignored the plight of its indigenous natives.  In 1937, the United States adopted Columbus Day as a national holiday, perhaps one of the greatest insults to Native Americans by honoring the man who arguably started the greatest genocide in recent history.

Although it can be said that our beloved United States of America would never have come into fruition had Columbus not sailed the ocean blue, it is important to remember that Columbus was never the angelic man we often portray him as.  It’s time our nation follows in the footsteps of cities such as Berkeley, Calif. and instead renames this day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day, in an attempt to honor the natives who originally inhabited what we now call home.

By Jacqueline Nguyen

On the tranquil morning of June 6, my mom and I innocuously decided to make a quick stop at the Starbucks on the corner next to James Lick High School on the way to Mount Pleasant High School, my test center for the day.  I hadn’t slept as early as I hoped because of the anxiety of getting anxiety from the gravity of the test, so the plain vanilla latte should’ve done the trick.  I was also hungry, so she got me a Bacon Gouda sandwich as well.  Though I can’t recall how the latte was, I vividly remember the bacon, cheese and regret I tasted from consuming that demonic sandwich.

During the test, my stomach would not stop grumbling.  My face was paler than bleach on white out as I was working through section 4.  I can’t even remember what type of section it was because of my stomach’s incessant demands.  This continued throughout the entire test, and even the plentiful bathroom breaks would not stop my stomach from attempting to leap from my body.  At around the later sections, I was ready to pass out from the horror of the grumbling and holding in the farts.  I was sweaty, pale and a hot mess.  I knew I wasn’t going to get a good score on my first try at the SAT, and I didn’t.

Though, as much as I blamed Starbucks (and College Board if you remember that train wreck) for that repulsive number, I now realize that I was trying to deflect blame off of myself for my incompetence and laziness.  I came into the classroom not taking the test all that seriously.  I only did three and a tenth practice tests and spent all my free time on Netflix.  I was stressing out over the fact that this one number had some weight on the next several years of my life that I ended up doing other things.  Not only did I walk into that classroom with terrible stomach pains, but also with stress, an attitude and a desperate need to cry.

The takeaway from this is to prepare now, stay calm and keep a positive attitude, even if feigned at first.  Get as much sleep as you can the night before the test, which means at most minimal preparation only the night before.  Discipline yourself to work your way through those tests.  Finally, remember that you can achieve the score you want as long as you work hard for it (unless you’re reading this the night before then good luck).