Like Faith and Like Hope and Like, OHMYGOD

Working in Off Campus Studies at UC Santa Barbara has been great for many reasons. It has given me a steady income and provides me and Will with full benefits (which I'm still happily amazed at) and has also allowed me lots of time to continue and pursue my writing. I would've never finished my play, assembled enough short stories for an upcoming book, or had the peace of mind to keep at my poetry - had it not been for this job. Now whether any of it is any good is another story.

I also feel privileged to sit in on quite a few different classes while filming them. I've learned far more than I ever did in my undergraduate days at Kent State University. I barely even remember my undergraduate days. I remember throwing up a lot. And falling down stairs a lot. And even waking up outside in the bushes and behind buildings. But that's all beside the point, I've been re-educated on much more than sometimes I want to know.

UC Santa Barbara is quite a juxtaposition. Nobel Laureates (I met one today, in fact) scattered here and there among the skateboards, tube-tops, bleached hair and surfboards. The average income for a family of a student that attends here is far above the national average. But you also have plenty of socially minded individuals that still feel the desire and gumption for social change. However, this does not come without some comedy. Thank god.

Last week in a Sociology class that I was filming, a student was giving a presentation. The student was not born with the breasts that she was sporting and actually, you could've set a small child upon them, maybe two and there seemed to be plenty of students, young men and women alike who seemed to be enthralled with her outfit, or what was barely in it. Her breasts were just about ready to explode into the room, practically breaching the seams of her tube-top - yes, a tube-top for her presentation. Her hair was completely jazzed to be there as well as were her hands that kept touching her hair in un-natural, sexually suggestive ways. She basically looked like a super porn star giving a presentation on social inequality. "OOO, aahhh...mmm...Momma likes that! YEAH! THAT'S IT! GLOBILIZATION IS WRONG! SPANK THOSE GLOBAL CORPORATION PIG-FUCKERS OUT OF ME - YEAHHH!!!"

And honest to god, this was a bit of her presentation: "Like people are like driving BMW's and then, like people are like....eating trash...and that's bad. Totally bad. And like Bill Gates probably has like, 25 cars that each cost like $500,000 and then you have people going to work like on their rollerskates - that's just so wrong. And then you have people who have like real big huge houses and then like...people who...don't." And interspersed during her presentation she would mumble something inaudible to herself and then kind of laugh.

It was certainly a little bizarre and by the looks the poor thing was getting, a lot of people thought so. However, I managed to get a glimpse through my preconceived judgment of her. And I realized that she really meant what she said and she said what she meant. And albeit she didn't have eloquence, and she didn't have articulation and she didn't have sophistication, she did have faith...that things could be better.

And that gave me hope.