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“April is the cruellest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land,” T.S. Eliot writes in “The Waste Land.” “Mixing/ Memory and desire, stirring/ Dull roots with spring rain.”

In Berkeleyland, April is indeed a time to mix memory and desire — the desire for good grades, the memory of too many nights spent “not-studying,” the futile, final sprint of the semester to make up for dull brain roots (stems?) with that one last cramming session.

And this — right now — this is the worst of it. Not the final stretch but the next-to-last one. It’s one last week of classes before they stop meeting, and all you have to worry about is the entire semester’s worth of material that you didn’t learn. At least that amount stops growing once dead week sets in.

There is community in dead week. My favorite one is the cafe community, composed primarily of crazy-eyed laptop-starers who are on the lookout for open outlets. In these warm little rooms, we are individually frenzied about individual projects but together in that frenzy.

Not everyone studies during dead week, of course. But when people don’t, I think they’re very conscious of what they’re not doing. Often they’re together in not doing it, together in lazy beds, lying out on Memorial Glade, in the middle of a thousand brunches. Even if they aren’t together, their not-studying is the perfect opposition to studying — that makes them far more connected than if they were doing anything else.

There’s desperation in dead week, and there’s something comforting in being allowed that desperation. Desperation means you only have a specific time frame to repair what you’ve screwed up all semester. There are only so many more times you can make the wrong decision before there are no more decisions to make and you can stop feeling bad about them. That’s a relief.

If this weren’t a common desperation, it’d be terrifying. But everyone’s facing it. Everyone has a hard time during Dead Week. That’s comforting, too. Most people are at least a little bit stressed out, and many of us are too caffeinated to express that fact coherently. If you can’t fall asleep until 4 a.m., that’s OK, too, because there are no classes to get up for in the morning.

It’s OK to be a little kinder to ourselves than we would normally be. We are allowed to eat Pancho’s every night if we need to, we are allowed to wear Cal hoodies every day if we need to and we are allowed to admit how shitty it all is sometimes.

And then there are the endings that roll in once dead week goes back into hibernation — even these are better than the week we’re heading into. There is finals week, at which point what was nurtured during dead week must rise like “lilacs out of the dead land.” And though that’s scary, it’s cathartic, too.

Whether or not they really are significant, endings always feel that way because they’re one of the few parts of life that are easy to delineate. You can put a date on the end of a semester, a clean goodbye timestamp to spring 2013, the moment your last final concludes. And once the final final ends, you’re no longer a part of the semester — you’re beyond it; it’s over. Very few endings are so clear.

But there’s still this next week, the final week of classes, and it will probably be terrible. This week will be the one when I realize everything I’ve done wrong all along (If only I’d been to a few more physics lectures!). Even though I realize that, the realization doesn’t do much because if I really wanted to turn things around with these last prefinals assignments, it would take way more effort than I’m capable of at this point.

So the next week will crawl along, and when I ask people how they’re doing, they’ll just look at me with blank stares and I will look at them equally blankly and I’ll count down each day as it ends. And I probably won’t do as well in physics as I would like, and that’ll be disappointing.

Still, I think it’ll be OK. I have blissfully little control over each day’s passing, and most go faster than I think they will. The signs of dead week will start creeping in; my cafes will get fuller, and library seats will transform into valuable commodities and the very last Shakespeare paper will be turned in.

And then that’s it! It’s dead week and then finals week and then endings and this too will have passed and I think we can get through it. I think we’ll be OK.

Contact Sarah Burns at sburns@dailycal.org or follow her on Twitter: @_SBurns.

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Between balancing a full load of classes, other extra-curricular commitments and trying to having at least some kind of social life, how are you supposed to find time to make it to the gym? Given the choice between meeting up with some friends over a delicious ice-cream sandwich and going for a run, we know what we’d choose any day of the week.Plus, even just the thought of hitting up the RSF can be quite intimidating to us couch potatoes who can’t squat the weight of Jabba the Hutt or pull off five miles on the tread mill while have a casual conversation with the runner next to us.

However, even though we may resent the thought of it, staying active physically comes with too many perks for us to ignore. Like maintaining a healthy weight, boosting your energy levels so you can make it across campus in 10 minutes and putting a little extra spark in the sack.

So, how to get started? Sometimes what’s required is a lil’ extra motivation. How about giving yourself a set goal in signing up for an event like Bay to Breakers, an annual San Francisco run on May 19? Ok, we know what you’re thinking: “Whoa, easy there, I’m not running an actual race anytime soon thank you very much.” Relax, you don’t have to be Bear Athlete Sophia Oberg to participate in Bay to Breakers, this event has serious runners, weekend joggers, relaxed walkers and costumed participants (how awesome would it be to run next to Superman or the Blues Brothers?). Plus, with thousands of spectators cheering you on, Bay to Breakers is bound to be a pretty great way to ring in summer break.

Image Source: nialkennedy under Creative Commons

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The solution? Grabbing a seat outside, of course! The FSM cafe usually has plenty of seating on its patio with great views of the west side of campus. And with the gorgeous weather we’ve been having the last couple of days, who’s complaining, really?

Well, as the Clog recently discovered, while basking in the sunlight on the balcony of FSM sounds good in theory, there’s a hitch in practice. More specifically, the incredibly ill-positioned conifer featured in the photo above, which effectively blocks out the sun and casts a good part of the patio in perpetual shade. Now we know Berkeley’s not exactly the most receptive place for any suggestions of deforestation, and at the risk of attracting the fury of the United Tree-Huggers Alliance, we still have to ask: Would it really hurt to “trim” this bad boy a little? All we’re asking for is a little sunlight. Just a few feet snipped off the top ought to do it, really.

No one need ever know.

Image Source: Corinne Platten, The Daily Californian 

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There was one cafe in particular that I was especially fond of and frequented most. I loved the way the sun filled it with warm golden light in the morning,  the way its sweetest coffee drink tasted with an extra spoonful of brown sugar on top and the way I always seemed to get more work done seated near one of its windows than anywhere else. But much more than that, the thing I most loved about this place was that one of the baristas who worked there always remembered me and could predict my drink order before I’d placed it.

Walking into that cafe felt, and still feels, like belonging to a world where everyone is connected. It feels as if even the neutral places in life contain the opportunity for connection if you just reach out for it, as if everyone is just waiting to be familiar, like maybe the Gilmore Girls Stars Hollow ideal isn’t too far from a reality you can have.

That’s a far cry from the way Berkeley usually feels. Berkeley as a college campus is large and made up of a diversity of perspectives so great, it can feel utterly anonymous, simultaneously like there must be a place for you in all those perspectives and like the sheer number of places makes it utterly overwhelming to find the right one.

As a student, the city of Berkeley can feel even harder to parse. It’s a city of activists, of the very rich and the very poor, the overeducated and the underserved, still consumed by the ripples of an era that made it famous now roughly five decades past. In a town with so much history, what role should and can students, with their two-to-seven-year expiration date, really play? And what is it exactly about warm pools that residents here seem to love so much anyway?

And that’s what makes the barista dream so sweet. It’s a simple notion: This place isn’t so large, it says, and you have a place here if only because this is where you often are. It’s a common one, too — so common it feels a little trite to talk about how you’re a “regular” at an establishment.

But I don’t think that the sense of belonging that comes with being recognized is necessarily a genuine one, exactly. When the barista remembers your drink, it doesn’t really mean she has a particular investment in your life. It might just mean you come in a lot, or that it’s nicer for the barista to feel like there is something recurrent in her job than not. Or that this exchange isn’t all about selling coffee, but that it’s also about helping someone deal with a tired day or assuaging someone’s sweet tooth — it  means something to someone beyond the cut and dry exchange of capital for product.

And I guess that’s what I think is going on here: We are looking for something beyond the events as they happen, a significance born out of some larger system.

In his unfinished novel The Pale King, late and legendary author David Foster Wallace wrote the following:

“Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient, low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling, or at least from feeling directly or with our full attention.”

In a September video blog, vlogger and young adult author John Green attributes people’s obsessive need to check their cellphones to avoiding a “deeper” pain by distracting ourselves out of real engagement.

“Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time I check my phone, it’s not because I’m so busy I can’t do it later,” Green says. “It’s because, on some level or another, I fear feeling that deeper type of omnipresent type of pain that Wallace was writing about.”

While I definitely think that’s true, I think there’s something more going on here, too. I think the reason we check our phones all the time has a lot to do with the reason I love my “regular” cafe.

We want to feel like there is always something important happening. We want to feel like people are trying to contact us — like there’s a greater system of which we are an intricate and important part, like we are an integral part of our barista’s day, like there is larger purpose to our actions, to our lives.

In my mind, Wallace’s “deeper type of pain” isn’t a fear of  engagement so much as a fear of nothingness itself, of meaninglessness. Because if we aren’t an important part of the system of this city or this campus or this coffee shop, then why are we here at all?

Contact Sarah Burns at sburns@dailycal.org or follow her on Twitter: @_SBurns.

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Most UC Berkeley undergraduates now pay about $1,780 each academic year for the UC Student Health Insurance Program, known as SHIP, and graduate students pay about $2,300 annually. And, under current proposals now being considered by UC officials to close the deficit, those costs could increase dramatically.

We are well aware of the importance of keeping health care costs as low as possible while assuring quality care.  We are advocating that UCOP leaders do everything possible to minimize the financial impact of this deficit to students.

We all know that health care costs and the associated premiums are likely to increase annually, even without a deficit.  Insurance premiums increase annually to adjust for medical inflation and/or if new benefits are added to a health plan.  However, in this case, the UC Berkeley administration does not support moving the burden of paying the SHIP deficit onto the backs of students in the form of higher premium costs.

The fact is that we have questions as to whether the UC SHIP program, fully launched in 2011-12, was set up with proper oversight controls and checks in place. Even as the UC Office of the President administrators investigate this issue, we have already recommended that immediate new controls be implemented to ensure effective and efficient administration of this program.

Campus-level health administrators are always looking for ways to contain costs without compromising quality  But instead of trying to squeeze funds from campus-specific  health programs on campuses or raise student premiums,  we have recommended that some of UCOP’s financial reserves be used to cover a  portion of the deficit.

Further, we believe that if SHIP premiums need to rise in the future to meet actual operational costs as well as to address the program deficit, those increases  should be moderate and spread out over multiple years to help relieve the burden on students.  Not only is this a matter of fairness, it is a practical matter.  Dramatic and/or sudden premium hikes could actually undermine the financial stability of the program if they cause some students to seek medical coverage outside of SHIP, leaving the program with fewer participants and, perhaps, a customer population that costs more to care for.

Together with students, we have reached out to UC officials and indicated our eagerness to work in cooperation with them on this issue. Students and campus-level health care administrators have great insights to add to the discussion.

Before the UC systemwide SHIP program was launched, UC Berkeley successfully managed its own independent SHIP program for 15 years.  UC Berkeley’s  University Health Services managers rightly take pride in having a fully accredited medical facility providing outstanding health care.  As part of one of the more comprehensive student health centers in the nation, they are able to provide excellent, convenient service while containing costs by keeping students right here on campus rather than sending them across town for lab work, radiology services or urgent care treatment.

If UC SHIP’s performance is not considerably improved for 2013-14, individual UC campuses — including UC Berkeley — could opt out of UC SHIP for 2014-15 to seek a more stable and financially viable health plan for students. In the meantime, it is our hope that UC SHIP’s challenges can be successfully addressed.

To be clear, we did initially assess that students would benefit if the Berkeley campus joined the larger UC SHIP plan. That move allowed our own UHS to increase health care benefits while, initially at least, keeping premiums lower than if we stayed with an internally managed SHIP plan.

Some of the new benefits added since joining UC SHIP include free preventative coverage benefits (wellness visits, immunizations), free birth control and a dependent plan option.

We are committed to doing everything we can to ensure that the UC system’s SHIP program runs efficiently and effectively and without placing an undue cost burden on Berkeley students.

Ultimately, UC Berkeley will not have the final say in deciding what course will be taken to reduce the looming SHIP deficit and strengthen the SHIP program — following the UCOP review and evaluation process, chancellors across the UC system will take up the matter — but it is our hope that we can limit the financial cost to students, and we are directing our efforts toward that goal.

 Ron Coley is associate vice chancellor of business and administrative services. Harry Le Grande is vice chancellor of student affairs. Andrew Szeri is dean of the Graduate Division.

Contact the opinion desk at opinion@dailycal.org.

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Yet still, the truth is that the crowning jewel of my time at Berkeley is not my success in the classroom — it is the sacrifice I made in the name of education and money. Since my freshman year, I have been taking an hour and a half journey to Berkeley by way of bike, then bus and then BART every day, rain or shine, to make it to class (mostly) on time. I know I’m not alone. About 3 to 5 percent of incoming freshmen don’t live in university housing and are, like me, also privy to these common struggles. I speak of a little- known story shared by the few who have yet to leave their childhood homes. And so it is because of its relative obscurity I feel that it’s one that needs to be told.

Let me first explain why I’m compelled to write about my experience as a commuter student. I would have you believe that what drives me is an unadulterated compassion and need to inform those in the university’s freshman class about the pros and cons of commuting, but in actuality, it’s not just that practical. I have an urge to share my thoughts because a certain conversation with my fellow students annoys me. It usually goes something like this:

Noncommuter Student: “Hey, so do you want to meet up on Saturday? I stay way up in Foothill. Bummer, right? What about you?”

Me: “Yeah, totally. I commute from Martinez. So…that might be a bit difficult.”

(A long, awkward silence lingers as I wait for it)

Non-Commuter Student: “Oh … right … really?”

Me: Really.

(End of discussion)

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve engaged in such a conversation. And then, as if it means anything, he or she has the gall to ask, “Did you choose to commute to school?” Choose? If the student is asking whether I chose to miss out on that much esteemed, once-in -a-lifetime “college experience” — of course not. They knew the answer, but they had to ask. Commuter students understand.

I say, “No more regret.” With my selected account of what it’s like to be a Berkeley outsider, I intend to change the perception of commuting students for the many future generations that follow. I think the task of having to travel the distance to UC Berkeley should be worn like a badge of honor. So let me tell you what non-commuters don’t know.

Noncommuter students don’t know what it’s like to wake up at 6 a.m. for an 8 a.m. class and then have to wait on campus for 10 whole hours to go to another 6 p.m. class. The time between classes can be daunting. On these formidable days, I have managed to occupy myself with a job or two.

Noncommuter students don’t know about that sinking feeling that happens in the pit of the stomach when the doors to the morning Richmond train slide shut in your face a few seconds too soon. What is left to do is but wistfully tap the foot and twiddle the thumbs as you wait, cursing the arrival of the next train … in 30 minutes. Ask any student who takes BART. He or she will have these tales to tell.

Noncommuter students don’t know the limitations there are in choosing classes come Tele-BEARS time because of the inconvenience of living far from campus. I have to be extra careful to not select back-to-back classes that may be just one or two hours apart. These small gaps add up to too much idle time.

And finally — most of all — noncommuter students don’t know what it’s like to juggle the prized independence of college life with the obligations of living with parents and siblings. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy the homely comforts of freshly made meals and La-Z-Boy sofas as much as the next person, but staying at home means that there are things expected of me. That includes frequent family gatherings, curfews, pointless arguments with younger siblings and having to answer questions, a lot of questions. I still routinely have to deal with these things that many Berkeley students are glad they are without.

Now, I hope that my shameless rant has given you, the noncommuting Berkeley student, a greater appreciation for those who do not (either for financial reasons or otherwise) reside as you do — in the middle of it all. We are Berkeley’s humble wayfarers, and we are important. Yet still, if nothing else is learned, I hope that your next encounter with such a student does not needlessly ring with silence nor with that hollow question of “choice.” Instead, I think a more healthy conversation would begin like, “Yeah, from whereabouts?” or “Wow, I’m impressed!” or something to that effect.

And besides, a little sympathy goes a long way. Am I right?

Anoop Mannan is a senior at UC Berkeley.

Contact the opinion desk at opinion@dailycal.org.

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