Good Ol' Scotts Valley

I grew up in a small town called Scotts Valley, near Santa Cruz and the majority of the population is upper-middle class white citizens. I was one of six other Asians in my class and three of them were not even a hundred percent Asian. Most of my classmates, including myself had economically stable families. The families that were not as well off didn’t seem to want to stay in this town for long. In fifth grade, my best friend, Chelsea moved to Oregon because she said that her family could no longer afford their house and they were having trouble with money. At the time, I was shocked and I didn’t understand her reasoning. I never thought that money could be such a big and demanding issue.

I love my hometown but at the same time it feels like I was living in a bubble. My community shelters their children and sugar coats situations, which is not reality. For instance, if a cop sees a homeless person then they will automatically be directed towards the homeless shelter in Santa Cruz. Scotts Valley is not very diverse when it comes to social class and we are constantly penalized for this. One time when I was in downtown Santa Cruz waiting in line to buy my ticket to go see the movie, Napoleon Dynamite, I heard a group of kids from a local high school yell out how Scotts Valley is just a town full of white, snobby, rich kids. Even though I didn’t say anything directly to them, in my mind I was thinking yes, a majority of the population is white and most of the people in town are well off, but this does not make us snobby. Being put under this class title whether economically or socially does not define your personality nor should it justify behavior.

Just Too Expensive

“$4.55!” Just this morning, the price for unleaded gas was $4.54 and it has already increased by a cent. This is unfortunate news considering the gas light in my car has been flashing at me for the past two days. So forced to get gas, I make a quick detour to Valero before grabbing lunch at Subway. Out of all the gas stations in South Davis, Valero is always the cheapest. I figured this out by scoping all the gas stations while riding the bus to campus. That is if I’m not half asleep at 7:30 in the morning. As I’m paying for my $5 foot long I noticed that there is an extra 50 cent charge if I pay with a credit or debit card. The extra charge seems unnecessary because my credit card is still a form of money. Without even knowing it at times, I deal with the economy in some form everyday. Economy is such a broad term because it encompasses so many other words. For instance, New Keywords associates economy with money, markets, commodities, wealth, industry, labor, enterprise, finance, investment, employment, consumption, production, credit, debt, competition, monopoly, and development. Truthfully, I never really cared about the economy and found little interest in the subject. However, now that the economy has gone down and prices for gas, food, clothes, and other resources have gone up I started to pay more attention. As college students, most of us are just getting by. So we can all agree that we dread the first day of classes knowing that we have to go to the bookstore right after class to buy the expensive books and lab manuals.

First Day of School

Okay, I won’t lie. I probably would’ve never found the book if my boyfriend didn’t point to the exact spot it was at; because the thought of looking under the English section would never cross my mind. If I was by myself, I would search all over the UWP section, and then once more to make sure that it wasn’t there (and that my eyes weren’t going crazy on me). My last resort would be to find an employee and bug them until they found it. So I would say that my trip to the bookstore was pretty successful today. No one managed to run into me and the line to pay was fairly short. Now that we don’t have to store our backpacks and bags in the lockers the bookstore is not a complete nightmare, especially since it’s the first day of classes. I got everything I needed and I was in and out of the bookstore within fifteen minutes. Afterwards, when I was waiting for the bus I started flipping through the book and it wasn’t what I expected. It’s not a book full of grammar lessons and different writing techniques. It definitely looks way more interesting than the UWP 1 textbook I used. And as for the blogging, I think I’m already starting to get the hang of it!