Math in Real Life

"When am I ever going to have to use this?" - School kid to every math teacher ever

Well, as it turns out, there are sometimes random instances in which math can be used in real life. (I mean even outside of a work context.) I've included two recent examples below.

Example 1: Clock hands alignment

I wanted to know when, precisely, the hour hand and the minute hand on a standard clock are perfectly aligned. There was no actual practical application for this problem; I was just curious.

Essentially, we need to find all the times at which the angles of the two hands are identical. The angles range from 0 to 360 degrees. (I hate radians.) So, over the course of an hour, the hour hand moves 30 degrees, while the minute hand moves a full 360 degrees. The angles of the two hands can be represented by the graphic below:

This problem seeks to find the points of intersection between the lines. To do so, we can establish equations for the angles of the hour and minutes hands:

Let t represent the clock-face time in decimal form (e.g., 2:30 is represented by t = 2.5). Let h(t) be the angle of the hour hand at time t, and m(t) be the angle of the minute hand at time t. We define h(t) and m(t) as follows:

h(t) = 30 * t

m(t) = 360 * (t - k)

Because m(t) is cyclical, we use k to denote the kth hour on the clock. That is, k is the integer such that k < t < k + 1.

To find the points of intersection, we can set h(t) equal to m(t) and solve for t.

30t = 360t - 360k

360k = 330t

t = k * (12/11)

Then, for each integer value of k from 0 to 11 (0 represents clock hour 12), we can find the value of t which gives the point of intersection for each hour. Then we can translate this t into a standard time. The eleven solutions are below:

k = 0 → t = 0 → 12:00:00

k = 1 → t = 12/11 = 1.0909 → 1:05:27

k = 2 → t = 24/11 = 2.1818 → 2:10:54

k = 3 → t = 36/11 = 3.2727 → 3:16:22

k = 4 → t = 48/11 = 4.3636 → 4:21:49

k = 5 → t = 60/11 = 5.4545 → 5:27:16

k = 6 → t = 72/11 = 6.5455 → 6:32:44

k = 7 → t = 84/11 = 7.6364 → 7:38:11

k = 8 → t = 96/11 = 8.7273 → 8:43:38

k = 9 → t = 108/11 = 9.8081 → 9:49:05

k = 10 → t = 120/11 = 10.9091 → 10:54:33

k = 11 → t = 132/11 = 12 → 12:00:00

Interestingly enough, the 11 hour does not have such an intersection point. By the time the intersection happens, it is the 12th hour (or the 0th hour).

A similar exercise could be done for the second hand as well--when the second and minute hands align or when the second and hour hands align. There exists no point where all three hands are in alignment except for 12:00:00.

Example 2: Cutting a regular pentagon

I wanted to cut a perfect star from a square piece of fabric to sew onto a shirt for a Halloween costume. To do so, I would start with a regular pentagon and then cut isosceles triangles into the sides. The isosceles triangles were the easy part; the pentagon was the hard part, perhaps because I had no way to measure the 108-degree angles required for a regular pentagon. So, instead, I busted out some good old-fashioned high school trigonometry to determine where along the edges of the fabric I should cut to create an inscribed pentagon.

First, I made an assumption by inspection: The largest inscribed regular pentagon within a square is that which is rotated at 45 degrees, with its top point and the midpoint of its bottom segment lying along the square's diagonal. The figure below shows this:

 

I sought to find the points of intersection between the pentagon and the square's edge; these are the points where I would cut. These are points B, D, F, and H on the modified figure below:

Given that the pentagon is regular and is rotated 45 degrees, all angles can be calculated, as shown in the figure below:

The square of fabric was 9 inches on all sides, but the calculations below would apply for any length c; simply replace all instances of 9 with c. Based on that information and trigonometric ratios for right triangles, we can set the following system of equations (all angles in degrees because I hate radians):

(1) AB + BC = 9

(2) CD + DE = 9

(3) EF + FG = 9

(4) GH + AG = 9

(5) BC = CD

(6) AB = DE

(7) AH = EF

(8) FG = GH

(9) BD = DF = BH

(10) cos(45) = BC / BD

Substituting BC from (10) into equation (1), we get AB + BD * cos(45) = 9

(11) cos(27) = AB / BH

Substituting AB from (11) into equation (1), we get BH * cos(27) + BD * cos(45) = 9

Since BH = BD, we get that the length of the pentagon's sides is 9 / [cos(27) + cos(45)]

We can substitute BD into equation (10) and equation (5) and derive that BC = CD = 9 * cos(45) / [cos(27) + cos(45)]

Substituting BC into equation (1) and equation (6), we get AB = DE = 9 * cos(27) / [cos(27) + cos(45)]

Following similar logic, we can calculate that AH = EF = 9 * sin(27) / [cos(27) + cos(45)]

Running the numbers, we find that points B and D are 3.98218 inches from corner point C; and points H and F are 2.55671 inches from corner points A and E, respectively. The pentagon's side length is also 5.6315 inches, which we can use to calculate how far from point G along the square's diagonal to cut to form the pentagon's top two sides: the lines from points F and H that intersect with the square's diagonal and are exactly 5.6315 inches long.

So, I cut the fabric. Due to human error and decimal truncation, it wasn't a perfectly regular pentagon, but it was close enough such that the errors were imperceptible. Then I cut isosceles triangles into the pentagon's sides, made a star, and sewed it onto my Halloween costume.

Ta-dah.

Institutions

The evangelical worldview does not accept the idea of institutions as legitimate social forces that shape our choices and decisions. Every action that you take is strictly interpreted through the lens of individualism, based on the following premises:

1. You made a decision to take a certain action
2. You had the ability to choose any alternative action
3. There were no external social or institutional forces at play

    Conclusion: You have full responsibility for the choice you made

So, you got addicted to drugs? Entirely your fault. You're getting divorced (for a reason other than infidelity)? You're not mature enough to handle a serious marriage commitment. You're struggling to pay your bills? You're not being responsible with your money.

This is essentially the perspective that psychologist and pedagogue Jordan Peterson espouses: If your life is out of balance (chaos), then it is on you to clean up your own act (or your room, more accurately)¹.

While there is indeed always a component of individual choice and responsibility to every decision, this framework ignores any external forces upon individuals that influence their decisions, or may even limit the options available to them at all. In other words, premise #3 is false. The framework assumes that institutionalized racism/sexism/other -isms don't exist; instead, individual actors are racist/sexist/other -ists. Heteronormativity doesn't exist (or, if it does, it's the way things should be anyway). Fiscal policies that have encouraged stagnant wages don't really affect your ability to make a livable wage. You chose to go to college, and you chose to take on obscene amounts of debt. If you got shot by the police, you should have complied with the officer's orders.

This framework influences how evangelicals (and I guess many Americans, too) think about making change in the world. I remember that in the first lecture of my "Principles of Sociology" undergraduate course at my public university, the first thing my professor said was, "Institutions are how we make social change." My automatic mental response was, "Well, no, social change is made through the changing of individuals' hearts," which I believed at the time. This is why converting others to Christianity is so important to the evangelical: it is seen as the only way to improve society. And, critically, funding social programs intended to better people's lives are seen as futile and a waste of taxpayer money.

When an institution fouls up, this worldview naturally requires that the focus be on getting rid of individuals--"a few bad apples"--rather than reforming or overhauling the entire system (because such systems don't exist). Instead of examining the structure and the policies that might have created the conditions precipitating the foul-up, the assumption is that individual actors within the system made bad decisions. The institution is left unchanged, while the bad actors can be substituted with better actors.

The framework also lends clarity to an incident I experienced at my Christian high school. The school had rules about the length of boys' hair: it could not extend past the eyebrows, ear lobes, or back shirt collar; and until my senior year, ponytails were prohibited². In the first couple of months of my junior year, I knew my hair was either close to or already violating the rules (curly hair's length can be ambiguous and deceptive), but I decided to defer action until a teacher explicitly told me to cut it. One day, a fourth period classmate and I were the only two students in a class of about 30 who received invitations to a lunchtime assembly for an unspecified purpose. The assembly ended up being a group of about 40 boys who had been secretly cited by their teachers for having hair potentially out of dress code. During the assembly, the handbook was displayed on the screen and the hair-length rules were read. Then the principal, vice principal, and a Bible class teacher called each student in attendance to the front of the room, one at a time, sat him down, evaluated his hair length in each of the three measuring points with a ruler, and prescribed a minimum haircut to be completed by the following Monday. The student was then permitted to leave, only to be mobbed by other students who had crowded around outside the room and were desperate to know what the mysterious assembly was about.

I had no qualms with cutting my hair; I knew the rules and that my hair was out of dress code. But the assembly was a humiliating experience. I had been wronged in a public way by an institution. There was not an individual whom I could hold this incident against. So I took to the most public way I could think of to voice my anger: I posted a Facebook note detailing the scenario and how I felt about it. It created quite a stir, garnering about three dozen comments by the end of the day merely from my Facebook friends. About 85% of the commenters completely missed the point of the note, saying that I had agreed to abide by the school rules and needed to honor that commitment (with a sprinkling of a Romans 13 justification thrown in there).

Over the next few days, some of the school faculty with whom I was Facebook friends engaged with the note. The vice principal also met with me at lunch on campus. The school staff (sort of) acknowledged that they did not handle the situation in the best way; but they did not make that admission without also pointing a finger. They said that instead of posting a public note, I should have followed the "Matthew 18 principle" of confrontation: one-on-one first, then a small group of two or three if the individual did not listen, and only then in front of a larger community if the individual still did not listen. Somehow, I had ended up committing the greater wrong in this situation by not following the proper grievance-airing procedures.

The Matthew 18 principle can be reasonable to follow if the parties involved are peers, and there is no power differential. But this was not such a situation: I had been publicly humiliated by a religious/educational institution. Presumably, a group of school staff or board members had agreed on this course of action, and I had no idea who these decision-makers were.³ Furthermore, all the teachers in the school had participated in the scheme to rat their students out. (By the logic that I was served, should not the teachers have confronted their students one-on-one first?) Although though the actors involved in the assembly were the principal, vice principal, and a Bible class teacher, none of them were personally or fully responsible for what transpired. There was no one or nothing with whom I could perform a one-on-one confrontation.

Because the evangelical worldview largely does not acknowledge the existence of institutions or power structures, of course it makes sense that they claimed I should have confronted an individual. There were only individuals who had wronged me. There was nothing rotten in the state of Denmark, because there was no state of Denmark.

In addition to pointing the blame back at me, the vice principal also told me that if I wanted to see change in the underlying rule that triggered the incident, then I should craft and present a specific and reasoned alternative policy for the administration to consider. The responsibility to make change fell entirely on me. The institution was not going to engage in self-reflection, nor would it take the initiative to sample student opinion.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the story ends there. Yes, I could have crafted an alternative policy and presented it to the principal and vice principal, but I think I knew on some level that this was bigger than me presenting a case to two people. It was not as simple as the vice principal made it out to be. I knew the school board had a much heavier hand in such issues than the administration was letting on, and that I would not get an audience with the board. Indeed, I was fighting an institution, and that was a battle I was not willing to fight.

¹Actually, I guess more broadly, this is really the American perspective on the world. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and shit like that. The myth of the "self-made man".

²This change in the handbook was snuck in there with no announcement to the student body that the policy had changed. But every year, I neurotically fastidiously read every word of that damn handbook and made notes on the rules and policies that I thought were stupid. I wonder if the teachers even knew that this policy changed...or that it was a policy in the first place.

³What I would pay to this day to have been a fly on the wall for: (1) the meeting(s) in which they decided this was how they should handle the many boys out of dress code; (2) the meeting(s) in which the teachers were asked to compile a list of their students out of dress code and provide it to the administration; (3) the meeting(s) in which my note was discussed.

Motion: A Short Story

I wrote the following short story for a contest that the Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART--the local transit system--put on to celebrate its 50th anniversary. The contest was called Bart Lines. Up to 400 submissions were accepted between June 1 and June 30, 2022, from residents of the counties that BART passes through. Thirty finalists were selected based on a review from five Bay Area "literary icons". Each finalist won a $200 prize, and their short stories were dispensed at BART's Short Story Dispensers at a handful of stations. Winners were announced the week of September 5, 2022, which is why I hadn't posted the story until now.

Submitted short stories was limited to no more than 7,500 characters. The prompt for the short stories was "motion":

What does “motion” mean to you? How does it change you? Impact narrative? Transform? Whether it’s a BART ride that made a lasting impact or an (e)motion(al) tale of struggle and triumph, we want to read your interpretation of “motion” across genres, themes, and settings.

I was not selected as a finalist. So, now for public consumption, here is the short story I wrote and submitted.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Please keep your hands, arms, feet, and legs inside the vehicle while the ride is in motion.” The announcement sends a chill down my spine. My lunch churns in my stomach. My hands are ferociously clasped to the lap bar.

I haven’t ridden a roller coaster in 15 years. The first—and last—time I did was the reason for my hiatus.

That ride was called Demon Twist. I was at the county fair with five middle school friends. To 12-year-old me, the track that towered above me looked formidable as the cars roared along and the riders screamed. I could feel the ground beneath me shake as the cars flew past. I did not want to ride it.

The other five boys consolidated their remaining tickets to see if they had enough for all of us to ride Demon Twist. I stood a few feet back, quiet, the corn dog from 30 minutes ago turning over in my stomach. Only when they came up short did they realize I hadn’t offered my tickets to the pool.

“How many tickets do you have? We need four more.”

I put my left hand into my pocket and felt my strip of remaining tickets. One, two, three, four, five. I would have to lie to get out of this. I pulled my hand out of my pocket, holding only two tickets.

“Uh, I only have two. But that’s okay—you guys can go without me.”

“No, let’s go buy two more!” my best friend suggested.

My stomach dropped.

“Uh, no, that’s okay, don’t worry about it. Don’t spend your money on me.”

My best friend glared at me.

“Why? Are you a sissy?”

“Yeah, Jack, are you a sissy?”

My face went cold, then it went hot. “I…I…no!” I protested.

“Sissy…sissy…sissy…” another boy started chanting in a low voice. The other four quickly caught on, the volume growing louder with every taunt. Two of the boys pointed at me.

Panicked, I looked around. Passers-by started to take notice as the sound of the boys’ jeers reached them. My face grew hotter. “Stop!” I shouted, before the scene drew too much attention. “I’ll do it!”

As we stood in line at the ticket booth, my lower lip began to quiver. I wanted to run out of the line, out of the fair, all the way home. But then the boys would make even more fun of me on Monday at school. So I watched helplessly as one of my friends handed the dollar bill to the booth worker and received two tickets in exchange. He slapped them into my palm.

“Come on, let’s go!...unless you’re too much of a girl to go on it!”

“No,” I mumbled.

My friends ran to the entrance of Demon Twist. I plodded along reluctantly to keep up. There were only two people in the queue ahead of us, so we were guaranteed to get on the next train. There was no going back. My heart raced.

I opened my left fist and looked at the tickets clutched in my hand. Maybe one got lost on the way and I only had three. But no, in my hand were four slightly crumpled tickets, damp from all the sweat my hands were producing. I hoped the wind would gust and blow the tickets out of my hand. No such luck.

As I approached the gate, I handed my four tickets to the ride operator, a surly teenager who had serious they-don’t-pay-me-enough-to-do-this-job vibes. I boarded the car, taking the open seat to the right of my best friend. I slowly pulled down the shoulder restraint until it locked in place. Starting from the back of the cars, Surly Teen walked toward the front, pulling on the restraints to check that they held. When he got to mine, he pushed it further down deep into my ribcage and brusquely moved to the next car. “Ow!” I yelped. My friends laughed. I felt like I could barely breathe.

Surly Teen took his position behind the controls near the front of the cars. The PA system roared to life with an evil cackle. “Welcome to the DEEEEEMON TWISSSSST, where you will descend into the foulest depths OF HELL!” a voice shrieked.

A softer female voice came over the PA:

“Please keep your hands, arms, feet, and legs inside the vehicle while the ride is in motion.”

And with that, the cars started to roll forward.

I clenched the shoulder restraint until my knuckles were white. I shifted in my seat. Suddenly, I heard a loud snap by my left ear. My restraint had become unhinged and came loose on the left side. Horrified, I jiggled it back and forth; the restraint wobbled, held in place only on its right side.

“Stop the ride!” I cried to Surly Teen as my car passed him. He gruffed, “It’ll be over soon.”

The cars ascended the hill while I frantically tried to figure out how to keep myself secure. “My seat harness broke!” I called to my best friend. He laughed, but then stopped once he saw my restraint wobbling. “Uh, push into the seat. Grab onto my harness,” he said. I grabbed his restraint with my left hand while my right hand held onto the stable side of my restraint. I closed my eyes as we crested the hill.

The other riders started to scream. I felt a tightness in the pit of my stomach. The wind blew against my face as we picked up speed, the cars rattling and shaking. I was thrown to the right as we made a sharp left turn. I opened my eyes as the track winded into a maelstrom of corkscrews and helices. My restraint wobbled every time my chest bumped against it. Was it coming looser? I couldn’t tell. I gripped my best friend’s restraint harder. With every bend and twist, I was sure my restraint would fly off and I would be left holding onto my best friend’s restraint for dear life.

At last, the cars came upon a straightaway and the ride’s brakes engaged. Inertia shoved my body into my shoulder restraint, from which came a loud creak. But it held.

I looked left at my best friend. Sometime during the ride, he had put his hand on top of mine that held onto his restraint. A bolt of electricity shot from my left arm through my body, followed by a warm sensation. Our eyes met; he did not move his hand.

The cars slid into the station and came to a stop. As the restraints automatically lifted, he abruptly let go of my hand. My restraint rose at an awkward angle, hitting my left ear in the process. “Ouch,” I whimpered quietly.

The 6 of us regrouped outside the ride exit. “So, how was that, sissy?” my best friend asked me.

Now, 15 years later, another guy sits to my right. He loves roller coasters. It was his idea to have our fourth date here at the park. I told him I didn’t do roller coasters; he didn’t mind. He said there were plenty of other things to do here, and he would be happy spending time with me wherever we went. So how did I get talked into this ride?

Earlier, I told him about what happened 15 years ago. “Some friends they were,” he remarked. “Well, if you want to try again,” he offered when we arrived at the park, “we can do the Diamond Mine Train. It’s a smaller one, and it doesn’t go upside-down.”

I'd spent all morning deciding, demons of self-doubt tormenting me. If you don’t go on it, he’ll think you’re a sissy. Maybe he just wants to see you get scared and make fun of you. He’ll like you less if you don’t share this interest of his.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to. You don’t have to go on it,” he'd said at lunch.

After a long silence, I said quietly, “I’ll do it.” He beamed.

I really like him. And I want to spend as much time as I can with him. And I want to join him in the things he likes to do.

The mine cart rolls forward into the dark tunnel. I turn my head to look at him. He smiles at me. “I’m glad to be riding this with you,” he says.

“Me too,” I reply weakly. I loosen my grip on the lap bar and slide my right hand toward his. His hand meets mine. A bolt of electricity shoots from my right arm through my body. The cart’s forward motion continues.

Of course I have opinions on the Biden administration's student loan forgiveness program; I'm so glad you asked.

Last week, the Biden administration announced a student loan forgiveness program, canceling up to $20,000 in student loan debt for Pell Grant recipients and $10,000 for non-Pell Grant recipients for individuals whose annual income is less than $125,000 (or household income of $250,000). $125,000 is a pretty high threshold (well above median income), and given how many people are saddled with student loan debt, this is a pretty significant program.

Critical to understand about this program is that it is fundamentally not an out-of-the-goodness-of-my-heart program. The logic behind the program is economic: people who have student loan debt have less disposable income, leading to suppressed consumer spending and thus a less robust economy. Any messaging around this program that has to do with bleeding-heart liberalism—from either side—is ideological and opportunistic. If there were not an economic benefit expected from this program, then it would not have been pursued.

Generally speaking, it is a good thing for people to be out of debt, so in that sense, the program is good. However, what bothers me is that the government absorbing student debt does absolutely nothing to address the underlying systems that got us here in the first place: inflated university prices with little accountability for rising fees. In fact, the forgiveness program arguably reinforces the trend of rising university costs. If students are insulated from the cost because the government absorbs the debt, then universities have no incentives to keep costs low. Students need not be deterred by the high costs. I hate that the government is effectively rewarding bad behavior on the part of the universities.

There are also much broader systemic and cultural issues that this program does not address. Unless you come from a wealthy family with generous parents, the only way to pay for university is to participate in a predatory borrowing system that lends the least creditworthy adults imaginable (eighteen-year-olds with a high school diploma) tens of thousands of dollars. The expectation is that a future university degree is supposed to provide the backing for the loans, but the backing is pretty flimsy when university graduates enter the working world of stagnant wages in real terms, especially in a post-Great Recession world. Because of our society’s emphasis on the importance of a university degree as a means to personal economic success, university attendance has been steadily rising, but this has inevitably resulted in an oversaturation of university-educated adults in the marketplace. An undergraduate degree simply does not carry you as far as it used to.

Now, let’s pull a bit more on the thread of, “it is good for people to be out of debt”. I encountered a critique of the program that provided a counterargument based on my same line of reasoning: if debtors suppress their spending, and if this is bad for the economy, then why don’t we also issue debt forgiveness for people who, say, carry $40,000 in car loan debt?

My first rebuttal to this counterargument is that a car purchase is exactly the kind of consumer spending that the government is hoping to stimulate by the student loan forgiveness program.

My second rebuttal is that student loan debt is the largest debt category in the country, ahead of credit card debt, car ownership debt, or homeownership debt. In terms of net benefit to the economy, student loan forgiveness is likely to have the greatest impact (or so the premise goes).

My third rebuttal is that usually you can’t get into that kind of debt unless you are approved for such a loan based on your creditworthiness. And that’s true for most other kinds of debt too: you need to get approved for home loans, and credit cards have maximum credit limits. As mentioned previously, there is essentially no vetting process for student loans; or, at least, the vetting is based on assumptions about the student’s future rather than an examination of prior financial records to assess the student’s propensity to pay back. And, unlike for student debt, people do always have the (unfavorable) last resort option to declare bankruptcy and be released from other forms of debt, including car debt.

My first three rebuttals have focused on why car debt is not analogous to student debt. But my fourth rebuttal highlights how car debt can be similar to student debt. There are a lot of people who would indeed benefit from having their car loans forgiven—namely, low-income people who have no other transportation options. Just as taking on student debt is essentially a requirement for economic success in our society, owning a car is also essentially a requirement for economic success if you don’t live in an area with reasonable transportation alternatives¹. And that sucks. It sucks that many low-income and working class people cannot get by without a car because they live in more affordable yet distant suburbs with unrealistic and impractical transportation alternatives. It also sucks that it has become so difficult to get by without a university degree.

Owning a car is expensive. If we chose to subsidize car debt for those who absolutely needed a car for their livelihoods, then by the same logic as the student loan forgiveness program, this would also unlock untapped economic potential through increased consumer spending.

 

* * *

Do not misunderstand me: I am certainly not a gung-ho defender of the student loan forgiveness program. I would much rather have had a policy initiative intended to address the student debt crisis attack the issues at the source. Or, maybe the issue should have been left to linger until society reached a breaking point such that expecting kids to go to college fell out of fashion. In the latter case, perhaps universities would be forced to cut their fees out of economic pressure—admittedly, this scenario is a very-long-term gamble.

The program is a quick fix intended to serve as a stop-gap and address an acute financial issue facing tens of thousands of people. Like all such programs, it’s a not-great solution to a shitty situation for which there are no good solutions—think of the bailout of irresponsible financial institutions in 2009, or the PPP loan forgiveness in 2021.

Where I will draw a hard line, however, is any critique of the program that is ultimately related to some twisted sense of “fairness”. This critique usually involves some form of differentiation between people who fully paid off their loans as “responsible” and people who carry large amounts of student debt as “irresponsible”. It sometimes more overtly asserts that people who paid off their loans are somehow penalized by the program.

To that, I respond: what kind of person would wish financial hardship on someone just because other people went through it? Furthermore, the student loan forgiveness program does not penalize anyone. No one who paid off their loans is made worse off by the program, aside from a feeling of it not being fair. Yes, there will be a downstream indirect tax burden, but that would apply both to beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of the program. (There is probably a hope that the increased consumer spending will offset the potential tax bill…an oft touted strategy which never actually works, but it’s a cute idea.)

There is also a generational element here. Asserting that some students are “responsible” while others are “irresponsible” with respect to the magnitude of their student debt assigns far too much control to the individual and ignores the institutional and societal forces at play. I say that this is generational because no other generation than the currently student-indebted one (i.e., Millennials) has had to contend with university costs as exorbitant as they are with decreasing returns from a university degree, all following a lifetime of being told that attending university was the key to success. University was not an option for Millennials; it was a baseline requirement to avoid social failure and disappointing our parents. Millennials played by the rules and worked hard to get into increasingly competitive university slots, but skyrocketing university costs financed by student debt and stagnant wages make it seem like society has not held up its end of the bargain. Differentiating between “responsible” and “irresponsible” students reeks of ignorance of the circumstances in which Millennials have come of age. Certainly, there exist many irresponsible student borrowers, but I would posit that “lucky” and “unlucky” would be a more accurate bifurcation of student borrowers. So much of the current system is outside of what individual responsibility can take care of.

And, lastly, because I sometimes also write about Jesus things, it may be worth commenting on some of the critiques of the student loan forgiveness program that have come from Christians who happen to also be politically conservative. Literally the entire premise of Christianity is that people carry a debt they cannot pay, but said debt gets canceled. Where are the arguments of “responsibility” there?

“Oh, praise the one who paid my debt…”

And don’t forget the parable that Jesus told about the landowner who hired workers to start at 9 AM, noon, 3 PM, and 5 PM, and paid them all the same wage. Those who started at 9 AM got Big Mad^TM. The landowner responded:

“I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?”

(Matthew 20:13-15)

Let’s recontextualize:

“I am not being unfair to you, person who already paid off their student loans. Didn’t you sign the master promissory note agreeing to the loans’ payback terms? Congratulations, you’re still debt-free, and this program doesn't change that. As the guarantor of the federal loans, don’t I have the right to cancel them? Or are you envious because I am generous?”

 

 

 

 

 

¹ In this country, that is basically everywhere except New York City. As an aside, San Francisco’s transit is objectively not great—it is almost always faster to travel by car rather than by transit in this city—and yet it’s touted as having one of the best systems in the country.

How to cleverly (or not so cleverly) disguise your tricks in your address book

When I was a sophomore in college, I developed a system for storing phone contacts for hookup buddies. This system was borne out of necessity, as near the end of the spring semester of my sophomore year was when I started hooking up with guys (plural). I needed a way to distinguish which string of numbers corresponded to which guy whom I didn't know on a last-name basis. Strangely enough, this system has partially endured to this day.

As anyone familiar with online dating knows, especially gay online dating, mates are almost always met on a first-name basis only to start. A last name represents a level of intimacy in the connection--it means that you can be discovered more easily on social media or via a Google search, thus exposing more vulnerability.

When I started hooking up, I experienced a cognitive dissonance between my conservative evangelical upbringing that cemented the belief in my mind that premarital sex was wrong and my biological urges to experience sexual release which had been suppressed for 20 years. Indicative of this cognitive dissonance, I sought to keep those two aspects of my life distinct with no crossover. My self was divided into two halves: the former was my public-presenting self, the self that my family and friends knew; and the latter was my sexual self that I sought to hide from others. I did not intend to become friends with my hookups; I hoped I would never encounter them out in the world; I would actively avoid them out in the world if I could; I did not provide them with my last name; and I did not host at my place of residence. I wanted to avoid integration of the two halves of myself, my left hand not knowing what my right was doing.

The online platform that was my foray into recurrent sex was Adam4Adam*--a web-based gay dating site, the existence of which I learned about through a casual reference made by a gay Cal Performances coworker. Every hookup I met through this site was stored in my phone as "[First name] 6". I initially considered entering "A4A" as the last names for the hookups met through this platform, but I feared what might happen if someone saw a text message come in from someone with "A4A" as the last name. To increase the vagueness, I assigned the last name "6". 6 is the sum of 1, 4, and 1, where 1 was a stand-in for the letter "A". So "6" represented "A4A", which represented "Adam4Adam". Best of all, since my contacts were sorted by last name, all my hookups were concentrated in one place at the end of my address book. This meant that scrolling through my contacts in a public place would be less likely to expose these men. It also could enable an easy way to find all my hookup contacts for quick and complete deletion--the primary use case I kept in mind.

This all started before I had a smartphone, so any online platforms I used were web-based, accessed through a computer. At the end of the fall semester of my junior year, I obtained my first smartphone. Over the following semester, this unlocked a world of possibility for me: smartphone applications. Grindr was the first dating application I downloaded on my smartphone, even as I continued to use Adam4Adam on my laptop. Over the course of the spring semester, I learned about the existence of Tinder and Jack'd. I simultaneously began seeking out a dating relationship, so I also expanded into okCupid. I intended to use some of the platforms for dating purposes and others for sex-only purposes, the latter of which I felt was a more shameful and inappropriate use of my social energy. Accordingly, I felt I had to distinguish between the guys I met on each of these platforms to distinguish who was a candidate for a real relationship, and who was just a trick to fulfill my carnal lust.

Grindr, in my mind, was a more base and carnal platform than Adam4Adam. Consequently, guys I met from Grindr were assigned a last name of "5"--lower than "6" because I deemed the platform less legitimate and respectable. Guys I met from Tinder and okCupid were assigned a last name of "7"--higher than "6" because I deemed the platforms (or at least my intended use of the platforms) more legitimate and respectable.

For the next several years, I maintained this convention, with my designation of the "respectability" of the platform varying relative to Adam4Adam's "6". Guys I met from 3ndr were assigned a last name of "5"; from Hinge, "7"; from Coffee Meets Bagel, "7"; from Surge, "6"; and in person, "8". At various points in the past, I also downloaded Scruff and Hornet, but these apps never "clicked" for me. I never used them enough to meet anyone from them, so I never had to decide what numerical last name was most applicable to these guys.

Oddly, this convention has generally continued to this day. However, unlike my 20-year-old self, I now prefer to assign last names to my hookups. If a guy makes it into my address book, then that is an indication that I want to see him again. He may have a numerical last name at first, but as soon as I learn his last name, he moves out of that grouping in my address book and is juxtaposed with family and other friends. I have largely integrated the two halves of myself. The numerical last name convention persists merely due to systemic inertia. And now, I give zero fucks about platform "respectability"**. Most guys I meet from any new apps I may download these days usually have an "8" or a "9" as a last name for the brief period before they become regular contacts.

*I distinguish "recurrent sex" from sex in general. I had my first and second sexual experiences in a two-week period in January 2013 with the same guy. Afterward, I cut off contact with him. I met this guy on PlanetRomeo. His name was Lee. Due to self-imposed guilt, I did not have sex again until April 2013, after I created my Adam4Adam account.

**Unless, of course, the app's UI sucks, though I don't currently reflect that in how I store my contacts.