The class they never offered

People spend years in college studying a subject in hopes of getting paid a good amount of money to work in that specific field for the rest of their life.

After all those years of hard work, a piece of paper saying the student has become an expert at what they studied, is given. Those general education classes that they had to take, which had nothing to do with their major become irrelevant, or simply, a waste of two years.

English majors will never need to know about symmetric polynomials, just as math majors will never need to know about a Shakespearean sonnets’ use of iambic pentameter.

They will however, need to know how to file for a mortgage, fix a leak in a sink, change a tire, do their taxes or anything to do with healthcare.

If college is a school for adults, it certainly doesn’t teach you how to be one.

Pierce should have a program teaching students the necessary life skills needed beyond college.

It may be difficult adopting a “Life Skills” class as part of the typical college curriculum, a fail in the class could be a misapprehension and interpreted as ‘you’re a failure at life’, or you get an ‘A’ because you did your taxes better than your classmates. It would seem rather ridiculous. Instead Pierce should adopt a program where there is no letter grade. It could be once a week for one to three hours around the late afternoon, making it more convenient for the younger students who typically have earlier classes.

The program could also to teach the young students about conducting a professional social media presence. According to careerbuilder.com,

51 percent of employers who have researched job candidates on social media have found content that caused them to not hire applicants, up from 43 percent last year.

Each week, something different could be studied and there could be a schedule of what skills are learned one week and what is learned the next. For example, Week one, “How To File A Mortgage,” week two, “How To Repair A Flat Tire.”

Each week the scheduled classes will attract a new and different

ENRIE AMEZCUA

Online Editor

enrieamezcua.roundupnews@gmail.com

It’s a good feeling when you clean your room. You appreciate it, and it doesn’t feel weird when you have friends and family visit. Coming to Pierce should feel the same way.

Pierce is a home away from home and should be treated the same. When the campus looks good so does its reputation.

It’s a good feeling that someone will have inside of them when it comes to noticing our campus looks so nice.

With a large campus, keeping it clean isn’t exactly a task that can be done with a small custodial staff against more than 20,000 students. Not all students pick up the trash that they drop, and it makes the school look messy when students aren’t taking good care of it. I will plead guilty myself for dropping trash on the floor, but I will usually pick it after noticing.

A clean up day being put in place is like saying thank you to the faculty who work vigorously to keep the campus clean everyday. Campus clean up day would show that we do care.It should be a day that students are available. Obviously Sunday would be the best day for students to take time off life and give back to the school.

Cleaning up the campus isn’t the only job that students and volunteers can do. There are parts of campus that needs to be repainted with fresh coats. Plants that need to be trimmed or more plants can be planted

Photographers:

Ezzat Bekheet where it looks barren. Rooms that need to be vacuumed or courts that need to be clean. I care about this school’s appearance, and every student should. Even after clean up day is done, we can still do our part to keep the school clean. Just clean up after yourself and help keep the campus clean.

Volunteering to help clean up, also looks good on a resume. In a LinkedIn survey found that 41 percent of hiring managers will consider volunteer service as equal as a paid job. Volunteer service will look a better on resume without any work experience than a resume with no volunteer service or work experience.

Custodians should be taking most of the credit for keeping the college the way it looks but there is just too many rooms, bathrooms, walkways, hallways and parking lots to keep clean at different hours of day. This is not including accidents that will require a cleanup.

When it comes to games, there is usually an audience who goes and watches the game and sometimes this crowd will leave a mess. Custodians will come in and clean up. We’re human, we can be messy but when it comes to clean, we have the capability to tidy up.

Pierce having a clean up day is good idea for when visitors come. They won’t walk away because of the trash.

Ahmadreza Rastegarrazi

Abdolreza Rastegarrazi

Dane Igharas

Taylor Arthur Travis Wesley

Alan Castro

Laura Chen

Brittany Stupar

Georgina Hernandez

Claren Flores

Calvin Alagot audience for those who just want to learn about the basics of healthcare for one week and those who want to repair the kitchen sink the next.

It would be a non-committed program. Sign-ups early on would not be required. This way there is no extra step into building popularity for the program. If the turnout is good and popularity increases, then having sign-ups would be mandatory.

As far as finding an instructor, Pierce could pay one of their own professors extra to teach the class for one day like an instructor in the automotive department, or a professor who teaches in one of the finance classes.

After you have graduated college and have earned a degree in your field, you may not ever have to remember learning about linear regression. Instead, you will probably have a better time remembering how to fix the kitchen sink that you learned how to do in a few hours.

KELLAN BRADLEY Campus Lifestyle Editor

kbradley.roundupnews@gmail.com

I don’t believe there should be a cleanup day on campus because students do not attend school to clean it. There are many things wrong with having a mandatory cleanup day on campus. One of them being, as students we are here to learn and get an education. I believe there is a simple solution to a dirty campus. That solution is for students to pick up after themselves.

We want our campus to be attractive and clean, right? When rival schools come to compete against us, we don’t want them going home criticizing us because of our campus. We want to keep our campus clean to show that we’re not slobs, and are educated enough to pick up our own garbage.

Nobody would like it if people stopped picking up trash and let our school become filled with trash. It is very important to keep our school clean to provide an appropriate learning environment.

It would be a good idea to clean up our environment, maybe if there were more trash cans you could make our school cleaner. Even if everybody picked up one thing, our school would not be 3/4 clean. That’s how bad our mess has gotten. Who wants to attend a school that’s now for the trash, ants and roaches. No one does, and that’s why we should clean our school and our great reward in the end will be a clean, safe and healthy environment. There are many things the college can do to reduce waste on campus other than having a campus cleanup day. We could have more trash cans and recycle bins around the campus, especially near the food trucks, student store and the café. Once again, having a specific day set aside for picking up trash is useless, and wont serve much purpose. as letters, literary endeavors, publicity releases, poetry or other such materials as the Editorial Board deems not to be a letter. The deadline is 11:59 p.m. the Sunday prior to the issue date. Editorial Policy: The Pierce College Roundup position is presented only in the editorials. Cartoons and photos, unless run under the editorial masthead, and columns are the opinions of the creators and not necessarily that of the Roundup. The college newspaper is published as a learning experience under the college journalism instructional program. The editorial and advertising materials published herein, including any opinions expressed, are the responsibility of the student newspaper staff. Under appropriate state and federal court decisions, these materials are free from prior restraint by the virtue of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. Accordingly, materials published herein, including any opinions expressed, should not be interpreted as the position of the L.A. Community College District, the college or any officer or employee thereof.

In conclusion, picking up any trash around school will be beneficial to everybody, but we do not need to have a campuswide day to do so. If you see a piece of a paper blowing around, stop it with your foot and throw it away. There’s no reason why our campus needs to be anything other than attractive. With everyone’s help, this campus can be a beautiful place to go to school everyday.

Vacuum pump not repaired

Broken vacuum pump impacts students learning experience in the Center for Sciences

TIFFANY BERWAGER Staff tberwager.roundupnews.com

Broken vacuum pump system leaves Organic Chemistry students waiting to experiment.

The vacuum pump system under the Center for Sciences has remained broken since the fall semester resulting in cancelled experiments and a professor to build her own system.

The Pierce College Council approved a request for $40,000 to repair the vacuum pump system in the Center for Sciences. Chemistry professor Isidore “Izzy” Goodman and Chemistry Department Chair Sara Harvey said they do not know when it will be fixed, and they directed the Roundup to ask Director of Facilities Paul Nieman for that information. Nieman could not be reached for comment after multiple attempts.

Organic Chemistry 1, Organic Chemistry 2 and Biochemistry require the pump during experiments.

Experiment number four in Organic Chemistry, preparing soluble salts by fractional crystallization, was canceled due to the non-functioning vacuum pump system, according to Goodman.

“The experiment has been postponed this [spring] semester, but if the vacuum is not fixed soon, the experiment may be canceled,” said Cari Meyer Joiner, chemistry professor.

The underground pump system is broken but Joiner created her own make-shift vacuum pump system, or vacuum manifold, using a miniature pump so some experiments that use the pump can still be done in one classroom.

Joiner said the vacuum manifold she built is a standard graduate school set up used for drawing reagents and other tasks.

“It doesn't drain without the vacuum pulling it, so we need that for our experiment,” Joiner said.

Biochemistry major Drake Edgett said students are lucky to have a professor who is capable of making a vacuum, but it is a slower process than if the main pump worked.

“The broken vacuum pumps are a bit of a hindrance,” Edgett, said. “We do have a very smart and intelligent teacher [Joiner], who had the tools and knowledge on how to remedy this situation and make it as best as possible. It's not ideal, but it's better than nothing.” their experiments. Now the class is divided into groups of nine students, with each group taking its turn with the equipment. The groups of nine are also separated, with four students on one side of the experiment, while the other five students are working at the other end.

“So we're going from 24, down to nine, and that's because we bought a second[pump], because during the Fall,” Joiner said. We only had that one[pump] that I dug out of an old glassware box.”

Joiner said when she realized the vacuum was not being repaired quickly she ordered a second and as a result it is better this semester than it was in the fall.