Advice Column: Balance, Boundaries, and Boyfriends

Image description: Girl lies on stomach while writing in open journal on floor, using a pen with a fluffball at the top. Drawn in black and white cartoon style.

I hate my job, but if I don’t make money, I will die. How do I cope?

Hi, reader. I completely and wholeheartedly sympathize with you: we are truly becoming workers alienated from our labor and any authentic emotional fulfillment. This question is one that I am sure plagues many of our fellow UCLA students and alumni (especially sociology majors). But your query has one simple answer: take on the personality of straight cis men with  crypto grindsets. Now that we’ve reached late-stage capitalism and the revolutionary class uprising Marx predicted is nowhere to be seen, there is nothing else to do but turn to the lifestyle that God planned for us.

That’s right — embrace the ideology of the hustle bro. We weren’t meant to live like this, but capitalism demands that we pretend to enjoy it, so why not lean into it as much as you can before the system collapses altogether? Start referring to sleep as a “poor person habit.” Call your friends “boss” and “king” unironically. Replace all your regular beverages with Celsius and black coffee and tell people you’re fasting for discipline. Invest in NFTs, even though the market is dead. Say things like “capitalism is just a game, and I’m playing to win” while wearing a Patagonia vest over an H&M button-down. 

Stop thinking of yourself as an employee, start thinking of yourself as a free agent in the open market of financial dominance. Begin every morning by liking every single one of Elon Musk’s tweets. Convert your 401(k) into Dogecoin. Start referring to meetings as “weekly stakeholder negotiations” and Slack messages as “on-chain transactions” (HR will love this). Use LinkedIn as your primary form of social media.

If you still feel any sense of emptiness from this lifestyle, you can escape the rat race altogether by becoming the rat—quit your job, liquidate your savings into Solana and become a full-time crypto trader. Wake up at 4 a.m. to watch overseas market trends while your former coworkers enjoy their boring “weekends off” with their wife and kids. Start calling yourself “financially independent” even though you recently moved into a windowless shoebox with six other guys named Chad (to commit to the lifestyle). Convince yourself that Bitcoin has a future and any sort of intrinsic value. 

And if all else fails? Just punch a wall and start your podcast.

How can I balance being an academic weapon while also being the life of the party?

Ah, the classic dilemma. The key here isn’t balance (because as we all know, the neoliberal myth of the work-hard-play-hard lifestyle is just another productivity scam),it’s efficiency. 

You don’t have to be in Powell 24/7 to dominate your classes––the people who willingly go to Night Powell simply hate their lives (speaking from experience). But you also don’t have to go out every night to have a social life– you’ll just end up at Ronald Reagan getting your stomach pumped and having to write an essay to UCLA Housing apologizing for your violation of the Bruin Code of Conduct. 

The real trick is strategic effort: maximizing impact with minimal wasted time. Leave your phone across the room when you’re doing work. Take meticulous notes so you’re not scrambling before exams. You see those annoying people in lecture halls who scribble on iPads with cases that look like composition books? Be like them as much as possible. Get a new set of acrylic nails every week so the ASMR of your typing motivates you to comment, “Great point, Ashley H.!” on every BruinLearn discussion board. Use Notion for everything. Lastly, caffeine (and any other stimulant you can get your grubby paws on) is an academic weapon’s best friend. 

And when you do go out, commit to the bit 100%. There’s no point in being half-present at a party, submitting your 500-word weekly memo during twerk contests in a WeHo club. Every time you go out dressed to the nines, don’t be afraid of that seventh shot. But most importantly,don’t say yes to every plan––you want people to want you. By being as sparkly as you can on the few nights you do say yes, your presence will elevate every gathering, whether it’s a kickback, night out clubbing, elegant dinner or birthday party. Plus, this gives you more time to lock in and finish your assignments. Going out always feels better when you know you’ve submitted that assignment. Nothing makes a tequila shot taste not-like-absolute-dogshit than the sweet, sweet relief of a Canvas submission receipt.

How can I convince my cis straight boyfriend that outside clothes do not belong on the bed?

For fellow readers who may not be familiar with the term “outside clothes,” this refers to any piece of clothing that has left the confines of your room or home and come into contact with the outside world. This would include the outfit you wore to pick up a few groceries from Whole Foods, go to that 8 a.m. discussion, or grab lunch with a friend in Westwood. The moment you step outside in that outfit, it all becomes outside clothes. 

Back to your question, dear respondee. I must first ask you, is your boyfriend a mangy beast? Hath he never known cleanliness? Why must the sanctity of your bed become desecrated by his inability to understand contagious germ proliferation?

Wearing outside clothes on the bed is equivalent to rolling around in the grime of never-cleaned Kerckhoff tables, too-warm lecture hall seats and air pollution produced by the constantly hovering LAPD helicopters…and then diving straight into the sacred, clean sanctuary of your sleeping space. 

Think about it—those clothes may have been on public transport seats, brushed against unwashed surfaces and absorbed the invisible filth of the world beyond your home. Would you willingly invite all that dirt, bacteria and who-knows-what-else into the very place where you lay your head at night? If the answer is no (as it should be!), then the case against outside clothes on the bed is clear.

Apart from the glaringly clear sanitary question of sliding into your bed in jeans that rubbed up against a Royce 190 lecture hall cushion that has been the victim of decades of student farts, this begs another query regarding your boyfriend’s character altogether. If he is willing to carry the dross of the heavily contaminated climate hellscape into a sacred space, what else is he willing to do? This sounds like a fast-track to a relationship built on questionable morals and even worse hygiene. If he doesn’t change into the proper at-home attire (that also isn’t pajamas) to go on the bed, perhaps it is time to revisit the dating apps. After all, you don’t want to be sleeping with a potential biohazard and walking UTI risk.