• ***The following story is satirical. For facts, please refer to our News section.

Ever since I was a child, it was my dream to graduate college, spend 20 years clawing my way up the corporate ladder, and then donate large sums of money to feel something again. Somewhere along the line, the powers that be moved the last step of this plan to the beginning. Through student fees, I now get to donate large sums of money before I’ve even graduated college. If you’re anything like me, donating money I haven’t earned yet sometimes creates more existential dread than it eases. So here are five of my favorite places on campus to sit down and, like any good student, think through the big questions of my life.

1. Next to the Salvador Dali Statue at the Ulrich

Often, the size of my student fee bill feels surreal. The only thing that can put it into context is looking at a piece of art by a man who, by all indications, thought that time and money were abstract concepts. Here, I like to think about how I can learn, like WSU Director of News and Media Relations Joe Kleinsasser says, “to look at a bigger picture than just [my] immediate four years here.” At first, I thought this meant managing my personal spending in order to avoid student loans and enter the workforce with enough money to pay for rent, but I’m beginning to understand that this means donating cash to future WSU students and just hoping that I don’t undergo any personal emergencies for the first 10 years of my career. Trust me, this all made sense when I was chatting with the Salvador Dali Statue at the Ulrich.

2. The deforested lot where the YMCA I’m supposedly not paying for is going to go

Ideally, this section would be titled “The beautiful rolling grassy area that I love walking through on the way to class,” but now it has been leveled to the ground. So instead, I like to stand next to the chain link fence that separates me from the future YMCA that will provide facilities very similar to the Heskett Center but, in lieu of history or nostalgia, will have a nice Christian organization brand name slapped on it. It is here that I contemplate how church and state are separated, just like how myself and hundreds of dollars in student fees are separated every semester.

The deforested lot where the YMCA I’m supposedly not paying for is also my favorite place to contemplate a quote by Vice President for Finance and Administration Werner Golling: “The university would be able to take on new debt because of the new funding source from increased student fees.” I don’t exactly know what it means, but it seems to really bring the room together. I don’t know. It’s a little hard to think with all the construction vehicles going at it.

3. Innovation Campus

Now I’ll admit it — I don’t really know where Innovation Campus is, but it sounds like exactly the sort of place I’d like to contemplate how my student fees help build this fine university. I imagine gazing upon the buildings produced by Public-Private Partnerships, contemplating my own conflicts of interest as I wonder how they match up to the potential conflicts of interest that could be occurring here at Wichita State. For example, I’m thinking, I want to graduate to make money, but I also want to not go broke trying to graduate to make money. Meanwhile, WSU might be thinking that people who have been married should not be allowed to make business deals over public-private lines, but that they also want to make money. It’s at times like these that I feel especially close to my administration.

4. The Flats

Sometimes, I like to sit in The Flats and pretend that I, like nearly 15 percent of our student population, live on campus. I think about how WSU is transforming into a live-on campus, just like how my student fees are transforming into a life-threatening bill.  Could these things, like my drive to succeed and my desire for a 24-hour library, be related? Only more contemplation will tell.

5. Waiting in the parking lot for this student to finally get off his phone and back out so I can take their spot

One of my favorite times to contemplate student fees is when, after I’ve been driving around the student parking lot for ten minutes to find a spot, I finally find a student walking back to their car and follow them like some kind of parking lot stalker. During the inevitable seven minutes between them getting into the car, posting to Instagram, and deciding which Ariana Grande playlist to blast on repeat on the drive home, I like to think about increases in student fees.

The contemplation sometimes goes a little like this: “Most people I know aren’t going to willingly say ‘I want to pay 90 more dollars a semester to do something,’ right? So at face value, you’re going to just say ‘Why should I,’ right? ‘I’m poor. I can’t afford it all.’” But then I remember that that’s actually a quote from Teri Hall arguing for student fees to be increased. By the time I realize this, the student has finally pulled out of the spot. I park, try not to die crossing the designated crosswalks, and make my way to the Salvador Dali statue at the Ulrich, where everything just seems to make a little more sense.