By Barbara Anderson

Pinning down a career

A college education is the foundation for so many kinds of careers, and UC Davis has helped shape the futures of astronauts, attorneys, stockbrokers, fashion designers and at least one professional wrestler. John Hennigan, who graduated in 2002 with a bachelor of arts degree, realized his long-held dream of becoming a professional wrestler by winning World Wrestling Entertainment’s Tough Enough III competition and then performing with the WWE’s Ruthless Aggression show at Rec Hall in February.

The evening’s event was staged before hundreds of Aggie fans, many of whom were friends and former classmates of Hennigan’s, and he didn’t disappoint them, outlasting his opponent, Shannon Moore, to win the match.

Hennigan’s rise to pro wrestling glory was aided during his student days at UC Davis with break dancing and kung fu classes at the Rec Hall, which he described to a California Aggie reporter as “the perfect place to start training to be a pro wrestler.”

The rating game

Once upon a time, if you had to take a class in medieval studies or computational physics and didn’t have an experienced friend to ask for advice, you pretty much had to take potluck in your choice of professor. These days, though, there’s the World Wide Web and www.ratemyprofessor.com, where students can rate a professor in the categories of helpfulness, clarity and easiness, along with an optional assessment of his or her physical attractiveness; those professors earning a high ranking in the latter category are dubbed “hot” and have a chili pepper appended next to their name. Students can add comments, and there’s a page on the Web site that lists some of the funniest (“He will destroy you like an academic ninja”).

At last check, UC Davis students had rated about 500 of their instructors; we don’t know if the guy referred to in that quote is one of ours.

Sleeping on the dock of the bay

“LIVE ON A SAILBOAT only 15 min. commute from Davis. $150/mo rent. Bathroom, refrigerator, teak/brass décor. 2 min. walk from golf course, restaurant, bar, grocery. Save $. Amazing experience. Details call Brian. . . .” (Classified ad, California Aggie, Feb. 26, 2003)

If this solution to Davis’ housing shortage catches on, perhaps we’ll soon see houseboats on Spafford Lake.

A backward glance

Below, excerpts from an editorial that ran 75 years ago in the April 11, 1928, edition of the California Aggie, possibly the last time anyone thought this place wasn’t growing fast enough:

“ . . . Everyone acquainted with the conditions at this college realizes that our enrollment is too small! . . . It has been suggested in the past that co-education would help this college, especially in an increase of our male enrollment, and we might add that we still think so.”

And speaking, as we were earlier, of career choices, that same issue of the Aggie contained a list of names, addresses and current occupations of alumni who had expressed interest in joining the new Cal Aggie Alumni Association. Among them were: U.S. Naval officer; beekeeper; orange rancher; buyer of shoes; pigeon breeder; bulb and flower grower; estate superintendent; banker; L.A. city milk inspector; hay business; marine radio operator; real estate broker; buttermaker; housewife; chief gardener, San Francisco Hospital; cow tester; hotel clerk; and bootlegger.