Attending Picnic Day as an Alum
Picnic Day (usually around 4/20), is a day to celebrate Davis. It's one of the biggest events of the year in this small college town, and is essentially when college students wander around campus and Downtown Davis drunk or high or both.
As a law student on the semester system, picnic day was usually close to finals, but Igave up trying took picnic day as a study break opportunity to see some sunlight and check out campus with my non-gunner friends.
FF to 2018:
I didn't really plan on going to picnic day as an alum, but this year Josey flew up to NorCal (mostly for Napa, partly to visit me) and Davis was the perfect meeting spot since she was at a friend's in the East Bay and I'm up in Sac. After surprisingly terrible traffic, I picked up Josey from the Amtrak station, and being too lazy to walk 8+ blocks to campus I decided to drive us to the law school.
Josey wanted to get in the law school and see if people were studying (what we usually did after picnic day, maybe we were wannabe gunners), so we lurked for a few minutes but were unsuccessful in our attempts to infiltrate our stomping ground [that we spent way too much time inside anyways.] We walked down towards the new Manetti Shrem art museum (that was under construction the entire time I was a law student), stopping by the Alumni center and getting random crap from the UC Davis Alumni Association (reusable shopping bags, pens, a GEICO lizard stuffed animal). The Alumni center had a fun scavenger hunt where you could win Olive Oil, but I didn't feel like signing up for it (I'm still in debt because of grad school) so we just took pics on IG instead.
Next we went into the museum, where I annoyingly had to check in my reusable bag with free crap. The highlights were a sign in Chinese, pie pics galore [Wayne Thiebaud], and some immigrant rights pieces. After about 10 minutes in the museum and reclaiming my bag of crap, we moseyed over to the Mondavi Food Institute, where we admired grapevines pretending we were in Napa and then got free ice cream, a nice treat on a 80+ degree day.
We traversed back to the law school where we snuck in the front door, and then walked to the library to see how many students weregunning studying. It was only 3. But I actually saw a current student I knew, and felt slight schadenfreude since I didn't have to study later. We also creeped around study carrels, where a student had this $7.99 sign from amazon that accurately describes law school life and life post law school:
Afterwards we decided to walk around the rest of the undergrad campus, making our way towards the new Memorial Union. We ran into other things the UC spent unnecessary money on, such as this vehicle:
We checked out the newly remodeled student union, ran into other fellow Davis alum, and also spun a wheel by Amazon for more free crap (we got vegetarian protein shakes, which may actually be useful- compared to the copious free sunglasses than I normally "win"). We stopped by the Egghead in a book, and Josey remarked on the simple joy of not having our head in a book on picnic day.
Once we finished up meandering around campus, I wanted to go to De Vere's to see if they had a photobooth. As soon as we stepped in, Josey said: "it smells... like college." Lo and behold, in the back there was a Giggle and Riot photobooth, a fun way to end our Picnic Day shenanigans.
We checked out most of all we wanted to see in less than 3 hours, but it was nice to be in Davis when the campus is open to the community and reminisce about being a student. It's not the most exciting town, but it's a quaint place to go to school and make memories with fellow suffering classmates.
As a law student on the semester system, picnic day was usually close to finals, but I
WHEN WE WERE YOUNG (circa 2014)
I didn't really plan on going to picnic day as an alum, but this year Josey flew up to NorCal (mostly for Napa, partly to visit me) and Davis was the perfect meeting spot since she was at a friend's in the East Bay and I'm up in Sac. After surprisingly terrible traffic, I picked up Josey from the Amtrak station, and being too lazy to walk 8+ blocks to campus I decided to drive us to the law school.
Josey wanted to get in the law school and see if people were studying (what we usually did after picnic day, maybe we were wannabe gunners), so we lurked for a few minutes but were unsuccessful in our attempts to infiltrate our stomping ground [that we spent way too much time inside anyways.] We walked down towards the new Manetti Shrem art museum (that was under construction the entire time I was a law student), stopping by the Alumni center and getting random crap from the UC Davis Alumni Association (reusable shopping bags, pens, a GEICO lizard stuffed animal). The Alumni center had a fun scavenger hunt where you could win Olive Oil, but I didn't feel like signing up for it (I'm still in debt because of grad school) so we just took pics on IG instead.
Our IG with Gunrock (the school's mascot and a real horse's name).
Next we went into the museum, where I annoyingly had to check in my reusable bag with free crap. The highlights were a sign in Chinese, pie pics galore [Wayne Thiebaud], and some immigrant rights pieces. After about 10 minutes in the museum and reclaiming my bag of crap, we moseyed over to the Mondavi Food Institute, where we admired grapevines pretending we were in Napa and then got free ice cream, a nice treat on a 80+ degree day.
We traversed back to the law school where we snuck in the front door, and then walked to the library to see how many students were
We checked out the newly remodeled student union, ran into other fellow Davis alum, and also spun a wheel by Amazon for more free crap (we got vegetarian protein shakes, which may actually be useful- compared to the copious free sunglasses than I normally "win"). We stopped by the Egghead in a book, and Josey remarked on the simple joy of not having our head in a book on picnic day.
I'm wearing a "Proud Aggie Alum" sticker #NoShame
Once we finished up meandering around campus, I wanted to go to De Vere's to see if they had a photobooth. As soon as we stepped in, Josey said: "it smells... like college." Lo and behold, in the back there was a Giggle and Riot photobooth, a fun way to end our Picnic Day shenanigans.
We checked out most of all we wanted to see in less than 3 hours, but it was nice to be in Davis when the campus is open to the community and reminisce about being a student. It's not the most exciting town, but it's a quaint place to go to school and make memories with fellow suffering classmates.
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