BERKELEY, Calif. — Berkeley undergraduate philosophy major Andrew Houston, who is particularly interested in Aristotelian metaphysics, spent much of last weekend pondering the question of why his friends don’t have access to their dads’ credit cards.
“We can assume a priori that everyone needs to buy things. Potentially some people have not ascended to the Platonic Form of the Black Card, but from the father’s perspective, it should be a categorical imperative to provide their kids with resources,” Andrew was found mumbling while sitting on a rock, hunched over. “But some people I’ve met don’t have their dad’s credit card in their wallet. Some even have to use their own money.”
One of Andrew’s friends, Xander, who to Andrew’s confusion has now declined three separate invitations to a private helicopter tour of the Bay, offered his account. “He was just going on about Jean-Paul Sartre and that humans are free or something. . . .” Xander recalled. “I told him my dad doesn’t work in private equity like his dad does, and he said something about that being an ontological statement and to consider the matter from the perspective of metaphysical grounding.”
Andrew’s ex-girlfriend Genevieve, located through means not considered respectable journalism so not to be mentioned here, had a similar story. “As a computer science major, I want to get recruited for a job at a big tech company with a six-figure starting salary. Andrew couldn’t seem to understand the concept of ‘getting a job’ and of ‘starting salary.’ He was just genuinely confused about what it means to work for someone who is not your dad.”
“He also once asked me if I was just embarrassed to tell him about my career goals because I would be starting out at a job like deputy-CTO rather than just CTO.”
At press time, Andrew brought up a new philosophical question. He had just implemented a new tax-loss harvesting strategy that would limit his portfolio’s exposure to capital gains taxes. And he was pondering why his classmates weren’t using a similar strategy for their portfolios.