Radio Chthulucene 87.9 FM

Education has become a business. At an esteemed institution like UC San Diego, it’s no secret that the dispersion of information, life skills, and knowledge has been capitalized and set behind nearly impermeable boundaries. The placement of just out of reach is behind the permeable membrane of the swinging door leading students to the beige splendor of employee offices, break rooms, and supply closets. Tones emitted by just out of reach are basic in nature, following a traditional octave extended to 12 notes with each note slightly out of tune to err on the side of unease. 

College admissions is, in plain terms, a crapshoot; you can have the best grades, most involvement on campus, and be strangled by cords and stoles at your high school graduation, yet be denied from every single institution of higher education you applied to. I am a lucky, lucky exception to the “ivies of the West”; as an out of state student from the opposite side of the country, I took an immense leap of faith choosing to move nearly 3,000 miles away from home to pursue an education at UC San Diego. Others were not so fortunate.

Countless news stories have popped up in recent years about students not being accepted to any universities, more numerous than anyone would like to admit. There are social media posts on LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, of students reacting to being denied from the school they’ve dreamed of attending since they were young. Degrees in higher education are a standard for most entry-level positions (without even touching on the 3 years of experience needed), yet are being kept out of reach by invisible hands building brick walls. They say “rejection is redirection”, but at what point does rejection become an obstacle for your life and wellbeing?

just out of reach was placed in the hub of Undergraduate Admissions at UC San Diego as a symbolic representation of the capitalized industry of higher education and its importance in American society. Today, students who take out loans to pursue an education and do exactly what we have been told have a combined bill of over $1.77 trillion dollars owed to both private and federal financial institutions. That one, single email with the seal of a university has the capacity to determine the rest of your life. That simple, swinging door could be opened to you or wrenched shut forever. just out of reach remains behind that simple, swinging door in symbolic resistance to the sisyphean task of learning to live.