\nby William Carlos Williams<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
![\"Abandoned](\"\/echo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/shopping-cart-236x300.jpg\")
Echo Photo by Luke Buehler<\/p><\/div>\n
Folks will drive on UCR Drive, pass this shopping cart, chuckle a little, then drive on, and forget \u00f7<\/p>\n
Not me. God only knows who put that cart there. Often too many people will overlook the purpose of something so random, so simple, so offbeat.<\/p>\n
As I drove home from school, thinking to myself how hilarious the next four years will be, I drove past the cart, which had been sitting on the UCR roadside for over a week.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat if I wrote a story for the Echo about this shopping cart?\u201d I thought.<\/p>\n
With the RCTC Foundation scholarship portal opening soon, I knew that a story about applying for scholarships was in need of being written. Again.<\/p>\n
Of course, every year it\u2019s the same. \u201cApply for scholarships! Too much money goes unclaimed every year! You have a chance if you apply! Not enough people apply! Blah blah blah.\u201d<\/p>\n
We get it. Yes, I\u2019m talking to you, faculty of RCTC. We need to apply for them. Enough already.<\/p>\n
So this shopping cart. Kind of weird, right? Just sitting there. Brown, dead leaves as patrons in its basket. Unclaimed. Completely out in the open. Exposed for what it is \u2013 humble.<\/p>\n
What if this shopping cart was worth $3,000? It probably does have some monetary value, but not to that extent. Let\u2019s pretend for a minute that it was worth $3K. It\u2019d have been gone yesterday. In fact, the minute it was abandoned, it would not have been long before someone came along and snatched it away.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s say there were two people who found it at the same time. What then? Would all hell break loose? Would the police be involved? Who knows, really. Now let\u2019s resume to where we are today. A boring shopping cart sitting on the roadside of UCR Drive. Abandoned. Exposed. Unclaimed.<\/p>\n
That shopping cart is the thousands of dollars that are available to students via the Foundation scholarships. I\u2019m not some middle-aged faculty member screaming at you from the depths of your unconsciousness that you, a financially lost student of RCTC, need to apply for these scholarships, or else the demonic student loans will kill you and eat your family.<\/p>\n
I will state this \u2013 it\u2019s really just free money. Think about it. How hard would it be for you to go get that shopping cart, call Cub Foods (which is most likely where it came from), explain to them the situation, and ask them if they\u2019d give you some kind of reward to return it? They might, or they might not. For this story, let\u2019s say they do. Yet folks will just drive by and not see the potential in making the claim. Too many students see the advertisement for the Foundation scholarships, but do nothing. Truthfully, I didn\u2019t believe I\u2019d get one until I did apply. Between the last two academic years, I\u2019ve received three.<\/p>\n
There is real purpose in the red wheelbarrow, my fellow students. I promise you that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Luke Buehler Editor-in-Chief Luke.Buehler7156@mb.rctc.edu So much dependsupona red wheelbarrowglazed with rainwaterbeside the whitechickens \u2013 \u201cThe Red Wheelbarrow\u201d by William Carlos Williams Folks will drive on UCR Drive, pass this shopping cart, chuckle a little, then drive on, and forget \u00f7 Not me. God only knows who put that cart there. Often too many people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}