Merging from Objectivity to Subjectivity

Eight months. It has taken eight months, actually it is probably more than that by now, but for the sake of this story, let’s go with eight months. It has been eight months since my Bachan (grandma in Japanese; sorry I didn’t clarify that in my last post) tried to get her driver license renewed. I personally don’t drive yet. Yes, I know, it’s shocking I’m in my third year of college and I still don’t have my license, but that is beside the point. Why has it taken her eight plus months to get her license RENEWED considering she was born in the US? The person at the DMV in Oakland messed up the paperwork and wrote that she was born in another country, AFTER she provided her birth certificate that stated she was born in Oakland, California.  My Bachan has gone through two temporary licenses and my aunt has spent months playing phone tag, waiting for hours to talk to someone on the phone, only for them to be confused as why she needs to prove further documentation, when she has provided proof of having a US birth certificate.

If Oakland, CA is not part of the US, then I'm
 concerned about our education system.
(photo courtesy of World Geographic Locations)

This is my most recent experience with the California DMV, and I felt that was a good story to share with all of you after reading the Op-ed piece, “It's Audit Time. California Needs to Hold its DysfunctionalDMV Accountable,” published in the LA Times. Like most people, this is my first writing experience with an Op-ed article, especially after the way were trained to write in high school and our first writing classes in college, where our job was to analyze other authors' arguments and how effective they were in presenting their argument, not give our opinion. Not going to lie, this post has been more difficult than I thought it would be to write, but this is how I perceived the transition from objectivity (unbiased stance) to subjectivity (personal opinion) in the Op-Ed article that I read. 

The article had many of the components that I read about in the articles , “LearnWhat an Op-ed Article Is and How to Write One” and “How to Write and Op-edArticle.”  While the author wrote about statistics and gave numbers and information about the current people who play a large part of the DMV system and the California government and what they have done, they blended it into her opinions on what should be done to fix the outdated and broken system. The current system is like the tires on cars, when they get too worn down, they need to be replaced with new and better ones to keep drivers on the road and moving forward. Because of my personal experience with the DMV, I agree with her stance that the DMV needs to be audited and replaced with a better system that actually performs better and is more efficient. If it was fixed with a new system, instead of patching the holes, paperwork would get to the right place, the frustrating wait times would be less for both appointments and non-appointments, and people wouldn’t have to wait their whole day standing in a line that wraps around the building.

For me, I can go on and on writing subjectively, but because of my background in writing classes, I am used to writing objectively. I don’t think I have ever really blended them together in  short post, even this post is kind of long, but that is just how I write. Sadly, I’m that person whose five page paper ends up being ten pages. I’m not sure I will be a big fan of writing my own Op-ed, mostly because it's unfamiliar, but I did keep this post less than the 750 words that the University of Massachusetts article said to keep it under, so I think I'm off to a great start- hahaha.