Your next Uber driver might be this college president

In a few weeks, Lawrence Schall will undoubtedly knot his tie for what might feel like the 10,000th time and make his way to his office in one of the impressively Gothic-looking buildings on the campus of Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia. Schall is the president of the private college but, for almost two months, he's been just another Uber X driver, picking up fares downtown, in the suburbs and on one of the city's approximately 572 streets with the word "Peachtree" in their names. Schall said that he took on the part-time job as a social experiment and that he plans to donate all of his earnings to the school's scholarship fund (but, so far, that's only about $100).

Schall has written about his experiences like an eager freshman who couldn't wait to finish his "What I Did Over the Summer" essay. In a Huffington Post column, he shared the very real rush of excitement he felt when he accepted his first Uber X fare – and his very real disappointment when his would-be passenger decided to get a ride on the other side of Piedmont Park (Schall's first day as a driver was during the massive cluster-eff that is Atlanta's annual Peachtree Road Race). His official first fare, he later found out, was a soon-to-be former Oglethorpe student who was in the process of transferring to a different school. He wrote:

I can't imagine what he was thinking. 'I guess the school doesn't pay him all that well' is the best I could come up [with]. Just my luck, my first ride and I picked up not just a student of mine, but one that was leaving to go to another institution. It's a small damn town.

But when Schall wrote a second column for the Washington Post, he realized that Uber just serves to reflect – and amplify – the problems with Atlanta's public transportation system. He admitted that he had a preconceived idea of who the typical Uber rider might be (although I'm not sure who uses Uber "because it's the cool thing to do") but said that his dozen-plus fares have been trying to get to work, to get to appointments or to and from one of the MARTA train stations. Schall wrote:

Atlanta is one of the most sprawling metro areas in the country, and large swaths of the suburbs are inaccessible by public transit. These suburbs are where many of the city’s poor, non-white residents live. It’s almost impossible for them to get to the city to work — an example of urban planning at its worst.

Schall said that based on the short amount of time he could dedicate to Uber X, he didn't expect to understand the entire sharing economy. But his own experiences did illustrate that no, Uber isn't just for people who need to get home from Applebee's after a fifth Bahama Mama. In some cases, Uber provides affordable transportation for people who didn't have that luxury – because sometimes, finding a ride to work or to the train station is a luxury.

Will Schall's realization make a difference, in Atlanta or any other metropolitan city? Probably not. But it does make for a good "What I Did Over the Summer" essay.