Thnks Fr Th Mmrs

I wish those days when we ended school and we got to celebrate by having a party, not dumb, meticulous finals to study for. Bleh.

As Finals are approaching faster than ever before, I feel like this would be an appropriate time to reflect upon my first year at UCLA. Plus this gives me an extra excuse to not study for Finals yet. I mean, nurturing my mind is just as important as my grades, right? I guess my grades will pay the price later.

What a first year it has been.

Just wanted to get that off my chest.

Now I can finally write in honesty. This year has definitely been an interesting year, little to nothing what I was expecting while I was still a little innocent high-schooler sucking my thumb while pondering about waking up at 3 pm every day, attending every single basketball game, and lounging on the bright green grass while sipping iced tea reading Kurt Vonnegut novels.

Yeah, not exactly what I expected.

Yet I can say that I didn't expect some of my greatest memories and moments to happen here.

As cliche as it is this year has really been a rollercoaster; I've been up higher than any man has been, living off my adrenaline while never wanting to fall back down, and I've been so low I've felt like no one was there but me. My heart has been revived this year; my heart has been broken this year. I have felt revived; I have felt shut down. I have succeeded; I have failed. I have felt loved; I have felt hated. I have had confidence; I have had regret. I now really know what Charles Dickens means by his opening lines famous opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

I have had some of my greatest and most heartwarming moments here at UCLA. It was here where I rediscovered my love for basketball after it was long forgotten. It was here where I improved my guitar skills and gained the confidence to sing in public places. It was here where my faith in God has grown like wildfire. It was here where simply going to a Bowling For Soup concert and meeting the bassist still regularly replays in my head. It was here where I was able to stay up and see the sun rise in the company of friends just talking honestly. It was here where I discovered how much of a joke some classes could be like MIMG. It was here where a simple night bowling turned into a game of laughs, hugs, and love. It was here where a Thanksgiving far away felt so much closer.

I've met some pretty interesting people here, yet at the same time I've also felt that I've met people who could care less about me. I've gotten to grow closer to a few significant people, and I've felt like I've gotten to talk to some people who I feel I can grow with next year. I want to reserve this paragraph in my blog that no one will read to just thank those people who were there for me, when I needed it the most. I may have only known you guys for nine months but you guys mean everything to me. Thank you so much. I hope you guys know who you are.

Not to say that there were moments that I would not like to think about. I'll be honest; there were times where I felt rejection, like the world was going to stop spinning, where I felt like one mediocre being out of a vast sea of geniuses, where I've felt socially out of place, where I felt that I had nothing going for me.

But I feel what kept me going to this point was God steering me towards the right direction. I would be nowhere without Him. Praise God for what he has given me and taken away.

For the most parts the adjustments were pretty smooth. Academically there was almost no transition period; going from a small, 20-30 size room to having 100 people in one class where you didn't know most people didn't feel intimidating at all. In a way I kind of prefer it this way.

Living in a dormitory also proved to be pretty smooth. Sure there were a lot of people, and I didn't have the most privacy, but I have actually grown to like the dorm lifestyle.

I would say my biggest challenge was adjusting socially. Going from a place where I knew most of my peers to not knowing a single soul (there are only a tiny handful of others I knew from my hometown) proved to be more of an issue. This meant making new impressions, making new friendships, making new bonds, inside jokes, connections, you get the picture. All in 30 weeks.

Which led me to a new realization; it's super easy to reinvent yourself in college. No one knows (except those who knew you before) your past life, your past stereotypes, your past experiences, and no one ever has to know. It's almost too easy to become a new person in college. I've noticed that this is both good and bad.

As this year went by much, much too fast, I feel like I'm not ready to end my first year at UCLA. I'm not ready to become labeled as a second year. I feel that part of this reason is because of the numerous regrets I have this year and the desire to make them up. There is this unexplainable attachment that I have to this year that I still want to keep, despite the negatives of this year. It still hasn't even hit me that I'm done with my first year. I feel like we're going to go on another two-week vacation, come back, settle, take more classes, live on the same floor, etc. For the first time, I'm not sure how ready I am for summer. This is the first summer that I've spent after college.

I feel like I missed out on a lot of things I still want to say. I also feel like this is a bad way to end a blog. But I feel like I have to end it like this. I will say, though, that I hope God continues to guide me through next year, and I pray that He will help me solve my regrets throughout my next year, and make miraculous improvements that I've suffered through this year while retaining all that I've cherished this year.

One last note. Seriously. I'm sure I'll still see some people regularly that I've met this year, yet I also feel that I'll rarely see some people I've met this year as well. Sometimes people just drift away unwillingly. It's inevitable. But for all of those people I've encountered this year: Good-bye and have a restful, blessed summer. Thnks Fr Th Mmrs.