Posts Tagged ‘experiences’

A reflection on college: what is it for?

laelene Posted in general blog,Tags: , , , ,
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Those of you active on facebook have probably been tagged in the “25 random things about me” note by this point.  In case you haven’t it’s this note that someone started by writing 25 tidbits about him/herself (I’m just going to pretend this was a girl and use the appropriate pronouns) and tagging 25 people who she wanted to learn more about.  You are supposed to include whoever tagged you as well, so they can read what you wrote.  I think it’s the most passed-on note of all facebook history.  After I’d been tagged a few times, I decided it was my turn to continue the trend and I found myself reflecting on college:

“After I graduated, I thought I’d miss college a lot. Surprisingly, I’m ok. Possibly because I am still there all the time (at least once a week), but I think also because this is the only time I can get away with weeks of not having something/somewhere I had to go, certain times I have to get up, and no deadlines to meet. I spent a lot of time watching TV shows, which I haven’t done since middle school – Gilmore Girls, House, Pushing Daisies, and now Lie to Me. Now that I’m all but caught up on the last episodes of House and Lie to Me, I’ve been filling my time with a lot of reading. To some extent I’m learning a lot more than I ever did in school. From career advice to relationship advice, Asian American perspectives to Gen Y opinions, I’m covering a lot of ground. The great thing is everything I’m learning is useful!

Looking back and reading others’ thoughts on college is making me think of it more as a place to blossom and learn about yourself than to really learn anything concrete for your future. To some extent, yes, there are facts and figures to be remembered. But for the most part, it’s about figuring out what you want to do, how you interact with people, where you fit in the world, the type of people you should surround yourself with, etc. Except for highly specified fields, the degree you walk away almost never tells anything about your future. (I just realized this is starting to sound like something that should be a blog post. Sorry. I’ll go write up an entry on this instead.)”

Here I am, making good on that promise.

I’ve read articles on why this guy regretted getting straight A’s in college, tips on what college students should do to prepare themselves for their professional future, and a personal account of lessons learned outside the college classroom.  It all made me realize that there’s a bigger picture here, beyond the quest for perfect grades.

We enter college thinking that this is our ticket to that job we wanted.  And in many ways, it is.  Just not the way you’d expect.  People spend so much time agonizing over what major to study, what classes to take, and what school to go to in the first place.  Yet what matters more are the people you’ll meet, the skills (and not so much the facts) you’ll learn, and the experience you can look back on.

What should you be capitalizing on?  Networking, self-discovery, and lessons in life.  The spectrum of people you meet in college will trounce any high school experience you’ve had (unless you’re going to some small private university meant for a very specific demographic).  It is important to notice the types of people you get along with, the types who rub you the wrong way, and your interactions with them.  Life is largely composed of relationships and looking at your interactions with people can tell you a lot about your personality and preferences.

When I look back on my time at UCLA and studying abroad at the University of York, I hardly cherish the facts drilled into me as much as how my friends, organizations, and even living situations have shaped me.  From them, I have learned that I enjoy company and never want to live alone.  They have shown me how much I love to travel and meet new people in foreign cultures.  They have shown me how loyal I can be and what motivates me to get things done.  They have even taught me a bit about relaxation and what soothes me in stressful times.

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to know yourself.  What are your passions?  What are your fears?  It is only when you begin to understand the “why” behind the “what” that you can apply that knowledge towards personal fulfillment.  Find what drives you and use that to motivate you towards your goals.  And while it’s important to be aiming for something, it’s also important to know how you can get there while enjoying yourself.

The idea is to not take things at face value, but look for the deeper lessons to be learned.  Lessons about you as a person and how you fit into the world.  College is a great place for you to meet the best and brightest to learn with.

Side note:
One of the great things about blogging (or keeping a private journal/diary) is your ability to look back and see how much you’ve changed.  I kept a blog for about two years in the early stages of my college career and when I went back to read what I had written so long ago, I was surprised to notice how things have progressed.  Even if you don’t have access to that type of insight, I don’t know anyone who looks back on college and thinks, “Oh yeah, just another four years of my life.”  No, college is life-altering.  Take advantage of it.

Twitter revolution

laelene Posted in general blog,Tags: , , ,
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For the past couple of hours, I have been entrenched in the world of blogs and Twitter, which seem to be at the forefront of social media.  I continued the slow trudge through the rest of the entries that Jess Goodman wrote on her blog after writing my previous entry and started to get curious about social media.  Link after link of related material led me to various blogs of famous writers, career coaches, entrepreneurs, and anyone else who has embraced this new trend.  I still have over twenty tabs open in my browser of blogs to visit and ideas to research.  It’s crazy!

What hit me recently (sometime between the last post and this) was the emerging phenomenon of Twitter.  Alarmingly, I haven’t a clue what it is or how to utilize it, but after reading up on it, it seems it is the new direction of the online community. I am sad to realize that as much as I pride myself on adapting quickly and being rather tech-savvy, I have been left behind on this front.  Thankfully, it’s not too late to get in on it, but to some extent I don’t want to.  I never really thought of myself as a traditionalist at heart, but I’m starting to see that part of me emerge.  I don’t want to learn about this “tweeting” and all the new lingo associated with it.  I don’t want to give up my Yahoo account for a Gmail one.  I don’t want internet access on my cell phone.  I don’t want to learn how to use a Mac.  I don’t want the pace of life to pick up even more!  But, it is the age of connectivity and sooner or later, that is how things will be.

Back when Facebook first began in 2004, I was graduating high school and resistant to this new concept.  It wasn’t until a friend whose judgment I respected greatly invited me to join that I decided to set up a profile.  Since then, I’ve never looked back and I absolutely adore what the site has done for me.  As a child, I moved every three to four years, and as a result of that, lost touch with most of my friends from my youth.  What memories I did hold of these lost friends enabled me to find them years later, on Facebook!  It was a great way to reunite with all those people who I had to move away from and now it is an amazing way to share the extensive amount of pictures that I take.  Throughout the evolution of Facebook, I have kept an open mind and though I am generally not a fan of the applications and the newsfeed made me a little concerned, I have always known that after the initial uproar, people would learn to use those new features.  It amazes me that time and time again, people will resist change, but then slowly they will adapt to it and forget how life ever was without it.

Now with the Twitter revolution, I feel like I am back in the summer before college, trying to decide if this trend was just a fad or something to start getting involved in.  And though I may not be entirely comfortable with it starting out, I will give it a try.  After all, it seems like every avid blogger (including my best friend)  is obsessed with Twitter.  There’s got to be a reason for that, right?

The joy of weather

laelene Posted in general blog,Tags: , ,
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As my mom and I wandered through a store last month, we saw a section of rakes on sale and it made me wonder who in the world would need one here, where all there are are palm fronds.  I miss having the seasons and I can’t recall the last time I raked a pile of leaves and jumped in them.  There’s something so simple and wonderful about that experience, which certainly can’t be replicated in Southern California, where all the leaves in one county would be required for such a pile.

I also miss the snowfall and waking up to a world whitened overnight, a thunderstorm with bolts of lightning illuminating the sky as thunder roared, and the various other phenomena to be found in other parts of the country.  I don’t mind being rained on, which is probably why I loved England so much.  It’s so nice to curl up with a hot drink and your blanket as the world outside rages on.  I always feel so safe when I am inside, hidden away from the downpour, yet still privy to watching it through the window.

Typing woes

laelene Posted in general blog,Tags: , , , ,
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Oh the joys of a broken keyboard.  For the past week and a half, I have been painstakingly pounding out everything I wanted to type via a crazy combination of typing on letters that don’t work and clicking them out on the on-screen keyboard.  It is the most annoying thing I have encountered recently, especially since I pride myself in my efficient typing skills.  Communicating just isn’t the same when you have to spend quadruple the amount of time getting something out.  Instant message conversations are supposed to be just that: INSTANT.  I hate it when I have to slooowly click out what I’m trying to say and hope that it still works in the moment when the real moment passed minutes ago.  Some of what I say is time sensitive!  GAH.

Well, thankfully I am being helped out by a friend who ordered a replacement keyboard for me and will help me put it in next week.  In the mean time, I managed to borrow an external keyboard from him and found that I had gotten so used to the unruliness of my fried keys that it took me a few minutes to get back up to proper typing speed.  It’s such a relief to be able to express myself as I used to.  I don’t know what I’d do if I had to wait this out too much longer.  I am not the most patient of people when it comes to basic things like this that I don’t think I should ever have to deal with.  I am an extremely expressive person and I’d lose it if I couldn’t use language to bring that out in me the way I enjoy.

Now hopefully with this disaster behind me, I will get back to posting more regularly.  Previously it was such a pain I couldn’t handle it, with my mind running a mile a minute and my fingers going one word per minute.  -____-  What a great match-up.

Changing times

laelene Posted in general blog,Tags: , , ,
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Every quarter, my fraternity (Alpha Kappa Psi), goes on a retreat.  In the fall, I have no idea where we go since I believe I’ve actually missed those whenever they came up.  In the winter, it’s up to Big Bear for a lovely tromp in the snow.  Then in spring, it’s off to some beautiful beach house or someplace out in Palm Springs.

This winter’s retreat is my first as an alumna – no obligation to stay for whatever period of time or participate in whatever activities.  Just me, my fraternity brothers, and making it whatever I want.  And though there are treasured moments of bonding and fun, I find myself spending much time contemplating by myself and desperately trying to stay connected to the internet long enough to hold a decent conversation with my boyfriend.  Ay.  I didn’t even step out into the snow!  Not that I was prepared at all, what with no thick clothes to speak of.

Maybe this whole adjusting to life outside of college thing isn’t as hard as I anticipated.  It certainly would be nice to get that job though…  I’ve been so used to earning income these past couple of years that I don’t even know what to do without it.  My bank account is dwindling far too quickly for my comfort.

Birthday gathering & potluck dinner

laelene Posted in general blog,Tags: , , ,
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The past two nights I spent the back around UCLA, eating at Chili’s and hanging out for a friend’s birthday and then gathering with Orientation staff for a potluck.

This seems to me to be a good time of year to have your birthday – school is just starting up again and everyone is coming back refreshed from break.  They’re just getting back into the groove and haven’t quite accumulated enough work to be too busy for you.  My birthday has always been over winter break, sandwiched between Christmas and New Year’s, which can be nice because I never go to school on my birthday, but it’s also difficult to celebrate sometimes since everyone’s got their own holiday plans.

The potluck was great because, as the host kept marveling, people actually made food!  Now isn’t that nice?  Ah, we are a talented bunch.  It was so nice to see those people again and be reminded of the fantastic summer we shared.  🙂  Originally Panda wasn’t going to come, but with some coaxing/guilt-tripping, he showed up and had a fabulous time too.  With Orientation Counselors, you just can’t go wrong!

On-screen keyboard

laelene Posted in general blog,Tags: , , ,
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So today I spent an exorbitant amount of time downstairs chatting with my mom and after a happy time I retreated back to my room with a hot cup of water.  Little did I know how much trouble that would cause.  -___-  As you may be able to guess, I consequently spilled said water and created quite the disaster for myself.  Now I am stuck using the on-screen keyboard, which is a painstakingly slow and arduous task.  I spent ages blasting the keys with those keyboard cleaners after letting what I could drip out first.  Then I dug out the one hairdryer that my family has owned and tried to save the keys that weren’t working.  Instead I managed to ruin more keys.  🙁

At first it was just 1 2 3 4 and 7 8 9 0 that weren’t working.  Now q w e r u i o p, the right shift key, and the arrow keys don’t work either.  Strangely, when I use the broken shift key with qwer I get 1234 and for uiop I get 7890.  Hmm.  So after all these desperate attempts, I was, of course, very sad and it just didn’t help when my boyfriend decided he needed to lecture me on being more cautious.  Now here I am, keyboardless and with noone to talk to.  :'(  Sad times.

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