Reminiscence

Today marked a historic and memorable day for me. On June 11th, 2020, I entered the last final of my undergraduate career at the University of California Irvine. Of course, with all our classes being remote due to COVID-19, it was a difficult time to navigate. The lacking end of a 4-year journey was not what anyone would have foreseen. Instead of a typical in-person final, the world had something else in mind for the class of 2020. The memory of walking into a huge lecture hall, trying to find my assigned seat amidst the hundreds of people doing the same, eluded me. I was never able to cherish the final time I would sit down in those comfortable, tight-spaced chairs as I took out my UCI ID card and my F-288 Par L Scantron Form, that I pre-filled the day prior, and focus all my energy for two hours for those grueling finals. I will never again be able to have the satisfaction of walking down the lecture hall, turning in my final exam with confidence, shaking my professor's hand and thanking them, and walking out with a smile and a clenched fist held high signifying the words "I finally ******* did it". The end of my undergraduate career ended as it began, at the comfort of my own home in the Bay Area. Although it is not the end most of us had envisioned, there was still a lesson to learn from this last quarter at UCI. The time you spend, and how you choose to spend it, counts. Every day. Every second. Although at times the task-at-hand seems meaningless, the entire story ends up developing because of it. Being able to positively acknowledge all those times is truly the moral of the story.

I have become reminiscent of my past four years at this amazing and unique university and I hope to share that here. I'm appreciative of what Irvine has helped me to accomplish and has helped me become. I'll try to dive into each year individually, but today, and with this being the first blog post, I'll just stick to the experience as a whole.

UC Irvine was not what I had expected. Coming off a fairly easy high school adventure, little did I know the toughest part was yet to come. The test of my ambitions, confidence, and values were the toughest to conquer. The root of my problems, in hindsight, was the inability to adjust to my surroundings. Being an only child, I was used to my parents always being there to help out and having my own room to do my work and focus. UC Irvine changed that by taking away all that familiarity. But with time, I was able to acclimate to those conditions of the dorms, my roommates, my apartment, and the extended freedom I was given. I learned to become much more independent and how to truly think on my own. Coming home, I believe I have become not only academically challenged, but mentally challenged, and I am much tougher and more than ready to take on the challenges that await me at UC Davis and in my future.

This is my first blog post! Although my writing skills is not as up to par as I'd like, I hope that continuously writing on here can help with that. These next four posts will be a self-reflection, one post for each year I attended UCI. I hope that this cogitation will allow me to analyze the rights and wrongs of my undergrad as I enter grad school and beyond.