Grad school apps are one of the worst things ever. Specifically the personal statement section. I KNOW what I want to write, but whatever I type just doesn't seem good enough, like I'm not using the right words or making it exciting enough. And so then my motivation to work on them just gets lower and lower.. Not a good cycle. I just have to sit down and do it, even if it doesn't come out perfect. SOMEONE has to accept me, right? Who knows where I shall end up.

Grad school apps aside, there is a $50 Visa Gift Card that I should spend soon so they don't start taking monthly fees out of it. The prospect of being forced to buy something for myself is new to me. I keep thinking of what I should get with this money but I am not knowing. Here are some things I've been considering: new computer speakers, new TV (obviously more than $50), Xbox 360, GPS... that's really all I can think of.

The list of things I want for Christmas has gotten shorter and shorter over the years. Does this mean that I'm getting more content with what I have? Or maybe the things I want are something my parents aren't going to buy me for a holiday aka a new car, new tv, grad school tuition, etc...

I saw Avatar 3d last night and I think I blinked like 3 times in that whole 2 hours and 40 minutes. The visual effects were incredible.

Christmas Break

Ah yes... Christmas break. My favorite time of year. Not only is it one of the best chances to relax and have lots of free time, there are Christmas lights everywhere! And I get to spend a lot of time with family. So good memories and quotes I've had so far this break:


Me: Ahhh should I buy that new TV??
Gma: Well do you actually watch a lot of TV?
Me: I would if I had a nice one.
Gma: Well if I had a brain, I'd be a brain surgeon.
Me: ......?
- Talking to my grandma about getting a new TV

"Seven lords a milking"
- My grandpa's guess as to what is on the 7th day of Christmas

Playing Scattegories and Pictionary with my family.

Mom: Andrew, what are the 3 things you look most for in a girl?
me: I'll have to get back to you on that one.
Mom (a day later): Have you thought of the 3 things yet?
me: not yet
Mom: No wonder you don't have any dates
Me: sigh

Playing DDR and Diablo with Brian.

Anyways that's all the good stuff I can think of right now. While I was sitting in Christmas Eve mass, I had some time to reflect, and I came up with a New Year's Resolution. It's a bit general but I know what I need to do from it: Get it together. Yup, get it together. Life is going pretty well right now, but I'm at a point where I really need to get more organized and figure things out. Sometimes I tend to have a kind of go-with-the-flow attitude towards the future. I need to get my things together, clean up my room, get back to grad school apps, do Mentorship stuff, etc..

When there are a lot of things I should be doing, they sometimes cancel each other out, like if 2 equal forces are pulling in opposite directions. Then I end up feeling guilty about doing neither. I just gotta get down to it, even if it means sacrificing free time. This is hard for me to do, because I really value free time. Going out and being busy is great, and some people like to keep themselves completely busy, but I feel like I'm one of those people that needs their free, personal time. Just time to be alone and relax and chill. That's hard to do being Program Director for Mentorship and working at the same time, while trying to do grad school apps and now adding on doing WALL as well. This may well be one of the busiest times of my life. I just have to do my best to manage my time, trying to leave some free time where possible.

Well, the new year's resolution starts with cleaning up my room. It may seem like a trivial thing but I think it's a step toward organizing my life. Then comes making a list of what I need to do. Then working on grad school apps...

All right, that's enough for one post. Merry Christmas!

Hey Mr. Mendoza

I've been working as a Teaching Assistant for my 5th grade class for a few months now. When I first applied for the job, I had no idea what grade they were going to place me in, so I was ready to work anywhere from preschool to 6th grade. Now looking back, I'm really happy I got placed in the 5th grade. The kids are still silly and energetic at times (ok still most of the time), but are also mature enough to sit down and talk. I also shouldn't generalize the 5th grader though, because the students in my class are anything but uniform. There is such a wide variety of personality and maturity in this class, like each kid is their own separate character.

I've never worked with the same group of kids for so long and for so much time. I've worked with kids a lot before, but Unicamp is only a week long. Because I'm with them so much, I'm really starting to get to know them each on a really personal level, discovering their interests, personal history, quirks, habits, problems.. They are all so interesting in their own way, and I'm glad I'm going to get to keep working with them for the year.

On the flip side, they are also getting to know me pretty well. Surprisingly well in fact. They've noticed that I only shave once a week (with some of the girls demanding that I shave more), that most of my clothes are comprised of UCLA and Unicamp gear ("You need to lay off the Woodsey clothes, mister!"), and that I smile a lot (one of them calls me Mr. Smiley). Everyone in the class calls me Mr. Mendoza, though some of them pronounce it "Mr. Mandoza," and a few of them, deeming Mr. Mandoza too long to say, shortened my name to simply "Mr. Man." Eh, close enough. A couple of them saw my BruinCard from when I was a first-year, with the picture looking like I just came out of the military, and they laughed at me. Also, for some reason, it's a huge deal when a kid finds out your first name. One time one of the teachers let it slip in front of the class, and they were like.. *GASP*. Your real name is Andrew?! Like Mr. Mendoza is a fake name. :P

Life Update

Hello blog.

Sometimes I forget to write in my blog until someone reminds me that it's here. Anyhoo, it's been a while, so LIFE UPDATE TIME!

1. I've started working at UCLA Lab School, formerly known as University Elementary School, as a full time TA for 5th grade. In a closely related subject, I am now officially getting old. The kids call me Mr. Mendoza, I'm paying rent all by myself, and I don't go out past 10pm if it's a weeknight.
The job itself is pretty good - I'm getting a lot of experience working with kids, and hopefully it'll help me figure out if teaching is what I really want to do. The kids are very observant - they've noticed that I smile all the time, have a really loud laugh, and wear camp shirts a lot. They've also noticed that I only shave once a week.

2. I'm living in a new apartment this year with my roommate from first year, the legend BC (Brandon Contreras) himself, thus bringing my roommate cycle full circle. The apartment is a lot nicer than my old apartment (See: The Worst Apartment Ever) - it's bigger, the rooms aren't awkwardly shaped, it doesn't smell, it has reception, and there are no cockroaches. So +5 for new apartment. The manager was really mean at first, but I think I'm getting on his good side. On a downside, I saw some termites inside last week, but I swiftly killed them all and haven't seen anymore... yet...

3. Mentorship is really starting up now. My co-program director and I spent a lot of the summer writing our funding proposal, and I'm happy to say that a few days ago we found out that we got MONAY IN THE BANK! We got $9845 out of the 10000 we asked for, so we were very pleased.

4. I found a new show: How I Met Your Mother. It's quickly becoming one of my favorite shows.

5. I started playing Pokemon again. I played it on the car ride back from Vegas with my family this summer, and since then I've still been playing it. Although I'm playing less now because of #1 and #3.

The Westwood Omelette

I realized that my past few posts have been me ranting about stuff I didn't like, so I decided it was time to write about something of which I revere: The Westwood Omelette.

The Westwood Omelette at Headlines is my favorite meal in Westwood. The omelette seriously has everything you could ever ask for in an omelette, and more. It's like God descended from the Heavens, looked at the omelettes we had here on Earth, and said, "No no you silly humans, here is how you make an omelette." God then proceeded to create the Westwood Omelette and entrusted Headlines with the task of distributing His creation to the world at a reasonable price. God looked at the Westwood Omelette and said, "Yes, this is good."

I was trying to find a picture of it online and I couldn't find one, but the picture wouldn't do it justice anyways. Just imagine in your head a huge omelette, with cheese, avocado, bacon, ham, and tomatoes, served with delicious hash browns and french toast. Now imagine that x10 and you have the Westwood Omelette. I realize that an omelette may not seem like a thing to get this excited over, but only those who have not tasted the Westwood Omelette would think such things. I hope to some day live in a world where everyone appreciates the Westwood Omelette for what it really is, and I have them served to me in bed on a platter every morning by little Headlines fairies. Until then, if you're down to go get a Westwood Omelette at Headlines, I'm down as well.

Music on the Radio

So I was driving home on the freeway today, flipping through my radio stations like I usually do, and I hear this catchy song, and I think to myself.. "wow, maybe there's actually something good on the radio now!" Turns out it was a commercial for Toyota. And that's when I really realized it: the radio, for the most part, just does not satisfy my musical needs anymore. All these new songs seriously sound the same.. And at one point on my drive, that one song, "Tonight's Gonna be a Good Night" or whatever it's called, was playing on 3 stations at once. I only like this song when I'm in the car with other people, cause then it's like.. ya know, tonight is gonna be a good night with my friends, and the lyrics are simple enough to repeat over and over. But when you're driving by yourself, the song just gets annoying and repetitive in my opinion.

Sorry, I got a little caught up on my rant on that Good Night song. But yea, I've been resorting to turning off the radio and just singing in the car by myself. Not even singing along with the radio.. just singing by myself. I find it a lot more entertaining than most of the radio. Unfortunately, my car does not have a CD player, and the tape player also isn't working so I can't use the tape converter for my ipod. It's hard to emphasize how unfortunate this is, because good music would make car rides a heck of a lot more fun.

Then again, maybe this is just me getting old and not liking all this new crazy music that kids listen to nowadays. Don't get me wrong, I do like some of the new stuff that's out there. But for the large part, I don't like the general trend of where the music industry is going right now. Specifically in the rap/hip hop genre, which is mostly what the radio plays. Maybe I just need to find some new stations? I've found myself starting to drift away from kroq, kiis fm, and amp radio to more mellow stations like My FM and Coast.. :P

The Worst Apartment Ever

Ok, so I've only lived in two apartments so far, and one of them was a furnished University Apartment, but I can say with a fair amount of confidence that the apartment I stayed in last year is one of the worst apartments, if not the worst apartment, in the Westwood apartment area. Where do I begin...

I guess there are a lot of little things that add up to big problems, and there are also big things that are just big problems on their own.

1. Smell. The apartment building had a variety of odors, none of which were all too pleasant. Depending on where you were in the building, you could experience a different foul odor. The elevator often smelled of alcohol and trash, our own apartment often smelled of secondhand smoke, courtesy of the chronic weed smokers elsewhere in the complex, and in the hallways you could actually smell a plethora of different aromas as you walked the length of the corridor. Someone wrote "This place STANK!" on the elevator door halfway through the year, and the mark was definitely warranted.

2. Reception. Or rather, lack thereof. It wasn't very convenient getting voice messages and missed calls hours after they were placed. Nor was it fun having to go outside the building every time I wanted to make a call.

3. Ya know, the place was just OLD, and in need or repair. They just need to shut down the building for a while and renovate the place. When we first moved in, they claimed that they "cleaned" the carpet, which apparently doesn't include removing bits of trash and nails. My closet doors were broken all year, though they "fixed" it a few times. At one point in the year all the burners in our stove stopped working. The water from our bathroom sink and shower was brown for a while, and sometimes it smelled like sewage. I learned to always smell the water first before using it.

4. Floor plan. The apartment had the most awkward floor plan I have every seen. Who makes rooms in pentagon shape?? It's like the place wasn't designed to accommodate furniture (or people for that matter).

5. Roaches. I saved the best for last, because this is what really made the whole apartment experience. Let me introduce you to our 5th roommate, the cockroach colony. They were there when we first moved in, and who knows how long they had already been there. Naturally, we complained, filled out request forms, etc, every time leading to an attempt at spraying down the place and leaving nice smells (see #1). However, I am fairly confident that all the spraying did was cause the roaches to evolve into bigger and stronger roaches. Survival of the fittest at its best. In the beginning of the year, they were actually pretty small and slow. Towards the end of the year, they had gotten much bigger in size, and I'm pretty sure some of them were starting to evolve wing-like structures on their backs. Thankfully I'm not going to be around when they finally do evolve the ability to fly. Seeing as how the feeble attempts of the apartment service were only making the roaches stronger, we had to take matters into our own hands. This marked the beginning of a longstanding war between us and the roach colony. We bought traps and our own spray, but the roaches had numbers on their side. Clearly, a large scale attack was needed. And so about halfway through the year, The Purge happened - we cleaned everything possible, sprayed in every corner, and for once we thought everything was going to be ok. We slept peacefully that night. Unfortunately, it was a false sense of comfort. The next day, the roaches were already back. I'm pretty sure all we did was anger them. And so we conceded to a truce - they stay in the kitchen and come out only at night, and we'd just let them be. This worked for a while, but blatant violations of the truce soon began, and we were powerless to stop it, still being demoralized from the failed Purge. It got to the point that sometimes I would open up a drawer, watch a cockroach scramble out from inside one of my bowls, and be like "eh." By the end of the year, we knew that we had clearly lost the war. Whenever I would go out into the kitchen at night, I would give the roaches a 10 second grace period after I turned on the lights to run and hide in their little corners, so I could at least pretend like they weren't there. Towards the end of the year though, they just stayed where they were after I turned on the lights, mocking me, knowing that I was defeated and powerless...

For the price we paid, the apartment was nothing short of robbery. There was ONE redeeming factor about the place, and that was that we had free fire in the fireplace. You could flip a lightswitch, and a fire would come on in the fireplace! Sometimes I would turn on the fire even if it was hot, because it was the only good thing about the apartment, and I wanted to cling to that light in dark times.

Summit BLUE!

I just got back a few days ago from Summit BLUE, and let me tell you, it was AMAZING. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that this was my favorite Unicamp session I've been too thusfar out of my 3 years of doing camp. And what makes that even more crazy is that I didn't know most of the counselors until the day before camp started, since I floated into the session. Despite that though, I felt really close to most of the counselors by the end of the week; they were all so nice and accepting, and I felt really comfortable around them even though I had only known them for a few days. My CO-counselors were also great - Slim Jim, who I had known from before, and Scissor Kicks, who I basically met at camp. I honestly didn't know how it was going to be working with them, but it turned out really great.

What really made this session amazing, though, was the kids. Well, I shouldn't really say kids, since they were all high-schoolers. But it was seriously the easiest time I've had taking care of a unit. My cabin was HILARIOUS - they always made me laugh, either with them or at them. Mostly at them. For example:

Slim Jim: "Dude you have a milk mustache."
Lupio: "Where?"
Slim Jim: A milk MUSTACHE
Lupio: I know I know, WHERE?
-_-

Censored (commenting on Lupio): Dude you suck at telling stories. You're like 'So I walked into the store, and yea.'

Lio (commenting on a girl): She doesn't turn me down, she turns me on.

Besides being funny though, they're all really good kids, and I feel like they were able to get a lot of the leadership programming we had for them throughout the week. I've already talked to most of them after the week at camp, and I really hope to stay in contact with them.

In addition to having a great cabin of my own, we were fortunate enough to be paired up with Cabin 4 (girls unit) for a lot of our activities. Collectively, we were known as the Fo Shizzle Fo Sho, and were the self-proclaimed best cabin pair on the campsite. We did our talent show skit together, climbed through spider webs together, and when it came time for each unit to do a skit at Closing Campfire, we independently came up with songs for each other!

All in all, a great week at camp. Usually I have some point in the week where I hit a low, but this week I had no lows, just relative levels of high. Unfortunately 2 of my campers had fevers on the last day, and a lot of counselors/campers ended getting sick as well, including myself. I call it the Blue Fever. But it was definitely worth it spending a week with these kids.

Graduation

And so the time has passed.. I have now officially graduated from UCLA! And so begins a new chapter in my life. For the first time in 18 years (I'm counting preschool and K grade too!), I will not be in school. I've been going to school for so long, it's hard to even imagine a life without school. I feel like school has always been the anchor in my life - it's always there, and your schedule revolves around it - studying for tests, going to classes, etc. It's going to take some adjustment now that school isn't there anymore. There's also that uncertainty factor now - I don't know exactly what I'm doing next year, and it kind of scares me. I'm still in the search for a job, which I will need if I want to live in LA.

Anyways, I've been pretty busy since graduation. The Commencement Ceremony on Friday was pretty good - the speaker, Brad Delson, turned out to be a lot better than I expected. Even though he was last minute, he turned out to be really funny. The Saturday Psych Department Ceremony was good too, except it took forever to read everyone's names. Then my family had a nice little get-together back at my home. Sunday we drove back to LA in the morning to move everything out of my apartment, and then I drove back to LA again Sunday night for Unicamp Orientation the next day. Theeen on Wednesday I went to Lake Havasu, and I got back yesterday! Whoo! And now I'm at home and I can kinda relax for a little bit. And write blogs. :-)

Almost there!

Whoops.

It looks like I haven't written here for a long time. I think that's actually an indication of how crazy/fun my last quarter here at UCLA has been. It definitely was my busiest quarter here, what with Unicamp meetings/socials, Mentorship coming to an end, and having all the fun I could possibly cram into 10 weeks. And oh yea, the occasional studying. But I honestly tried to keep that to a minimum this quarter.

I had my last lecture at UCLA last Thursday, and I'm proud to say I stayed awake through the whole thing. This week will be my last week of finals, and I graduate on Friday/Saturday. As for the whole what I'm doing after college thing, I still don't know what I'm doing in terms of a job or living.. BUT, I do know that I am going to be the Program Director for the Mentorship Program here at UCLA. I'm going to be taking a year off to apply to grad schools, and I can't think of anything I would rather do. Now the only problem is finding a job to pay rent. Ahhh!

This last quarter has really made me realize a few things about myself:

1. I'm happiest when I'm making others happy. As corny as that may sound, it's true. Making the people close to you happy is, in my opinion, one of the most rewarding things you can do, and so I'm going to try to do more of that.

2. I need people. And by people, I mean people that I can call close friends, talk to about anything, just hang out, etc. Having people like this in your life makes it SO much better. There are some really special bonds I have made here, and I really hope to maintain those after I graduate.

3. Being spontaneous is fun. I wish I had realized this earlier. This past quarter I've been more spontaneous, like doing random things at 2 in the morning with people. Again, you have to find those people that will be spontaneous with you. :)

4. The Universe is big. Ok, so I've known this for a while, but I finally took an Astro class for fun, and it really gave me a new perspective. Sometimes I close my eyes and try to put human beings in perspective with the Universe: to think of how the earth seems so big to us, yet we are SO tiny in comparison with everything else. I can only wrap my thoughts around it for a few seconds though, because it seriously blows my mind. The fact that life was able to form from the beginning materials of the Universe is in itself an amazing feat. So, kudos to you, Universe.

So yes, those are the revelations I've made this past quarter, and I am going to make an effort to incorporate them into my post-graduation life.

Weeks 2-4 Recap!

Dang, it's been a while since I last remembered to write in this. About 3 weeks in fact. It's been a pretty busy and exciting 3 weeks, I must say. Here are some highlights:

1. I finished my first crossword in the Daily Bruin! Granted, this took me 4 years to do, but it finally happened. It's been a little mini-goal of mine ever since my first year. Who knows how much paper I've wasted from all those Daily Bruins I got only to do the crossword.. I don't even wanna think about it haha. Some people like the Sudoku as an alternative to the crossword, but to me it's just too easy.. there's no challenge. You can't just stare at the crossword for a long time and eventually figure out the answer like in Sudoku.. either you know it or you don't, and if you don't you have to wait until the next day to try anew. Maybe it's just easier for me cause I'm a South Campus major and I like math, which may also be the reason why it took me 4 years to finish a crossword. Anyways, this crossword came down to a final letter that I didn't know.. the horizontal clue was "to put the kibosh on," and i had n_x for the word. the vertical clue was "with, to Fritz" and I had m_t, and since I don't know any German there was no way I was gonna get the word from that clue. Now, I have a very strict moral code when it comes to doing crosswords - no outside help whatsoever, otherwise it doesn't count. That means no asking other people, no looking up stuff online, etc. I knew that the missing letter had to be a vowel otherwise the words wouldn't make sense, so I had to choose.. take a guess and have a 1 in 5 chance of getting it right, or breaking my moral code in a desperate attempt to finish a crossword before I graduate. Well, I chose the former, and luckily it paid off. Turns out "mit" is the German word for "with". Will I ever do another Daily Bruin crossword now? I'm not sure. This might be a good time to retire from the DB crossword, going out on top. Then again, if I stop doing the crossword, what else am I going to do in class?

2. Ok so I've done more in the past few weeks than finish a crossword, I promise. I also took the CBEST, and I was able to confirm the rumors for myself that the CBEST does not really require any prior studying. I swear this was one of the questions: 5.2 < ? < 5.8
Which answer can go in the "?"
a. 4.9
b. 5.4
c. 5.9
d. 6.2

The writing still took me a while though, because I had to think of who to write my essay on - the one about a friend who has influenced my life/changed my perspective. I ended up choosing my very good friend - Jenn Min - because I believe she has changed my perspective, so it made it easy to write about.

3. I had my Unicamp retreat! I always forget how fun/magical Unicamp retreats are until I experience another one, and this one was no exception. It's so nice to see the whole session come together, and you really do feel closer to everyone afterwards, even if you didn't really talk to them. I really like my session this year :)

Well, those are the big things that have happened in the past few weeks. Some random minor things:
- I played a guy on the racquetball challenge court at the gym and got my butt kicked. the difference in skill level was HUGE! hahaha
- i dropped my Gaming Ming class, so I'm only taking 2 classes now. The class wasn't as cool as I thought it was going to be. And I'm lazy :P
- I really like my Black Hole and Other Cosmic Catastrophies Class. Learning about the universe is fun :)

First Week!

I've now been back at UCLA for one whole week - my first week of my last quarter! And it may have possibly been my most active week of my time here. I was feeling very spontaneous when I arrived last Sunday, since it was the beginning of my last quarter and all, and so my roommate Effie and I decided to go for a little run around the perimeter. This was neglecting the fact that I hadn't really run in a year or so. I ended up having to walk about halfway through on account of my being unable to breathe, and my legs were sore for days. But it was a good start to the week! I want to be more active this quarter, so exercise is good.

The next day I played racquetball, and then on Tuesday and Wednesday we had our first weekday Mentorship event of the quarter - Technology Day! My whole starting a blog actually started with my idea to have the mentors and mentees make a blog together; that's how I found this site and all.

Thursday I had Unicamp meeting + iceblocking + watching Slumdog Millionaire starting at 1am. It's a really good movie, but I wouldn't recommend starting it so late. Friday night I went to a Dodger's game for a Unicamp social.

Although all those days were really fun, Saturday was definitely my favorite day of the week. We had our Saturday Mentorship event, Arts Day, at Holmby Park. I was super stressing about this day working out, especially finding a location, but it ended up turning out awesome. The performers were amazing, all the stations had something new and exciting for the kids to try out, and everyone seemed to have a great time. I ended up running the sculpture rotation, and despite the fact that I haven't touched clay since 2nd grade, it ended up being fun. In the evening, I went with some Mship people to have a bonfire at the beach. All the pits were taken, so we had to dig our own, which turned out to be some shady business. A patrol guy eventually came, called us firebugs and said something about not having enough tickets, then left. I got to roast hot dogs and I had smores for the first time in a long time. It was a gooood day :)

And then comes Sunday, and I realize that I'm still enrolled in classes and that there's a good possibility I have homework due next week. So obviously, I spent most of the day working on an official Mentorship blog to share with everyone. But ok, I should really be attending to my studies now..

Into the Unknown

As one of my main intentions of this blog was to make a record of past and present memories, I suppose it makes sense to start off with what is going on in my life right now.

In about a week I'll be starting my last quarter as an undergraduate at UCLA. People say that those four years of college fly by, and boy were they right. So what am I going to do after I finish 16th grade? I wish I knew the answer to that question! For the first time in my life, I have absolutely no clue what I am going to be doing next year. It's scary and exciting at the same time, but mostly scary. Thusfar, life has been a pretty staightforward path. Even though I chose my own college and major, there wasn't really any question of whether I was actually going to college for four years or not. Graduate from 8th grade, go to high school. Graduate from high school, go to college. Graduate from college, ?!?!?

Well, I do have an idea of what I want to do, or at least try out. From my college experience, I've found that I really like tutoring and working with kids; so, I have been trying to get into a program that incorporates those interests. I applied to a couple of programs in December, hoping that I would get into one of them, but unfortunately I was turned down by both. Though I was pretty bummed, I'm trying to remain optimistic, and I'm using this spring break to apply to more and more programs. If I keep applying, I'll have to get into one, right?!? Ideally, I would get into a program that serves to address the needs of underserved communities, especially in education for children. That's what I've been doing as a volunteer at UCLA, and I think it's one of the most rewarding experiences one can have.

I guess the most important thing right now is to create a lot of options, so I'm not dependent on only one or two things falling through. I've registered for both the CBEST and all 3 subtests for the Math CSET. I did some research online to assess how much I should study for the CBEST, and got mixed results. Websites that were trying to sell study guides said the CBEST is going to be the hardest test I've ever taken in my life, and told me that unless I bought their study guide and sacrificed three goats the night before the test, I was sure to fail. People who actually took the test, however, said it was so easy that their goldfish could pass it. I ended up calling a friend I trust who took it, and she said the test was indeed a joke. So, I'm not toooo worried about the CBEST.. I think I will have to study for that Math CSET though.

Well, that is my situation right now. I'll feel a lot more secure once I know exactly what I'm doing next year. Until then, I just have to keep my head up and hope for the best!

My First Blog

And so begins the journey.. into the life and times.. of Andrew J. Mendoza.

This is my first time ever making one of these things. Well, except for the short-lived Xanga I had back in high school, but I'm not counting that. So why, in my last quarter as an undergraduate at UCLA, am I deciding to start up one of these things? Good question. I suppose the main reason is that it would be nice to have some record of my thoughts and happenings, so when I'm old and have nothing else to do, I can go read my old blogs and laugh at how silly I was. Hence, my intention for these blogs is to make a compilation of present and past memories, thoughts, and feelings; to capture in words specific parts of my life, so I won't forget them as time goes on. I can already think of a lot of things that I want to record, that I want to remember. Things that I want to be able to look back upon and recall how I thought and felt at the time, because remembering them will remind me of what is really important. And I don't want to forget things like that!

So, with that, I end my first blog. Hopefully many more to come! :D