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.