Flashback: UCSD, Freshman Year Fall Quarter 2008

After the summer of 2008 ended, there was no place left to go except San Diego, literally. College was about to start, and I was about to embark on an experience unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.

I will use Xanga blogs from the time period as well as my personal memory of what happened in an effort to fill in all the missing gaps.

Move In Day: September 18th, 2008

I’m currently in San Diego, sitting right next to Howard Nguyen. He’s watching anime.

Move-in-Day: Oh, what an experience! After me spending virtually the entire day with Howard and his parents (including a free meal at Panda Express, yum! :D), we got lost looking for our way back to our dorm. It was super confusing! After getting back, I believed we both ate noodles for dinner. (FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL!). Howard was watching Anime while I played Roller Coaster Tycoon for a couple of hours. It was a wonderful way to start off college…. Anyway, after a while me and Victor Fung chatted on facebook, and he said he was here, so we knocked on his door to hang out!. Then virtually down the line, we met everyone in the apartment. From Victor, to Ryan, to Austin, to John Torres, to Stephen Brett Sauls. For some reason or another we looked for girls to meet (shrugs.), and couldn’t find any. Somehow, we ended up in a huge circle outside of Harlan with a bunch of other freshman noobs like ourselves. Brett & Austin left to play Catchphrase (?) with some girls in Frankfurter so the rest of us went back to our suite just to hang out. We did so. Ryan must have thought I was a strange one for playing High School Musical music on the very first night, but whatever. We talked for a variety of the night, and said we would all go to breakfast the next day together on Orientation!

Orientation: Breakfast was ultimately good the next day… Leandro could not wake up if I recall correctly, but that’s beside the case. As far as Orientation being a wonderful experience, I would say it’s just been OKAY – simply put, I really don’t talk to most of the members from my Orientation group, so whoever said “Your Orientation friends are your friends for life” must have been either lying or on drugs. Oh well. HOWEVER, even though Orientation was rather lackluster it was made up by spending the night with the newly bonded Suite 400.

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008

Well, it’s only been a week, but things have gone really well for me thus far.
My suitemates are really nice, and all of them seem like the type to not go wild and party, so that’s good. The rest of the members of the floor, as well as the members of Stewart Hall mostly seem to exhibit a trait of genuine kindness. (Some are a little anti-social, but eventually they’ll break out of the shell), the shell that probably initiated from victimization of being called a “nerd” or dweeb in high school.

Orientation went extremely well, except some of things were extremely unnecessary. The food is pretty good. I’m getting VERY homesick as well.

I love College thus far. When classes start, I’ll learn to deal with it, and have fun with the best resources I could possibly have.

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IF YOU DON’T GO TO WARREN SONG!

Anyway, it’s hard to really describe what happened next. School started, we got very adjusted to our schedule, and life went on as continued. We ended up eating with each other every chance we could, and hanging out and doing everything together. I remember the day we explored campus together. Those were truly wonderful times.

October 2nd, 2008:

Is it true that every freshman ends up gaining 15 pounds? I certainly hope not…

Anyway, classes have started, and they’ve been pretty chill for the first week or so (as compared to some of my suitemates or even my dorm mate). Wednesdays seem to be the most challenging day, where I have approximately 3 classes and 1 lab. The workload and the environment however seem a lot friendlier in high school, but also it seems everyone actually TRIES in college, so the idea of you being a big fish in a small pond is now a small pond in a big fish (?)

Introduction to Logic, the class that SEEMED easy seems hard now. The professor said the tests are long, and just by asking around, people say “you either get it or you don’t”. Oh no, sounds like Calculus all over again.

Fluency/Information Technology seems to be very very easy. In the powerpoint, the professor ends up repeating everything in the book. And in the labs (which count for 45% of your grade), it’s pass/fail so the class thus far seems pretty chill.

Warren Writing is probably the hardest class. With the most writing, and most homework thus far, we have to incorporate “Toulmin’s method” into both the analysis of other readings as well as our own.

Finally, Society and the Sea seems so chill. Everyone seems to have taken the class for the same reason, because it’s easy. The professor seems to wander off though a lot.

In other news, I’ve received 3 job interviews – at the gameroom, SAC, and the library. I hope one of them will hire me. I think I did relatively okay at the SAC interviwed, eff’ed up the gameroom interview, and the library interview is today so I will cross my fingers and hope for the best.

OH! There’s now a TV, minifridge, and microwave in my dorm. =D As well as a Miley Cyrus / Hannah Montana POSTER & Jack Bauer poster. I also hung up a Mccain/Palin poster as well as pictures of my friends everywhere. Howard’s planning to hang a periodic table on his side of the wall (haha).

Anyway, we went everywhere together: including the Lupe Fiasco Concert, which was pretty good even though I don’t like rap music. We started adjusting to schedules, and really didn’t have any other friends, as far as I know. I remember the first batch of people we actually met as a group was Suite 500 though. We watched Youtube videos randomly one night with all of them, and I remember visiting Suite 300 to watch TV(?). Shrugs.

October 16th, 2008:

Before I say anything, make sure you register to vote (the deadline is Monday).
Anyway, college is going to well. I still don’t have a job yet unfortunately. =[. I feel like meeting new people as well, so I’m sure I’ll join more clubs for the days to come.
Wanna hear a funny story? Yesterday, I got blocked from Facebook by messenging too many people (I was asking them for birthday messages for 5 people, = so about 1250 people). LOL, WOW. Thank goodness I was eventually revived, whoot.

It appeared that one random day; the exact date isn’t exactly coming to me, the floor family started coming together as an entity. It started when we played Volleyball randomly one day with Jordan & Alexis. I believe it was me, Ryan, Victor at first. Anyway, it was fun while it lasted – I can simply recall the chantings of “Victor E” and “J.J” that one random day. Still, it was still debatable whether that was the foundation of the floor family, because there were many in Suite 416 we had simply not met yet.

But, I remember it was John Torres’ birthday (10/17/2008) where we first invited the girls over to hang out! Only Alexis came though, and we ultimately played Quelf.

Eh, it doesn’t matter at this point, but we eventually started branching out and met various members of other Suite (408). At about roughly this point, I believe John Torres also got his job at the Sunshine Market.

The next major event was my own birthday(10/28/2008) ! Where we took various pictures as a Suite….

I forgot to mention, Stacey Hunsucker was our R.A. – and what a wonderful person she was. She was nice to our suite, and she helped increase the bonding experience for all of us. In our first Suite meeting, we played Catchphrase with one another, as well as attempted to say an adjective before our name that starts with our own letter. I’m “Just John”.

Anyway, the next day I went to the beach with many of the 416 girls, and that was a fun experience too!

The next “Major event” in the foundation of our floor family was Staecy’s Kim Birthday. Several hours before October 30th, 2008, our floor compiled in a video in an effort to honor Staecy Kim. I would like to say it worked, and from that point on, our floor family was truly activated.

From that point on, we started hanging out quite a lot, and doing various activities together that are almost unforgettable.

November 7th, 2008:

So yesterday, I bought Starbucks. It was in a glass bottle. I was walking up the stairs, tripped over air/nothing, and then the glass bottle slams onto the ground and breaks.
I got 1cut from the glass. I was safe. but what a funny story. LOL.
An hour later I went back to buy more Starbucks.

Random tibdits happened in between, among hanging out in the study lounge, watching movies together such as “Zoolander” and “Donnie Darko”. It was virtually “drama-free” in the beginning of our wonderful floor family. I remember one night the guys locked the girl’s bathroom from within, and then Yesenia lifting a coach in the study lounge, but other than that, things were good. Oh yeah, and Ryan’s shoes were put in the trash can, and he forgot to get them, and thus Ryan had to look through the trash. He was so lucky though, because the first bag he went through was the bag containing his shoe!

November 22nd, 2008:

I’m uncertain of the future, but I know one of two things.
I will have fun tomorrow eating dinner with Suite 400/416. And the highly anticipated return of 24 is Sunday at 8. That should be a blast.
In other news, my mood has been up and down over the past couple of days. At some point, I’m going to have to be willing to let go of the past, indefinitely .

At the Red Robin Dinner we also chose names for “Secret Santa”, an exchange we would do, for one another – it was really sweet. And eventually we would exchange the gifts.

That day, we also showcased a Christmas video present for Brittney, Leah, & Michelle. In the video, our suite (400) played the girls of 408, and basically made fun of their tendencies – Brittney cheerleading, Michelle & Staecy being Korean, Leah & One Tree Hill, Esme being Mexican, Alexis liking churros and meowing, Jordan & Tahoe, and Yesenia lifting couches. They were simply good times! And after that point, finals came, which were ultimately disgusting. However, having the easy classes I had that quarter, they were very easy.

It all ended up coming up to one night, December 12th, 2008, where: we went to Souplantation, swore we would all miss each other during Winter Break, and I almost lost my keys because they flew into Brittney’s purse magically.

Good times! However, as you can see in the above picture my keys were still around my neck, which means somehow they magically flung into Brittney’s purse after this.

December 13th, 2008:

So, a funny story… Yesterday, I swung my keys so hard, that I apparently “lost it”. After searching for 5 hours, inside, and outside of both suite 400 and 416, I finally found it. It’s a good thing, because I didn’t want to pay $150-200 dollars for a replacement key set.

Anyway, I swung them so hard when we were talking suite pictures that they flung into someone’s purse.