2011 was a growth year for me because I took various actions that would impact both my life on a personal level, and in regards to the relationships I share with other people. A personality shift towards more independence occurred in me, ironically through the garnering of a relationship.
Things continued as normal with me continuing to grow my friendship in my PAW, ICRA, and other circles on campus. I started my first college relationship in February, which was a rewarding and a learning experience. I never knew how much time and dedication would go into maintaining a healthy relationship, but I learned that year through all the experiences I shared with Geetha. Even though the relationship tended to stagnate at certain parts of the year, it helped to booster my self-esteem and changed the way I saw myself and others.
I attended the Clinton Global Initiative on campus this year; sitting through various discussions, seminars, & seeing real celebrities Mandy Moore and Sean Penn was a very unique experience. I respected that Clinton made the conference essentially non-partisan, empowering everyone to do their best to change society in their own way. The best part of the conference was by far when we were about to go take a picture and I got to shake his hand!
That year, I also went to a Glee Concert. Enough said. My life as mildly complete.
Boardgames remained the staple of how I chose to interact with others on campus. To this day, I thoroughly enjoy all boardgames to a tee, my favorite at the time being Loaded Questions, because of all the inappropriate and ridiculous answers you could come up with through the game.
My sophomore year comprised of me coming up with a genius idea of a mock campaign for A.S. (with the help of Tyler Nelson). In fleshing out details for our eventual run Junior year: we settled on bringing Muse, the Glee Cast, and Puppies to campus. We named it “Flush the John”, a play on words on the “Board the Wing” slate. We began recruiting members for our slate, but as the deadline fast approached, they dropped out like flies. And, despite the slate not having as many people as I had hoped, the end result was for mere entertainment purposes.
The best part of the experience was probably getting covered in the the school newspaper. Not to mention the terrible debates that both me and Tyler would participate in.
And yet…. despite my debate performance being pretty terrible (clip below), I was still relatively amused by the whole routine of it all.
In the end, Students First filed grievances against every other slate (to try to disqualify them all). This ended up pissing off all the other various slates to the point of mental exhaustion. With all of that mess cleared up, Board the Wing sweeped the elections, and Flush the John finished exactly where it should have: LAST PLACE! 🙂
Yet this still remains one of my favorite images from the campaign, created by Alec Weisman:
That summer was when I finally made the decision that I also wanted to become a teacher. I spent 45 minutes busing from UCSD to a middle school for 6 weeks straight for the sole purpose of working for a summer camp, ThinkTogether. It was there that I taught film and math and became very entertained at the prospect of fostering and mentoring young minds. That was when I started gossiping with middle school students and really getting invested in their stupid teenage drama.
I knew all my life that I needed to somehow make an impact on the world, yet I never found the means by which to do so in college. With my involvement in Programming at Warren, the Inter-College Residents Association, and UCSD Cares, I thought I was making somewhat of a difference. Eventually I realized programming didn’t really amount to much in the real world except providing people temporary, yet superficial happiness. One of my proudest events put on exclusively by me was PAW’s Valentine’s Day Extravangaza, which fundamentally exemplified my ability to plan and execute an event of my own making. Having virtually no help in a club that had failing events all quarter, with my hard work I was able to exceed turnout expectations. Yet still, though Valentine ’s Day was something I definitely did believe in, I needed more.
I continued working at this time at Environment, Health, and Safety while still pursuing other things that would shape me as an individual in regards to my overall effect on the world. My internship at the Sustainability Resource Center taught me advertising abilities used via social networking sites, but not much else. Nice picture of me embedded below:
Yet, even after all two quarters of all this, I still needed more – something I eventually found in my last Fall Quarter of college. Helping Elizabeth to start up UCSD Youth for Ron Paul gave me the opportunity to do something I believed in. I wanted to spread Ron Paul’s message of liberty and hope all across campus, and in starting and maintaining a student organization I would be able to find supporters from all across the political spectrum. Even if you are a liberal or a conservative you will find things about Ron Paul’s consistent policies that you might end up agreeing with if you had a hard listen. That year, I also boarded a plane to Iowa to help both campaign door-to-door and through phone banking to get Ron Paul a win in the Iowa caucuses (spoiler: he loses). I would have never thought I would be independent to something like that all on my own. However, I now know that through hard work I can help make history.
That year, I had a new gauge by which to live my life. Instead of relying fundamentally on pursuing jobs that would garner more profits (which I could have done if I majored in Pre-Med like everyone else), I started pursuing only paths which will allow me to have more of an impact on other people. Teach for America’s rejection of me in October really hurt my self-esteem in regards to my desire to become a teacher, but I ended up feeling the need to apply for a teaching credential to keep my options open.
In summary, 2011 was an amazing year – my relationship helped me grow, my involvement with Youth for Ron Paul helped the world, and my mindset on the future will help shape history.
The top movie of the year was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt.2. I kind of liked the first half more, oddly enough. The top song of the year was Adele’s depressing Rolling in the Deep.
