After a summer filled with loneliness, I sought companionship and love through different mediums.
I first rushed a fraternity, which I didn’t get into. Looking back, I’m pretty confident it was because at a Monday Night football hangout, I said very abruptly that “I don’t like football. I think it’s kind of stupid.” But also, it takes me a while to open up to people, and so a week of hanging out with “frat bros” isn’t enough time for my true personality to come out. I think it was a blessing in disguise though. I would have transformed into a completely different person had I gotten in.
After applications to be an Orientation Leader, Resident Advisor, Camp Kesem Counselor, and Student Health Advocate on campus I was rejected by all. At the time, every single rejection hurt and made me feel worse and worse about myself.
Now, I was living with some former roommates from freshman year in an apartment on campus. I thought that many of the friendships made in the previous year with our suitemates and neighbors would continue. Unfortunately, this was not the case, as I soon realized many of these were friendships of convenience.
I eventually found my niche when I joined PAW, Programming at Warren on campus. Seeing as we were a school of engineering, the name did the club a disservice because most people thought it was a computer programming club, when it reality it was an event programming club. We put on fun events on campus including a haunted house, Pi Day (free pie on 3/14), study breaks, and other fun things for residents.
It was of course through PAW that I made many new friendships, including one of my future groomsman Amul. It was through that club that I would indirectly join ICRA, when I ran for the position of “ICRA representative”, not even sure what that entailed. ICRA was basically UCSD’s version of PAW, connecting the event programming clubs on campus together. More details to come later on how that will forever change my life…
The things I used to do with my suitemates I started doing now with PAW, including playing boardgames, hanging out on and off campus, and going to fun places like the zoo and the beach. My loneliness subsided for a bit, but I was obviously still craving a relationship. Owl City’s Fireflies came out at the time when I promptly played non-stop for the rest of the year to relieve my feelings of sadness.
I continued to have happy times with the people I was living with, despite there being a bit of drama between them. We played many boardgames together, including Bang and Loaded Questions (and went to Phil’s BBQ and Pho trips quite often). We also had Glee and “24” Parties for watching my favorite shows at the time. I was able to live with my apartment-mates in the summer before bidding them adieu to live on campus again one more time.
