Welcome Week of College
Hi guys, it's currently 9/27/2023, Wednesday. I moved in to UC Santa Cruz last week on Friday.
I've been writing daily diaries of how many day goes. You can find them separately here: cavs4twdiary.blogspot.com. Here's a combined version of my welcome week to just have a grand post. It's also cool to just combine everything.
DAY 1
Today, Friday, 9/22/23, I moved into college.
We woke up at like 8 AM and drove to San Jose to get breakfast at google cuz my sister works there lol so yea free food we take that. the food was pretty fire, these blueberry pancake things were super good and so were the staple pan au chaogloate however u spell that in french or whtaever. Then the smoothies are always so good man, though this time it was avocado ginger smoothie which was kinda mid.
Then yea we drove down to Santa Cruz, I haven't driven down there in a while and honestly it's not that stressful of a drive for me, lowkey some of those cheeky highways branching off of berkeley are pretty stressful and shaky to drive in.
Anyway I would say comfortably that we literally like didnt bring much. My mom stuffed a good majority of things in this big red suitcase and outside of that we had some other boxes and stuff, but like we fit it all in the trunk and frunk of a tesla. We didn't even use any part of the backseat of the car or the ground of the backseat of the car or anything bruh. We didn't even need a dolly or whatever wheelie rolly cart things to transport our stuff cuz the four of us got everything in one trip. Idk why like I'm writing this in a flexing tone lmao but like that stuff is fire. Obviously, one of my roommates is bringing a minifridge and microwave and their MONITOR so like you can't avoid that but we had it super easy. We took like total like 20-30 min scraps setting up the bed and unpacking things and like lowkey we were done.
So yea it wasn't that hectic, we walked back to the car and i said my goodbyes and MAN i was trying so hard not to cry that i legit just cuoldnt contain it. If no one was around me I wouldve been sobbing but like I was restraining it rly hard. I had some tears but nothing audibly loud like man dude i was trying so hard not to cry. Just saying bye to my family like that. It's not really the thought of like "i wont see my parents for a long time" but more of like moving on to this next stage of my life. It's like this moment when it fully hit me. All of my 4 months its been so happy like jjst my life style of going to the gym and coming home with like nothing on my mind to do really. And then just being around my family and especially my sister man like these times have just been so fun and just some experiences that are so hard for me to let go of. Its really all ending, and its just maybe bittersweet, but sad.
but yea after that my roommates were still setting up and unpacking cuz some of them brought so much stuff and i was just like helping them with things and also organizing my clothes and shelves nicely during this time. We did this until like 2:30 pm or something.
Then after that, me and jackson walked around cuz the cafeteria closed for a while since it was like 3pm at this point, then we went back and ate like a small snack of these crossaint pan au chocaolat thing and we continued soodling and
anyway, we then headed to our welcome dinner slot at 4:45 pm where there was some random ice breaker circle and then we ate dinner and this was like our first formal event of meeitng ppl. During dinner i met these three kids, raymon, austin, and matthew, that i get along with super well, and turn to find out our rooms are like right next to each other.
So yea I met those kids, we ate dinner which in my opinion was pretty solid. Ppl didnt really like the pizza but I thought it was some good high quality healthy stuff bruh.
LIke sure yeah that might look nasty but its pretty good. THe sauce is kinda bad but like idk something about it hit me. Bro i didnt take like any photos or vids of the cafeteria, but its pretty solid. Apparently the cafeteria near us is one of like the best on campus. I could see myself getting stale to the food but ill take it bro. I griefed some bananas back to my dorm cuz theyre nice to eat when ure hungry
then after that we had some event at like 9 pm, so thats a lot of time so i headed to the gym myself. There, I first checked out the indoor gym, and saw that they ONLY HVAE ONE COURT. I asked some guy on the sideline if theres more courts and he said that theres more on the west side gym. There's two gyms on campus, i went to east, and the west side has like 2 courts or something and thats where all the athletes go. But yea so I just headed to the outdoor courts instead and rented out an outdoorbasketball and shot around. This guy named tejas pulled up and was shooting around too so I asked him to 1v1 and thats how u meet ppl bro. The outdoor court is pretty bad, like the rims are so concrete, the ground is slanted, and also its super rough, i feel like its bad for my basketball shoes. Either way, we then played 2v2 with these upperclassmen that were at the courts too afterwards and we talked for a while about like life and stuff. They were super nice, its honestly crazy how nice and open they were to us. They just told us about like tips on how to make friends, what we should do, things about like professors and classes, and like taking routes and shortcuts. super fun tiems, and i walked back with tejas cuz turns out hes also from john r lewis.
So then after that we went to the loteria event for John r Lewis and College 9 at 9pm where we basically played bingo. The first couple of rounds i didnt rly have a chance but like this one round i was 2 away and I was mad stressing then SOME DOUCHEBAG GETS UP AND GRIEFS THE ENTIRE FKING GAME. LITERALLY USUALLY 10 PPL WOULD WINA T ONCE BUT THIS GUY MESSED UP ALL OF OUR PROGRESS JUST FOR ONE PRIZE THATS NOT VERY EFFICIENT LMAo but anyway i ended up winning after that cuz ton of kids left and there was like 20-30 of us left. We got some lanyards and a sticker and umbrellas for winning and yea that lasted until like 10:30
After that, we headed back to the dorm, and then tejas asked to come over so i said yes and he came over and met my roommates and we played rocket league and talked abotu stuff. thats actually, while we were talking, when i found out my other roommate from foothill was actually IRANIAN bro i thoguht he was indian the entire time. Now it kinda makes sense cuz his parents did look iranian. He legit like moved from iran to america when he was 13, and he speaks farsi and all of that, its honestly pretty cool.
But yeah, tejas left at like 12:00 or something and i went to take a shower and we dipped out, turned off the lights at like 12:45 AM, and went to bed. Nothing rly complicated. The shower was pretty nice and I was the only one there. We have 2 bathrooms on our floor, each of them have 4 showers. And both of them are gender neutral which was very confusing at first. It's quite interesting, never experienced this before
So that was my first day of college.
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a DAY diary.
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DAY 2
9/23/23
hi today was day 2 of college. we woke up 9 am, i put it in my contacts, we got breakfast, which was alright. there were pancakes which is hard to mess up.
then i walked to the gym myself to play some basketball, this time i played indoors and we had like 12 ppl so we played 5s. It was the first 10 ppl to sink a free throw got to play and im so glad i got a consistent free throw game. Anyway it was pretty fun, i made some tough shots in the game itself but also missed some easy shots, i would say it was a sub-par performance. i'm just happy i got to hoop with some people and meet new friends. I would say the skill level is lower than fallon in general, some of them dont rly know how to play, but theres also a lot of big men and ppl who def play.
anyway after the gym, i walked back to campus to go to some welcome lunch orientation thing that ended up being kinda bs we legit just ate lunch in the dining hall. On my walk back to campus from the gym we passed by the bay tree campus store quad area where i copped tons of free lanyards for my friends and some pens and a tote bag. It was a fire stop and im glad i took that route through those booths. Anyway, lunch was kinda mid, i ate some rice and sausages and stuff. Then after lunch, we went to the neighboring MPR for some presentation where they went over student success and what it means. I dont even know wtf that was but yea it was cool ig. Then, we had a floor meeting at 2:30 PM with our floor and our RA. It was pretty long, but we got to like formally meet with everyone on our floor. We already knew most of them, especially raymon, matthew, and austin. There was an exchange student studying economics for 2 quarters from copenhagen which was a super fun conversation to have. But yea we had that floor meeting, and then there was a small club fair at 3:30. It was rly small and crowded, we went to one booth to spin a wheel for a prize and i didnt land on the bag and instead got a sticker that i didnt even take. Waited in that long packed line just for a sticke rbruh i felt so offended. We left that club fair after that and then killed some time with our floormates by playing "exploding kittens," which was honestly a blast. There was like 8 of us hanging out playihng cards. Anyway then it was 6:30 PM, we speedran dinner which was pretty mid, there was dolewhip i guess. Then at 7 pm, there was a room decor event going on. We went over to the rec lounge and there was a super long line so we dipped out super fast.
Then the rest we played some games and talked and stuff and i dont have energy to like go into detail but yea thats how our day went we also walked around after that and checked out a rave and yea here are the photos from today, im going to bed now :
https://photos.app.goo.gl/7PRoyKGLbQUGV3xQ8
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a DAY diary
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DAY 3
what a day...
so my third day of college. its 1:40 AM right now, i need to speed through this wrap-up
- woke up at 8:50 am, didnt end up going to cafeteria because i only get 14 meal plans a week and i wanna be a bit conservative in the beginning, so i ate a fig bar that i brought
- then i think i walked around a bit, snaked some lanyards from some booths or something, and met up with floormates to walk around after they finished going to the gym
- then went to some orientation speaker thing where they talked about respect or something it was kinda funny cuz they would play lofi music and have us reflect and no one could focus
- then we went straight to lunch, i only got one slice of this pizza before it was all gone, youll see it in the photo album. It was a pesto pizza and it was SO GOOD, i need that pizza every time i go to the dining hall PLEASE. Other than that there were some good sausages and stuff.
- After lunch we headed back, our floormates decided we wanted to go to downtown santa cruz in teha fternoon cuz there weren't rly any interesting events going on
- so i went to the gym and played some basketball and i played HORRIBLy. Man I just missed so many shots and one of them hit the side of the backboard too yikes. I didn't do any weights today because it was so packed
- then i came back and had like 10 minutes to kill before we left at 4:45 to catch a bus to downtown santa cruz
- me, raymon, matthew, austin, jackson, and andres, us 6 had some fun exploring the downtown which was quite small and not that cool to be honest. But cool to see, for the first time, i guess
- Then we headed to the santa cruz pier. There's the pier and the boardwalk. We went to the pier cuz theres a boardwalk event in 2 days.
- walked around pier, took some rly fire photos of this seagull, it was quite stunning, youll see it in the album
- ate dinner on the pier in this hawaiian place that was GAAAAASSSS. I got tehse beef skewers and they were so good. We prob gonna come back to this place eventually and ill get a burger next time. Almost everything here has some random like pineapple sauce or something, but yea anyway it was such a nice break from all the cafeteria food. It was some rly fire food.
- Then we took the bus back, it was kinda cold, at this point it was like 7 pm or something
- Then we went to karaoke night at 9:50 pm which totally exceeded my expectations. the format was fire, the setting was fire, and there were so many ppl. There's too many highlights to talk about. It was cool to see some chinese exchange student get up alone and sing a chinese song, along with all these hispanic and french groups singing some of their fire songs that ppl couldnt rly sing along to but was cool to see. Then there were some quite energetic ppl, and also jackson and matthew going up and singing im just ken and some other r&b song. It was just super fun, and we were there until 12:45. At the very end all of us went to the stage to sing party in the usa, it was super funny cuz like everyone just slowly started to get the memo and started going on the stage it was crazy, the host made us get off tho cuz we were boutta start a mosh pit or something which is honestly hilarious.
- i can talk more but i need to sleep, i wanna wake up early tmrw. cya
https://photos.app.goo.gl/NyHfPB9sWWxk9mTL7
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a DAY diary
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DAY 4
hi this is day 4, its 12:58 AM
- woke up at 8, went to teh gym to play basketball, no one was there
- after the gym, i went to this info meeting about research at 10 am
- after the lecture thing which lasted about an hour, i took a bus down to UCSC TAPS, transportation services to figure out the ebike stuff cuz i filled out the ebike form with my personal email instead of my ucsc email and they wont reply to my requests now. Got it all figured out which was cool
- tried out the ebike, which is apparently just "electric assist" so its not even that good to uphill. Plus, for my first impressions, all of the bikes at the dock were on low battery. Hopefully this is just like a fluke or whatever tho
- Then i went to the dininghall with a couple of floormates. food was alright, they had these raspberry gradola bars that were rly good
- Then i was in my dorm for like 2 hours just cubing. Byt htis time it was 4, so me and raymon decided to just take a bus and see where it takes us. The others were at some kpop event that we didnt wanna go to cuz it was too far away. We ended up like scouting out a mall area in downtown santa cruz. This was when we reached like just the general downtown area which is honestly pretty sick. It reminds me a lot of livermore downtown, its pretty lively and way less dead than what I apparently went to yesterday, that i called "downtown." This was the real "downtown"
- but yea anyway we did that until like 6:30 or something i dont remember, we went back to the dining hall to eat dinner where we acutally saw arian
- after dinner, we went back to the dorm for a while, then 6 of us floormates decided to go on a walk under a bridge. The gate was like closed or whatever so we couldnt, so we decided intsead to walk towards east field. Keep in mind it was like super dark, it was like 10 pm or something and it was just nice, we walked past the east field onto a street and saw a nice viewpoint
- Then on our way back, there was a huge group of students just standing aruond the east field. We thought they were doing weed but it was just a wholesome like social gathering thing. Apparently theres some stephenson(a college group affiliate) group chat and everyone decided to meet up there. We decided to make some friends in that thing and just talk about stuff. It's honestly kinda wholesome to see an event with this capacity of people with just the sole objective of like talkinga nd meeting new ppl. It's rly wholesome lol
- We were there for like 40 minutes or somethign just talking to ppl but yea
- anyway then we headed back, an along the way we saw lucas(one of our floormates) hanging out in the lounge with one of his friends and we popped in and played some cards. The lounge also had a piano and I played on it but then it was quiet hours so a like officer came in and told me to stop very kindly. Anyway we played like egyptian war and spoons and stuff and it was pretty fun
- Yea then after that we headed back, i took a shower, we were NOT planning on getting back this late, but man i guess that random socializing spontaneous event and that lounge thing is just part of like the college experience or whatever
- but anyway yea before i wrap things up i SOMEHOW CANT FIND MY PIXEL BUDS and i am VERY ANNOYED. I SWEAR ON MY LIFE I DIDNT BRING IT TO THE HIKE OR WAHTEVER. I swear i left it in my room, but its legit not on my desk or anywhere. I'll have to properly find it tomorrow ig, ill take a bike back to our viewpoint because i sat on a bench and it mightve fallen out of my pocket there. but my wallet didn't fall out which is good i guess? but like man ive had these earbuds for so long i DO NOT WANT TO LOSE IT especailly this early in. My only backups are like wired ones and i dont wanna deal with that especially at the gym. man i BETTER FIND IT TOMORROW PLEASE MAN PELASE JUST BE ON THE FLOOR SOMEWHERE BRUH I LEGIT THOUGHT ABOUT IT FOR LIKE 20 MINUTES JUST SITTING HERE PONDERING IF I BROUGHT IT WITH ME OR LEFT IT AT THE DORM AND I LEGIT DONT KNOW
DAY 5
hi its 1 AM again somehow
- woke up late at 9 am today, no gym
- went to a math undergrad welcome party at 10 am where they gave like free waffles and stuff. It was really fun cuz everyone ive met so far is like biomed or like cs or something, i havent seen like any math majors.
- At this event there was like 20 of us around, it was rly cool. However NO ONE there was a Math Theory and Computation major which was what my major was. In the beginning the math department director or whatever talked about it and said that this new major was hype or something abd basically kinda gassed it up and said that a lot of ppl are gonna want to declare this major in the future or something i dont rly quite remember what he said cuz i was also late to the thing too but like ppl were saying that its cool taht i got admitted to that major
- also the food there was pretty good too. there were waffles and bagels and cookies and everything, i stashed a yogurt and spoon to take home lol
- Then I went back to the dorm and actually walked back with a friend i made during that meetup, he was a math + econ major or something that was also in JRL, the college section area im located in
- Anyway then I ate lunch with arian which was alright today esp since they were serving popcorn chicken and this lemon cilantro rice that wasnt bad
- I chilled in the dorm, then got out and used the ebikes to look for my earbuds, i went to a lot of places, and didnt find it. I didn't have much hope either. im sad, my parents are definitely mad, they are going to read this and be mad. i always lose things somehow
- but anyway the ebikes are actually not bad. when i was picking it back up one time, i forgot to turn on the ebike and the pedal assist was on and it was so hard to pedal and gain momentum. And if you put it on the right setting, its actually quite easy to go uphill, so honestly i dont have many complaints with the ebike. The lock system is also very good, i used it a couple of times when i went to get off the bike briefly
- Anyway then I ate lunch which was alright today esp since they were serving popcorn chicken and this lemon cilantro rice that wasnt bad
- then i think i chilled for a while, then the rest of the day was pretty long
- at 3 pm we headed to cornucopia. This super big event at UCSC, and it was definitely very big like they hyped it up to be. It was on the big east field and there were like 300+ club booths or something. I pretty much visited all the booths, and there were some highlights, like the republican club which was kind of funny to see, like how out of the place they lowkey seemed. Also there was an ARMENIAN club which was so random, like armenia is such a random country how is there a club for them, everyone there was armenian lol.
- I got a TON of free stuff, like tons of stickers, magnets, pens, candy, sunglasses, flyers, etc. I got some electrolyte packets from the bike club, along with chain lube. At the firefighter booth, i got a free flashlight and free glowsticks.
- I remember scouting at cornucopia earlier on the website and saw the competitive programming club. So I made sure to look out for them and I did. I talked to them and said i have lots of experience in cp and like im expert on cf maxed and they were basically lowkey sounding kinda desperate LOL. They explained that theyw ere 1 place away from making the national ICPC last year and that theyre looking for people like me. One of the kids was 2200 rating on cf which is RLY GOOD, but he said that im the second best in the school. So that was really exciting for me, dude if i can be on like the UCSC icpc team that will be so cool, jsut the experience itself will be so cool. Also helped like boost my ego with what they were saying lol, but anyway im pretty motivated to start grinding again even though like idk, solving problems never hit the same anymore still, but yea i do hold lots of impact on icpc or hopefully but yea. Anyway other than that there were a bunch of sweaty robotics clubs and AI clubs that i joined the discord servers
- Anyway dinner at cornucopia was alright too. The line was insane, you'll never understand how long that line was. But aryan had a spot so I got pretty lucky. The dinner itself was pretty good, it was my first time having soda in a while and that stuff tasteS TRASH. My stomach lowkey started feeling weird after drinking sprite, which ive never experienced before. Idk man soda is just straight up sugar that stuff is nasty im taking water over soda ANYDAY of the week. Eh soda is kinda good sometimes and refreshing but like a whole can is way too much
- Then we headed to the santa cruz boardwalk. I first had to drop some stuff at my dorm cuz i stashed like 4 electrolyte cans or wahtever and like 3 apples from the garden that they were giving way and theres no way im carrying around that heavy bag to the boardwalk for 3 hours
- So then we waited at the bus station and there was like SOOOOO many other people waiting there too. We had to wait like 3-4 buses which was like 20 minutes before we finally got to the front of line and ended up on a bus. The buses were so crowded and packed because of this frolic. Oh yeah, i never explained this. They rented out the whole boardwalk for ucsc, we pay 15 dollars for like unlimited access to all the rides and stuff and like a $10 playcard too, its pretty cool, except that like everyone from the school is going and so all these lines are CRAZY.
- After we got off the bus which took so much dedication to even accomplish because we were at the bus stop for so long, we were walking down the line and MAN THAT LINE IS SO LONg. We waited for 30 minutes literally 30 mintues before taking a glance down and seeing that like we barely made ANY progress. At this time austin and matthew came over too from their nap lmao, THATS how long we were waiting. So then we decided to cut the line and it was so easy, u legit just go to the front lmao
- And just like that we were finally in. We walked around for a while, went on go-kart and some rides that were honeslty pretty fun. This one gravity one made me soooo dizzy but it was also fun. Then we ate some stuff, we split up where some of them got burgers or chicken tenders but me matthew and arian went to get those potato skewer things. These werent that good but its hard to mess them up so yea.
- Overall pretty fun experience for my first time at the santa cruz boardwalk, and definitely not the last considering im going to school here.
- We then took a bus back home which was ANOTHER line but this one went pretty fast because there were tons of buses coming in frequently. And also, when we took the bus out of campus to the boardwalk, lots of the times the buses were already filled with tons of people from previous bus stops on campus
- Shower + fooling around with foolmates and bombing them or whatever + talking = nightnight
DAY 6 (last day)
Hi, it is 11:15 PM, WOW!!! Great way to cool things down leading into school. I've been writing these at 1 AM regularly
To be honest, I quite don't remember what I did today like specifically in the order. It will take a bit of brainpower to remember
- Woke up at 7:40 AM, ended up snoozing it all the way to 8:30 AM before I finally got out of bed
- Headed to the gym and the indoor courts had some people but like I got to practice by myself. Then we played 3v3s then 4v4s, I played solid today, I made some nice hook shots. It was DEFINITELY way better than last time, i still remember Monday I played SO BAD.
- After the gym, I walked to Classroom Unit 2 for some John R Lewis Core Course First Meeting where the professor just talked about some random things man it's like the history about angela davis who is what one of the buildings is named after and just random stuff it was soooo boring
- Then after that, me arian and matthew went to eat lunch at cowell, a dining hall that we haven't been to. We went there cuz we knew the JRL dining hall would have a super long line cuz everyone just got back from the lecture
- Lunch was actually REALLY SOLID, chicken, rice, steamed broccoli, and the cookies were really good. It's so refreshing to be eating actually cooked broccoli instead of the ones that taste like plastic at the salad bar
- Then after lunch I headed back to the dorm and chilled for a while, then me Raymon and Matthew took a bus down to downtown santa cruz cuz we didnt know what to do and we just went inside like every clothing store and thrifting store. None of us bought anything at any of the stores. Lots of them were like hippy clothing and like super musty inside, and other ones were super expensive. There was a goodwill, but everything there felt so dirty but it was cool to experience I guess. At the end we hit up trader joes on our way back and I bought a juice while raymon and matthew bought some food that they can heat up and stuff. I'd say that the trader joes session was a W. But yea what we realized is that really like Santa Cruz is a pretty lame city aside from the boardwalk. There really isn't much to do, and there's some sus homeless ppl too. The only good places to eat are like five guys, chipotle, nick the greek, and taco bell and some pizza places. But our gang made a deal to only eat out once a week, probably on Sundays, so we gonna have to wait some time before eating that five guys. MAN EATING OUT IS SO FIRE.
- After that we took the bus back, and me and Raymon ate at JRL dining hall while Matthew ate at the dorm where he microwaved his trader joes mac and cheese
- This dinner was a SPECIAL ONE. Me and Raymon each got a bowl and put some vegetables in there and iT WAS NASTY MAN
- I put peas, edamame, cucumbers, carrots, lettuce, and the salsa. I ended up eating like 70% of it I would say. My stomach and throat HONESTLy started hurting from eating all that healthy stuff. Everything there just tastes like plastic man I miss my moms food man I didn't appreicate my moms vegetables enough I AM SUFFERING
- After dinner it was just a combination of like hanging out on the floor with floormates and me on my computer getting ready for tomorrows class. I also zoom called my mom and dad to pay the tuition for the quarter. I'd say it was a pretty chill/fun day today. See you tomorrow! It's sad that it's all over. I haven't had this real stress of homework or anything since May. I've said this many times but it's just been so blissful and like so happy every day to have like nothing to worry about in general. I need to actually lock in tho, I got this.
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