First week of classes college update!

  Hi guys, so I haven't opened up blogger since Wednesday night last week which is like 9 days ago which is kind of crazy to think about, right now it's Friday night. I should've but was too lazy and busy. Here's like a comprehensive run-down of some events that happened that I can remember

• Math 24
• My monday, wednesday, friday class from 10:40 - 11:45. There's like 30-40 ppl in my class which is relatively small
• professor is very nice, has a strong hispanic accent, teaches fairly well. She just seems like a very nice person and I've asked her a couple of quesiotns after class too and yea shes just generally nice
• Then I've been to one discussion so far on Wednesday today. We went to some classroom in mchenry and it was an alright discussin. For like the first like 20 minutes it was just straight up review where one of the PhD student TAs just reviewed concepts and it was SOOOO boring because it was like rly basic stuff. But then there was a good majority of the rest of the time spent on examples which i felt was like generally good practice to do. Some of the problems he put up were pretty hard too and like we would discuss stuff, so overall it was like fun and a good way to meet new ppl in the class too cuz usually its just like nearly straight lecture
• Homework seems pretty manageable too, theres like one assignment due on the Friday of each week, I just need to keep up and not procrastinate.
• CSE 30 
• My Tuesday, Thursday online class from 5:20 - 6:55. There's like 150+ ppl in the zoom meetings and no one including the professor has their camera on. The professor had his camera on for the first class, but gave it up from then on lol. I'm not gonna lie it is VERY DIFFICULT to sit through this entire class session beacuse my guy will jsut start rambling about random stuff. I remember one time idk how but he started talking about anchovies or something for like 30 minutes, another time he was talking about omega-3 and how good it was for your body for like 30 minutes. That stuff is genuinely funny cuz like you can tell hes not even realizing taht hes off track. But its hard because I go to the library to take this class in like a pod and a lot of the times I end up just giving up trying to pay attention and opening up geoguessr on the library computers and playing some duels. So far everything is super fundamental, hes been teaching like strings, maps, sets, etc so that only adds fuel to the fire cuz theres like not a single point of time where i have the motivation to focus. But soon there will be some interesting things. I still half-listen to him constantly when I play geoguessr too with my earbuds so ig it kinda works
• We've had one discussion section on Wednesday and I MET ZACHARY DOROSHENKO. I remember I saw him opening the door and we were both like SHOCKED and like "YOOOOO" it was super funny, hes my friend from band and orchestra, he played mellophone and stuff. So yea that was fire. The discussion section itself was pretty boring, it was just some asian guy reviewing everything which is super basic python stuff. The kid in front of me was LITERALLY on league of legends for the ENTIRETY of the discussion section lmao, bro just went there for the attendance. The classroom itself is kinda cool tho, its in the baskin engineering section and the chairs are really cool, i cant rly describe the chairs but UCSC and maybe college in general has some really cool chair designs. I'll make sure to take some photos for the next diary post about what I mean
• Homework for this class seems SUPER EASy. The first assignment I finished in like 2 minutes, but obviously it wont be like that in the future. But I'm set for the REST OF THE WEEK. It's the same system as my math 24 class, I have one assignment due on Wednesday, weekly assignments on Google Colab or something
• JRLC 01
• This is my core class, about like ethos and social justice or something, its every Tuesday and Thursday at 8 AM - 9:35 AM , theres like 30 ppl in my class or something, our classroom is like a highschool classroom lowkey.
• Essentially it's an english class, and my professor or whatever is some white lady, and we have a reading response due before every class, so tahts twice a week. Then during class we discuss the reading response and SOMEHOW it takes the entire 90 minutes of class. Cuz we go into groups and then fill out a google doc for like 30 minutes, then each group shares out their responses and stuff and like overall she asks some questions too in between to stimuately soem random discussions and like half the class is BS its kinda stupid no one cares too cuz its like 8 AM too lol but yea htats how the class works
• Then my FIRST ASSGINMENT i got 10/12 WHICH IS REALLY STUPID because assignments are worth 20% of yoru grade and like if you get below 93% thats a 3.7 and I reallyw ant a 4.0 this quarter. Now that is SO STUPID like I looked at the rubric and she said i didn't quote neough from the thing or whatever. So like after that, I started taking these reading responses super seriously and like writing super long responses and like analyzing it like its an essay. Like, I'm practically writing 2 essays per week which is ridiculous in my opinion. This is like SOOOO much more work than my other two classes which I literally thoguht would be the flip-side.
• There was one "discussion section" or wahtever you call them and tehy are "planerys" where everyone from JRLC, john r lewis college, goes to the quarry amphitheater and watches some like ted talk or speaker or discussion. Theres like a thousand of us in that thing, youll see in the photo album. It was really boring, half of us left halfway through the thing which was super funny cuz they were talking about deep stuff too. We had to write up a response to taht which was so annoying. Overall, you can tell taht I hate this class. I swear if I get 10/12 on these next assignments man thats gonna be so tough
• Going home
• So one week in I decided to go home. I wasn't planning on it, I was planning on going home the week after. But like a lot of my floormates that I'm good friends with were going back to San Jose, and also there werent many events this weekend, and also I didn't have like ANY homework this weekend, AND PLUS its my moms birthday on Saturday so like Yea i really made a push for it. My sister drove from stanford and picked me up and we went home and it was SOOO nice being home. It honestly felt so surreal beacuse my first week of college felt like a month honestly, and now like I'm just like suddnely teleported back home. I feel like I'll never experience that feeling again, just driving back in Pleasantan downtown for the first time in a week but what feels like it's been like a month-long summer camp or something. I remember on Friday I literally PICKED UP ASHWIN to go to orloff and fallon sports park, it litearlly felt exactly like htose summer days again. It felt like insanely surreal, just like as if nothing ever happened, college never happened. Literally we would run taht routine to fallon like almost every day during the summer, and here we were coming home on the same weekend after the first week of college running it back. 
• It was very relaxing to just like have space i guess and also just to be with my family and eat great food, and also bring back to the dorm some essential stuff, like a laptop stand, keyboard, cubing mat, water jugs, and rubberware container. I totally dont regret coming home at all, it was really fun celebrating my moms birthday and everything. I didn't miss out on like anything at college too.
• Competitive programming club
• So when I went to cornucopia I talked about the Competitive Programming club. They had their first meetings on Thursday and Friday, which was yesterday and today. It's a pretty 'awkward' club I would say, like most of the ppl here are some cs nerds that don't give the vibe that they ever go outside lmao. But like yea lots of the ppl here don't even know what codeforces is, so like yea the first meeting he just showed us the Watermelon problem on codeforces and we solved it, then on Friday we did a harder 900 rated problem. But yea he said the ICPC tryouts are happening in like late-October so yea thats cool that its upcoming. I'm thinking about doing the Codeforces contest at 2 AM ON SUNDAY, which is an insanely awkward terrible timing. Like if I stay up until 2 AM, I'm going to be so dead, I've literally done that before and I was getting so groggy, I couldn't think, I literally went to bed at like 3:30 AM. Then at teh same time, its 2 AM so like theres no shot I can sleep at 10 PM on Saturday with my roommates here too on a weekend and get like 4 hours of sleep somehow. I'm not sure how I will figure this contest out, I might just skip it because that timing is just so bad. If it was like 5 AM I could lowkey push myself to waking up early for taht
• But anyway CP is genuinely like fun now. Ever since binarysearch shut down like there's no flare of doing problems anymore. There's no passion, but like during my English class when people are yapping about random social justice topics I just open up a div2 D codeforces problem and jot things down in my ntoebook and solve it. If it wasn't for that opportunity I wouldn't do codeforces that much, but its lowkey like some consistent training lmao. Cuz its like perfect cuz u think and stuff and ure not like on ur computer staring at things where the professor can notice that ure offtask.
• Dining hall food - photo album
• So the udpate for dining food is that its generally solid. I'm not going to like list out every single meal I had because I didn't write it down, but like there were some new discoveries, like the popcorn chicken, tacos, lemon rice, burgers, but most importantly the GOAT so far is stir fry. They served this stir fry with vegetables, chicken, and sauce and man it was SOOO good like thats the only thing I've eaten from the dining hall that's on the caliber of restaurant food. I used a rubberware box and packed some chicken and rice and broccoli one time to eat during my cse 30 lecture, youll see it in the photo album
• but like two weeks in, dining hall seems alright. There's like lots of choices most of the time, and if all goes wrong i can just put a bagel in a toaster and put some ham and turkey and honey mustard and stuff on it.
• my friends and i have also like challenged each other to actually start eating veggies cuz one time we just ate pepperoni pizza and called it a day and then when we got back we were feeling super guilty cuz thats an embarassing performance to say the least
• So you can see that broccoli i put in soup so it doesnt taste like plastic. I've been adding like green beans to my meal everytime i head to the dining hall.
• Eating out (twice) - photo album
• So i said before that we agreed to only eat out once a week, but we ate out twice lmao. Literally we gave up on like Tuesday and went out on an adventure for some taco bell. I got nacho fries and a chalupa
• Then on thursday it was matthews birthday and i got a call from raymon to go to five guys and im just like aight bet. I didnt get any photos of it in the album
• That five guys burger is so good, like eating out is honestly just anotoher level, I remember i ate a dining hall burger the next day and it just is impossible to take that stuff seriously especially when u just had five guys the day before
• Gym
• I went to the gym like 3 times this week, two of those times i played basketball before my workouts. They were solid workouts, and I go with raymon and matthew, i did squat one time and i got super sore, i havent done legs in like a month lmao
• But like I'm thinking about taking the gym pretty seriously. I needa start like a push+pull+legs instead of upper body + legs, but idk if i can go to the gym like 6x a week. Idk but either way im gonna make like some schedule today. I also wanna buy a blender bottle cuz u can add like blueberries or bananas or milk or ice cream to a protein shake or something which sounds like a fire breakfast.
• Koi pond - FIRE photo album
• Last week on Thursday which was a while ago me matthew austin arshia jackson and andres went to the koi pond at like 10 pm or somethign when it was dark and that hike DID NOT HAVE TO GO THAT HARD because i wasnt expecting so much like scenic stuff. It's really cool to see UCSC having all these random hiking trails and these hiking trails HITTING HARD. There was a full moon out and theres like so many cool spots like cut down giant tree trunks, logs, random huts, and just random things that students left out that make things go hard. Lowkey I wanna buy a camera cuz were gonna go on a lot of hikes like this, but the pixel 7 flash is arleady good enough. My phone was super low on battery so I didn't take many photos in comparison to arshia and andres who took the bulk of them. We got some group pictures:

And that's all I remember. Obviously theres like tons of stuff that I missed but those are like the main points. It's been super hot lately and I've been going to the library in the afternoon. Here's a video of matthew's 18th brithday celebration lmao with a super scuffed cake that we stored in andres' room refrigerator. https://photos.app.goo.gl/tpe1YGitAWC2yDn6A

Schoolwork is gonna start ramping up next week, gotta get on my game, especially that writing class. I'm gonna go to like writing tutor appointments and have them review my essay even if i feel like its good. The service is free and i paid so much to go to this college so might as well. I'll see you maybe next week or somethign? I'll try to be more responsible about the diaries lol

Lyric(s) of the Post: 

"I'm putting of what's coming,

Why am I always staring at the ceiling?"

To Be Loved - Arcando, Maazel, Salvo