Hellos and warm welcomes to all the fellow anteaters, allow me to introduce myself as Josh. I look forward to writing about my experiences here at the University of California, Irvine.
Some details about me are that I was originally born in Northern California, Fremont to be exact, and moved down to a small town called Eastvale when I was in the 3rd grade. A major I would be interested in taking would be Computer Science since that seems to be the trend for many jobs in the STEM fields. My hobbies are rather simple, I enjoy going out with friends, playing video games in my dorm room on the weekends, and just chilling out with some music.
My first two weeks were pretty exhilarating as the university campus is a new environment for me so there was so much to do. Week 1 was quite hectic because I held myself to a crazy standard of waking up a full hour before my classes started so that I would be sure that I would have enough time for my morning routine which, unsurprisingly, only took around 15 of those 60 minutes I afforded to myself. That being said, waking up an hour early did pay off one day when my roommate left for classes while I was in the shower. We have an agreement that if no one is in the room we would lock the door so that our stuff can be secured but my roommate forgot I was in the shower so he ended up locking my keys in the room as well. So I had to walk into the Mesa Court Housing Office in a towel and sandals and figure out what to do. As it turns out getting locked out due to a roommate was a common occurrence so that was, personally, a relief to hear I wasn’t the first instance. I was given replacement keys to my hall and room and was sent on my way. So the moral of the story here is… Always bring your keys with you when you’re on campus, even when in your own hall. Week 2 was definitely more relaxed than Week 1 because a couple hallmates and I went to the beach to just enjoy the sun before submerging the study submarine in preparation for the first midterms of our UCI careers. The lows of Weeks 1 and 2 were pretty much non-existent mainly because I can’t recall them at the time of writing this post.
Onwards to classes! Classes have been pretty well spread out through the week I am only REALLY busy on Wednesdays. Currently I am enrolled in Environmental Engineering Challenges (ENGRCEE 60), Math 2A, Writing 39C, and University Studies 1. If anything in my classes this quarter surprised me, it was how interested I was in the topics being discussed in my ENGRCEE 60 class. I think it’s in the way that the professor explains the topic that let’s you know that she is an expert in that field. That being said, Math 2A is like one of those classes where you just gotta suck it up and do it. Writing 39C is the last class for the lower-division writing requirement and it involves research and argument. My professor in that class is an absolute blast to be around and makes the class more like a critical thinking class than a writing class. University Studies 1 is in my opinion what it is advertised to be, an easy A to help your college GPA. I’m not gonna sugarcoat it and say that it has some work because that class has loads of just busy work but the thing is, if you end up getting ahead of the deadlines it’s a class you never have to worry about. In my hall, it seems that if you just sit around in the commons you are bound to meet a majority of the residents and so I made a few friends in that time.
Besides that there seems to be a large portion of people from my high school here at UCI so I have quite a number of familiar faces. Overall my time at UCI has been extremely fun and not too stressful, given that midterms haven’t started yet so there’s that. I hope to have an eventful first year with all of you.
Zot On!
Josh Yow
