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How to Start anew

“If you want to change things in a big way, then you gotta make some big changes.” (Rocky Balboa)

Resolutions mean a lot to me. I see it always in the new year to drop the bad and pick up the good habits, to hold myself in a new standard. Always wishing for living healthier, learning new skills, and other ways to live life to the fullest. Of course not all of my resolutions stick, but the one’s that do, the resolutions that I still commit to this day, are life changes I hope I’ll use forever.

Hello everyone and welcome back from winter break and a happy new year! My winter break was a great time for me to come back from Irvine and reunite with family and old friends. I got the chance to celebrate Christmas and the New Year for another year. Coming back to Irvine, with a start of another quarter, I was much more prepared and ready for what was to come. Last quarter I remember spending a majority of it exploring and looking around all the possibilities that are provided around campus. Finding and learning all about clubs, study rooms, and networking with others were the main goals of my last quarter, a way that I could get a footing in pushing myself out there. Now this quarter I plan to set myself to stay on top of class work and develop on what I’ve already worked with. Using the study rooms I found more often, getting more involved in the clubs/organizations I’ve joined, and meeting up with all the new friends I met last quarter is all ways I’m improving my college experience bit by bit.

But just because you explored a lot last quarter, doesn’t mean that there isn’t more to explore. Everyday I always learn more and more about UCI. Take Aldrich Park for example. The park is known for being quite literally the center of the school, one of the calmest places on this busy campus, an eye of a hurricane. It’s a place where people gather to relax, socialize, and just have fun. When its good weather, you will almost always see others having picnics, taking naps, and walking around the park. Since it is also the epicenter of campus, it’s usually the meeting place for Petr sticker hunters to gather before the drops happen. Sometimes you won’t even need to look for the location of the drop but rather follow the running crowd over to get a free sticker of your own.

So with a fresh mind, experience from last quarter, and a positive outlook, I hope that I can take on this winter quarter and succeed. Wherever you are, I hope that you are able to do your best too.

Lets do our best,

Nicholas Chou

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Looking Forward and Back

I know it’s only been a month, but I’m feeling a little out of practice with this and not entirely sure where to start.  So, I suppose I’ll begin at the beginning: hello ZotBlog– it’s good to be back!

I’ve always had the somewhat misguided belief that the new year is a clean slate, a chance to start entirely anew, but as I set resolutions and decided what I want my 2023 to be, I thought a lot about how I want my life to change from where it is right now, rather than the vague goal of where I want to be by the end of 2023.  I think I discussed a lot of this in my last post of the Fall quarter, but the thing I’m looking for this quarter is routine; to try to establish some semblance of stability in my life with regards to the times I work, the times I study, and the times I use for relaxation.  I’m saddened to say that as of the time I’m writing this post (nearing the end of Week 2), I went to bed incredibly late last night and woke up closer to noon than sunrise, so I haven’t found much success there.  Fortunately, having to write this out and admit it to ZotBlog is some motivation to change my ways, and I hope I’ll be able to give a better update in my next post.

I thought a lot over Winter break about the person who I am right now and the person that I want to be, and those goals are a bit too personal and abstract for me to fully elaborate upon, but a major theme running through them is that I want to dedicate more time to figuring out who I am and engaging with things that interest me (if only to find out that they weren’t that interesting in the first place); I tend to be a passive person, resistant to change, and that makes for an unfortunate combination when it comes to exiting my comfort zone.  So, I hope to push myself a bit more during this quarter.  One part of this involves wanting to go to more events – as a commuter, a lot of the time, I feel like I’m just I’m clocking in for class and then leaving as soon as it’s over (which is mostly my own fault – I’ve been overindulging in the comforts of home).  So, that’s one way I intend to exit my comfort zone.

My first two weeks of Winter quarter have been nice, as my schedule actually allows me to be on campus at the same time as the sun (during Fall, all my classes were after 5 p.m., with the exception of one 8 a.m.), so I like that I can get my day done earlier.  I also found out that I have days that can be entirely taken on Zoom, which is not doing wonders for my motivation, but is a flexibility that I enjoy.  I’m still in the phase of getting acclimated to the new quarter, but I’m excited for what’s to come and I’m glad that I have established the foundation for systems to guide me through it.