Hi! My name is Teresa, and I’m quite excited to be a U/U student at UCI. I know that there’s a lot of negative connotation attached to the word “undeclared” (indecisive, doubtful, unsure, unprepared, etc.), but I’ve come to embrace the part of that connotation that is true; I’m 18 and fresh out of a school system where I was basically given a checklist of classes that I had to take in order to graduate. Of course I catered my schedule to my interests and explored new subjects outside of class, but I’m not sure I have the confidence to begin taking an uncertain path only to realize it’s not actually what I want and turn around at the most strenuous point.
With that being said, my current major interests are Computer Science and Language Science; I’m taking classes in both this quarter, and I have confidence that by the end of this quarter, I’ll be able to make a better informed decision about how I want to incorporate those two areas into my college studies. In terms of actual career paths, I’m quite interested in the field of natural language processing as well as cybersecurity, though I do anticipate discovering new interests during my time at UCI.
I’m a commuter from Huntington Beach, though I’m still driving on a learner’s permit, so I probably won’t be driving myself to school this quarter (for the greater good… you don’t want to see me on the road). This has provided a few complications as I need to find a ride for anything I want to go to, but I’m still doing my best to be involved in all the activities that interest me. I hope to share my adventures on the blog!
What else is there to say about myself? I got AirPods right before I graduated high school and they honestly changed the trajectory of my life (nothing hits like using study hall time to work on homework while listening to the Animal Crossing soundtrack on the lowest possible volume out of fear that the sound will bleed and someone else will be able to hear “Bubblegum K.K.”). I’ve always liked to fidget with my hands, and I decided to funnel that energy into learning how to crochet. I’m currently working on making something vaguely like a top (it’s like a shawl or a cover-up) and it involves sparkly white yarn and a cool spiderweb-like mesh pattern. I have an 800 day streak on Duolingo and I live in constant fear that I will lose it one day. I’m mainly learning Korean and Chinese (which I studied in high school), although past ventures have included Spanish and any other mildly interesting language.
I’ve never been good at conclusions, so I’ll leave you with a quote from Lulu Miller’s Why Fish Don’t Exist: “We barely know the world around us, even the simplest things under our feet … we have been wrong before and we will be wrong again. The true path to progress is paved not with certainty but doubt, with being ‘open to revision.’” I hope that in the future I’ll be able to report back with updates on my adventures at UCI!