Recently, I have been telling my friends all about this one class I’m taking, called University Studies 3. Over these past few weeks, this class has been by far my favorite, and I would recommend everyone to take Uni Studies 3 at least once before they graduate.
In this class, a professor who is an expert in their field teaches a once-a-week seminar about a specific part of their field that they are passionate about. For example, my University Studies 3 Professor works on making cameras for NASA and is teaching my class about photography techniques, one of his hobbies. I mean, how cool is that? Every class of University Studies 3 is different because each professor teaches a different subject. Honestly, it’s a shame that I can only take one “version” of this class each quarter, as there were so many good options to choose from. There was a class titled “Bubbles,” one titled “Video Game Afterlife,” and even one about K-pop! I really like the idea of a class where the professor chooses the subject, and where his students are there to learn, not just to fulfill requirements.
Anyways, my class is all about photography so it’s only right that I share some photos, right? I don’t think my photos are that good—yet. I have practically no photography experience, but I have to start somewhere!
However, before you judge my photos, I would like to add a disclaimer: I am taking this class because I am interested in photography, not because I am good at photography. Ok, enough stalling—here are some photos that I’ve taken:
My first picture taken with my fancy new camera!Here, I was able to focus on my desk while blurring my (very messy) dorm!
My attempt at following my professor’s advice of “try to take the same picture from different angles.”
More of the same concept (ft. Christmas Ratatouille)
Some headshots that I liked! (Ft. my friends Hector and Joni)
If you’re reading this, thanks for taking the time to look at my first few photos! I have more, but I feel like flooding the blog with just pictures isn’t the best idea. 😅 If y’all enjoyed these photos, I might include some photos in my blog posts later—who knows? Well anyways, thanks for reading, and I’ll see you soon!
so, i have some exciting news. okay well not really but it’s exciting to me.
i recently obtained an old digital camcorder that my parents used in the early 2000s. its a camera that i know my parents recorded a lot of my baby moments in and so i had my dad bring it to my roommates family (who was visiting uci) so that i could play around with it. i have always wanted to get into video making and film-directing sorts so i was pretty excited to get it last friday.
what is a camcorder
i am supposed to elaborate but i don’t know how much more i could explain it. i think its sony something? i am not really sure but anyways, imagine an old school camera with its signature opening tab viewer thingie that ur dad probably has somewhere in a drawer. that’s what my camcorder is. it’s also black. and i love it because it really has so much history built into it inherently; it is literally a part of my history, something that existed as a part of my childhood. and as a result, it has that vintage, grainy look to it but not one that is engineered to pretend to be history, it is what modern tech looked like when i was growing up. if you want to see it, its on my instagram and maybe what i am saying will make a little more sense. anyways, as u can tell i think its pretty cool.
i dont think i need to explain how recording things work to our generation so i wont but what i will explain, ironically, is the parts of the old tech that you might not imagine. firstly, my favorite, it has a zoom function. on the base of the camera, there’s a little knob that zoooms in or zoooms out and i think it is the coolest thing ever. something i remember very specifically about film 85a is something my professor said about the zoom function. while we can perform typical camera functions like a dolly, which is just when a camera comes closer to the subject, our human eyes cannot zoom. our eyes cannot use distance to focus on something; it’s a manmade function. and today, the notorious zoom has fallen out of contemporary filmmaking while it’s prevalence stays in the glamor of the 80’s and 90’s.
to add to that, the quality of the camera itself isn’t particularly good. it has that vintage tint to it. you know, slightly undersaturated, super grainy, but these aspects are exactly why i like it. it’s like time traveling and now i get to participate in an era where camcorders really were the only option.
camcorder adventures
so what did i do with my fancy new toy. well the same day that i got it, my friend was visiting from ucla. shes a very close friend of mine and we have been friends for a very long time. she’s also one of the few people that i really trust and i would say we have a very intimate friendship. since she was visiting for the first time, me and the third member of our little trio had made plans for an eventful weekend. and though i we did have a lot of fun, most of my camcorder minutes were just of us being stupid in my dorm. my roommate was there too and it was fun. i think they got annoyed at me but i idk it felt necessary to quietly film my closest friends. i really wanted to embody what it was the camcorder stood for; captivated memories of a good time. i wanted to record the same way my parents wanted to remember me as a kid, careful not to miss anything so that, in thirty years, i can remember what life was like when i was younger. i really did record intending to hurt adult me with my own nostalgia. i hope that was an adequate explanation but anyways.
i think, other than random dorm things, i have a lot of footage of us just walking. just walking. on campus, in buildings. at the beach, in the sand, a golden hood over 4 p.m. skin. a lot of the footage i know will be beautiful. not because i only recorded my camera only when it was beautiful, bellieve me most of it was the most menial of things, but because it was the truth of what my life was that weekend. most of it just happened to have its own beauty. maybe 4 people on a rug watching a bad movie and falling asleep isnt the most conventionally attractive, but the honesty in the video as a depiction of that eventful saturday is beautiful in the same way we need to love the menial things. to find beauty in them. and i would show you but i haven’t figured out how to upload or even look over the footage yet. i need a cord or something. i dont know ill have to run to target later and figure it out.
camcorders in film and other things
in this last section, we will look at the old-school camera look in films. well only one film i think. and one of my friends own vlog that she recorded on her own digital recorder.
our first example is:
Aftersun (2022)
“Sophie and Calum.” Aftersun, 2022, https://media.timeout.com/images/105894567/image.jpg.
conveniently, this film was recommended to me by the same friend who made the video that i just talked about. i think i owe some of my own inspiration to this friend as well. i find her artistic creations to be so beautiful. she does a great job and she also inspires me through her photography. yeah shes pretty great.
anyways, the film.
Aftersun (2022) is a film about nostalgia and fatherhood. of the first things i love about the film is it’s cinematography and, above that, the actor playing the father, paul mescal’s, does a perfect embodiment of a father trying his best. so if u get a chance, it is definitely a performance worth watching.
what’s also enticing is the medium in which the movie was made: the film combines the contemporary videography with camcorder footage that our main characters, sophie and calum, switch between. and together with anti-chronological editing, the movie portrays snippets of sophie’s current life, her memories, and the camcorder to piece together a puzzle of her father. but i would like to note that our questions as the audience do not allude to just a simple who or what or why it is that everything is the way it is. in the contrary, the entirety of the mystery is just of her father, a puzzle that that even the audience sees is completely fragmented in the same way that sophie herself understands it. and this message is geniusly encoded in random ins and outs of scenes and blanks in the story itself.
the camcorder’s presence, in my opinion, was terrific because it seamlessly creates nostalgic illusions that the film elegantly dance through. so yeah again, if you get a chance, you should definitely see the film. perhaps the plot itself isn’t exactly the most eye-catchingly enticing but trust me, it gets there. and even if it doesn’t, i assure you that the production of the movie certainly is.
secondly:
my friends little montage thingie of our senior ball. i remember her trailing us as we were going about our festivities and now i am grateful i have something that i can remember the time with. when i watch it, it definitely gives me a rollercoaster back to last april. and although it might not for you, i hope you kind of get a gist of what diving into tools of the past does. and while you’re here, go check out her page i think her photography account is pretty cool and im sure you will agree that she is incredibly talented.
Winter break has ended, and now I can officially say that I’ve survived a whole quarter of college. It seems like only yesterday I was still a high school student, wondering to myself what life in college would be like. But now, here I am with an entire quarter under my belt.
This next quarter, I plan to build on what I learned from last quarter. Now that I don’t have a writing class, I have no excuse to take as many all-nighters as last quarter. In fact, my class schedule this quarter is incredibly light, so my goal for this quarter is to not have to do any all-nighters at all. Speaking of, I really like my class schedule. I’m taking Anthropology 2A, Econ 20B, Math 2A, and University Studies 3. Three of these classes are online, which in my opinion makes the classes easier. I have in-person discussions throughout the week, but the only official in-person class I have is my University Studies 3 class, which is a chill photography class that meets one time a week.
So far, everything class-wise has been going great. Even though it has only been two weeks, I hope things will continue to go in the right direction. This quarter, I want to try to secure an internship for the summer. As of right now, I have no plans for this summer, but I want to try and do something productive. (Especially since I did nothing but sleep and play video games over winter break)
As a U/U major, I was at first hesitant to the idea of getting an internship before I declared a major. However, after talking to other people, I have come to the conclusion that getting experience is a great thing as a freshman, even if I’m not 100% sure of what I want to do in the future. This summer, I want to get an internship related to my current prospective major, business economics. By doing this, I will be able to achieve two things: my short-term goal, which is to have something to do over the summer, and my long-term goal of building up experience to eventually work at a job that I enjoy.
At my summer orientation (SPOP), I remember listening to a man talk about undergraduate research. In his talk, one way he advocated for research was the idea that “if you didn’t like it, at least you know you don’t like it now.” This really stuck with me, I realized it was a good mindset to have regarding trying new things. Mirroring this over to my upcoming summer, I will be trying to be an intern. If I do like it, great! But if I don’t like it, no problem. That just means I’ve narrowed down my options for the coming years.
Happy 2023 everyone! I hope you all had a restful winter break and got plenty of sleep, I know I did! During my break I went to my optometrist and she said that I was getting more than enough sleep! (This was because I had no reason to wake up for any classes) 😀
Some of my winter break highlights were spending time with my whole family, movie nights with my family, seeing my hometown friends, making charcuterie boards, and volunteering at a homeless shelter.
For me, last quarter consisted of getting acclimated to the rhythm and life of UCI. I will admit that towards the end of the quarter, I started to feel less motivated because of the thought of winter break and exhaustion that was slowly starting to creep in. This resulted in me trying to take a “short nap” at 10pm and wake up by 10:30pm. In reality, I was sleeping at 10pm (which meant I was getting a decent amount of sleep), but meant that I had to catch up on work that I was aiming to complete the night before. Thankfully, I had classmates, encouraging friends, UCI’s LARC, and review sessions that were led by positive Learning Assistants, to study with for my final exams.
One class that I will miss from last quarter would be my Physical Science 5, Introduction to Science and Math Teaching. In this course, we had the special opportunity to go to an elementary school, work with a teacher and the classroom, and experience the day in the life of an elementary school teacher. I will miss my fieldwork teacher and always being greeted with a smile from the students that I worked with.
As I am beginning my second week of Winter quarter, I can proudly say that it is quite different from what I experienced during the first couple of weeks of my Fall quarter. Some habits I have implemented are developing a consistent schedule and including office hours into my Google calendar. I did this because I want to make it a routine to attend them weekly. I am excited for this new quarter, attending my club meetings, strengthening my friendships and forming new ones, and enjoying every moment of the next 10 weeks. I also hope that I stay healthy for the majority of Winter quarter! Staying in good health is extremely important in college. I would highly recommend wearing a mask during the Flu season (November-December) in your lecture halls because this is when midterms and final exams occur.
Again, Happy 2023!
#ZOTZOTZOT
Here are some photos of my charcuterie boards.
This one was for a New Year’s Eve get together with hometown friends
This one was made by me and my hometown best friend.
Yay winter quarter. I mean it with zero enthusiasm, truly. One thing I have decided recently, after a spectacular winter break, is that I have been lyingto myself. I do not like school. It sucks. I mean yeah who does but like I literally don’t want to do anything but read (I read this fantastic novel over the winter and the writing was just so phenomenal but I will get to that later). Like seriously, I am so ready to retire. I cannot wait for my life in thirty years when I am a super successful author (journalist? english teacher? magazine editor? super star celebrity? You see, as much as I have changed in the past few months, being undeclared is, it seems, still a major problem) and I can do whatever I want with my time and not have to think about money or, I don’t know, arbitrary obligations like school.
But enough rambling, I am supposed to reflect on the last quarter which, I kind-of don’t want to do but a prompts a prompt.
Well, academic-wise, I learned that, as an undeclared first-year looking into humanities, I can really kind of just try my best and still be successful. I have talked about this before I think but I took Writing 60 with Professor Ryan Chang and gosh, the class was so fun. As an intense writing course prioritizing research writing, I had to dive into professional academic writing and it turned out to be (to my surprise) a really enjoyable experience. The biggest thing that I learned from the course, though, was the strangeness of my work-ethic. You see, when it comes to writing, I really do not write unless it feels right. And I don’t really know to how to describe it to you, my dear reader, other than sometimes, I imagine writing my papers and feel dread and sometimes I feel excited; so I decided that I will write when whatever task I was supposed to do came easily. Same goes with most other things now. Of my obligations, it either gets done naturally and painlessly, or it won’t get done until then. So, my inconsistent work-ethic, and it’s exhilarating dangers is, of one of my recent self-discoveries.
Socially, I have more interesting things to talk about. I have honestly had a lot of trouble making friends and engaging in the community here. Back at home in the good ol’ Elk Grove, I was myself, comfortable and confident. But here, I was faced with a new environment, far far away from the luxuries of my family, close friends and most heart-wrenchingly, my 2009 Honda Accord that is so ever representative as a symbol of my adult freedom. So being a student here has been particularly rough on my social life. I had to learn to function around other people when I really didn’t who I was. Around these new Southern Californian plebeians, I was more anxious and more often than not, uncomfortable, insecure, and afraid of being myself. And even now, I am still working on this anxiety. It has been, believe me, very difficult but I know I am getting closer and closer to finding my confidence back.
On a more positive note, I am very proud of the past quarter actually. I have really put myself out there and, at times, a little too much. Sometimes, mostly in social situations, I would push past my discomfort in order to, you know, seize the moment, seize the day. But sometimes, personal growth and becoming a better human being has to take a backseat to how I am feeling. Sometimes, I don’t want to do things because I just don’t feel like it. Sometimes, I am tired and I don’t want to go to a team hang-out or study together or go and do a lot of methamphetamine (a joke). So, in a self-care moment, I have learned to protect my energy better. But my carpe diem adventures haven’t all been that bad. I have a few friends that I wouldn’t have talked to or wouldn’t have met if I let my anxiety stop me. And, I wouldn’t be on the amazing dance team that I am on if I had let my self-doubt win. So yay me! I hope you are “yay-ing” yourself too for your hard work over these past few months as well. And a quick warning, there is an incoming affirmation: I also hope you are remembering to be kind to yourself on this journey and that you are trying your best. I am practicing reminding myself that too: that I am trying my best, and it really is enough.
Anywho I shall be back to write my book review so look forward to part two of this when I abuse my Zot-Blog privileges to promote the superb literary prose in the novel “A Little Life” by Hanya Yanagihara. So until then,
