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Tottenham Hotspur Primer

And back by popular demand… me! (Hopefully) This time, I’m here to talk all about my favorite sports team, Tottenham Hotspur. Following this team has been something I’ve thoroughly enjoyed over the last few years, and I would love to share this passion of mine with y’all.

Watching Soccer

Tottenham Hotspur (also called Spurs) is a soccer/football club based in North London, England. I don’t think I have to explain soccer, but I do think I need to explain why I love watching it so much. When people say they think soccer is boring to watch, I kinda empathize with them. When viewed very shallowly, only a few goals are scored per game, making the rest of the game boring to watch. But when you really, really, throw yourself at a game, you feel highs and lows that can be found in few other situations. All of this becomes amplified when you choose a team to support: every touch, pass, and tackle become their own events in the game. And when that goal finally comes—

So anyways, back to Tottenham Hotspur. Every year they compete in the Premier League, which is the best league in England. This league lasts for 38 weeks, and every team plays once a week to accumulate points. Three points are earned for a win, one for a draw, and none for a loss. The goal every year is to place as high as we can in the Premier League table, and while first place is the dream, doing so is pretty improbable this season. (Maybe one day) However, placing in the top four of the table is the next best thing. This is because placing top four qualifies you for the Champions League, which is the most prestigious competition in Europe. Currently, we are in fourth place, which is barely good enough for us to qualify.

This is the top half of the Premier League table. Tottenham are currently in fourth place, but that is subject to change depending on how the rest of the season goes.

Who makes up this wonderful team, you ask? Once you start watching you’ll eventually learn all the players’ names, but I’ll introduce some of our star players. 

Hugo Lloris

Hugo is our captain and goalkeeper who usually leads the team in every game. The Frenchman is a defensive wall in front of the goal and makes these amazing acrobatic saves. Unfortunately, he got injured mid-Janurary and cannot play for the rest of the season. While this is a big blow, I have full faith in our backup goalkeeper, Fraser Forster.

Harry Kane

With Lloris injured, Harry Kane is filling in for captain. Indisputably our best player, Kane plays as our striker and has scored a whopping 267 goals for the club. He has the third most goals in the history of the Premier League, and even our rivals admit that he is world-class. 

Heung-Min Son

Recognize this man? This is Heung-Min Son, our South Korean star boy. He always plays with a smile on his face—scoring goals only makes the smile even brighter. As the global face of the club, he brings fans from all across the globe, but especially from South Korea. In fact, he was considered the third most influential Korean celebrity by Forbes in 2022, placing him just behind the girl group BLACKPINK.

I try to watch every game that Tottenham play, but with timezones, sometimes games at 5 or 6 am become a bit of a stretch. However, if you’re looking to get into watching, I’d recommend watching highlights on youtube as they are easier to consume in the form of 20-minute Youtube videos. And when you’re ready for the next step, try watching a live game—it really is a different experience when you’ve got someone to root for.

My dream is to one day watch a live game in person, but until then, I’ll happily write or talk about the team. And if there are any other Spurs fans out there, please reach out to me! I’d love someone who I can talk Spurs to. Well, thanks for making it this far—I feel like I’ve just been rambling on and on. I really do love the team though, and hopefully, I’ve conveyed this feeling.

Until next time,

Ian

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Looking to the future

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.

Thanks for reading,

Ian

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Working through Winter Week 3

We have arrived at the one third mark of the Winter quarter and I have to admit, this quarter is definitely more relaxing than last quarter for me. The reason being, I am currently only taking 12 units since I am currently enrolled in ICS 31, a prerequisite for becoming an ICS major. With my current 12 unit course load, I have the time I need to slowly work through the material so that I understand it rather than just for getting the grade I want. Regardless of course load, Week 3 is the first checkpoint in your classes since many classes have midterms on Week 3 or Week 4.

Speaking of midterms, I learned a few things from my first quarter that didn’t seem to work for me when it comes to studying or doing work. First and foremost, I cannot work efficiently when I am in my dorm room. The reason being, that my roommate is usually playing games while I’m working on homework he already completed. My eyes just tend to naturally drift from my tedious calculus homework to his monitor and just stay there. Regretfully, I managed to stare at my roommates monitor for over 30 minutes this one time last quarter. As a result, I started to look for places to work that provide an environment that I can be productive in. Last quarter I found that the balcony that the Computer Science building has fits my needs. This quarter I started to look for a new place to work and remembered that one of my high school friends told me that he was part of a PP&D (Planning, Policy, and Design) elective course that was held from 7pm to 10pm. Being the night owl I am, I decided to follow him to see if I could be productive. The three hour lecture as it turned out was held in the same building that my math final was in the previous quarter. Not being actually enrolled in a class and just using the space to work seemed to help my productivity as the classroom setting kept me focused on the task at hand. As a result, I think I may just start following my friends to their lectures just so I can work.

Looking back at the Fall quarter, there was not much that I regret not doing since I dedicated myself to working on my academics and not my professional development. So all these job and involvement fairs were not really piquing my interest. That being said, going to the ARC every so often and playing a good few hours of badminton is something that I should be doing more often as even though I feel sore afterwards, my mind seems to enjoy the stress relief. While we’re on the topic of stress relief, my sleeping schedule has consistently been improving since my last quarter as I can wake up at about 9am to 11am depending on the day. It’s definitely a plus that my classes are not in the early hours of the day and hopefully this trend continues. Furthermore, classes this quarter seem to be going better than the classes last quarter for the sole reason of experience. After going through a quarter you will start to realize your strengths and weaknesses as a student and hopefully begin to play to your strengths and try to avoid your weaknesses to the best of your ability. For me, social life is just kinda like a side mission since there is little doubt in my mind that somebody can go through four years here at UCI and not make any new friends.

Zot On!

Josh

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Welcoming Winter Quarter

Ah yes, the notorious week 3. From my experience last quarter, I can honestly say week 3 is the tipping point. How well you’re doing in week 3 will most likely determine how your quarter is, or at least that’s how it was for me. However, winter quarter has been significantly harder than fall quarter.

Last quarter, I was making the difficult transition from high school to college and from home to the dorms but now, I am making the transition from biology geared classes to business economics geared classes. Quickly realizing I didn’t want to be a doctor, go to pharmacy school, do research, or teach biology, I switched my focus to business economics so the classes are on the complete opposite side of the spectrum. I can still take my study skills and time management from fall quarter and apply it to these classes though! Having adjusted to the college time cycle and workload has helped relieve unnecessary stress this quarter and allowed me to dedicate more time to clubs and pursue activities that aren’t necessarily academic related.

For winter quarter, I want to plan my time more efficiently so I don’t have to spend days catching up. So far, I’ve been doing this by using a bullet journal to plan out my entire day the night before! This is literally so useful because I know a rough outline of the tasks I have to do that day. I set aside chunks of time to complete assignments I need to do, time to eat, and time to just nap or chill out in my room. It gives me more order to each day and prevents me from spending time deliberating on what to do. I would highly recommend trying this out for anyone who finds themselves spending half an hour trying to decide whether to do math homework or start their essay (me last quarter).

I’m also planning to be more involved in clubs on campus. In high school, clubs were such a big part of my life but I didn’t feel ready during fall quarter, which is totally normal. Although I am an intern for VSA, I wasn’t as active as I would have liked to be. This quarter I want to change that and have made good progress going to my first staff meeting and boothing. I missed the thrill of selling food to fundraise and represent your organization. Come visit the VSA booth on Fridays on Ring Road for banh mi and boba! I’m also going to join Trace, the traditional Vietnamese dance group, to push my limits a little and challenge myself to try something new. This quarter is going to be filled with firsts because I regret spending more time than I need to on my studies. College is so much more than just academics.

Comparing fall and winter quarter, my sleep schedule has definitely improved as well which I’m excited about. I’m constantly getting around seven hours of sleep compared to my five last quarter and I can feel the difference in my mood. It’s partially because my 11 AM class got moved to 8 AM, but I really don’t mind it now. It forces me to get up early and be productive with my day. (College tip: If you have an 8AM, try not to have a class right after so you can go back to your dorm and nap.)

Winter quarter is a different battle than fall quarter. But this time, I’m well equipped with study skills and have adjusted to college life so I’m ready. Bring it on winter quarter.