I'm Heading to UCLA

[jinydu]

Tomorrow, I will board a flight to Los Angeles. On Sept. 27, I begin my undergraduate education at the University of California Los Angeles. I plan to major in Mathematics.

I should be able to continue posting on this forum as normal.

[trill]

awesome, good for you--I graduated from UCLA in 2001! Awesome about being a math major--be aware that the math building is very confusing to find your way in! (also the engineering building, to which it is connected).

tell me everything, what dorm you will be staying at, etc, I can tell you anything you want to know!

(also my boyfriend is a graduate student and TA at ucla, he was a math major at purdue--but now he's actually studying history, so if you ever take history as a GE he might be your TA )

[jinydu]

Thanks for your help. I'm now just hours from leaving home.

I won't be staying in a dorm (the lack of privacy would be intolerable for me). Instead, I will live in a two-bedroom apartment. To help pay off the rent ($1500 per month!), I will look for a roommate. However, I will still have my own bedroom (with a lock on the door), which is much more privacy than I would get in a dorm.

For my first quarter, I've registered for 4 classes: Life Sciences, Comparative Literature, Linguistics and of course, Mathematics. I wanted to get a course in Physics too, but my lack of prerequisites got in the way...

One other thing: I have an aunt that lives about 1 hour driving from UCLA. Her husband works as a doctor at UCLA.

Once again, thanks for your support.

Jin

[trill]

hey cool, what life science class are you taking? As a premed I took LS1-4, but there is also a class called LS15 which is for non-life science majors...

I actually did not stay in a dorm during my first year (1996)--I was supposed to have a triple at sproul but my overprotective parents had a fit when they saw how small it was, so I had to get an aprtment...in my unique case that actually worked out for the worse b/c the roommates I ended up with were very obnoxious and rude--things got out of control and I ended up moving back into the dorms during spring quarter. luckily I got into sunset village (courtside) and I had a really nice room and nice roommates...stayed in the dorms till the end of second year, when you get kicked out of the dorms at ucla.

now they have this very nice new dorm at ucla on de neve that they didn't use to have when I was an undergrad--you'll see it when you get here.

I think the one advantage of living in the dorm your first year (an advantage I did not have) is that there is a very welcoming atmosphere and people introduce you to everything you need to know. I kind of wish I had that, I felt very lonely moving here--not to say that you will feel that way, every person is different.

One thing you might want to know about UCLA though that you may not know already is that we have this tradition called the midnight yell. this means that on finals week, every day of the week at midnight, people stick their heads out the window and scream. In some areas it gets out of control and people also throw fireworks and the police comes and it makes the evening news...I had no idea about this my first year and was really irritated that everyone started screaming while I was trying to study for finals.

also one thing you crazy kids have now that we didn't use to have back in my day (that I wish we did) is ursa online--we used to have to register for classes by ursa telephone which was totally exasperating! We also didn't have an arcade and a bookstore and all this fun stuff that you youngins have.

one more helpful thing: there are elevators located in the tennis courts, in the anderson school of business, and in boelter hall--you can avoid going up the hill by taking those elevators if you're lazy like me.

*sorry I'm getting all nostalgic and probably boring you more than you ever wanted*

[PWrong]

I plan to major in Mathematics.

Hey, I'm doing a maths major next year too.