Golden Years in UCSB

Ah, UCSB. I will always cherish my years in this school. They were years of personal growth, where I learned to not only live but also thrive while living apart from my parents for the first time. There were many trials and errors, but they made me a better and (slightly) wiser man.

In the beginning, my journey in UCSB seemed rather uncertain. I had just been rejected by my top choice schools such as UC Berkeley and UCLA even when I had a fairly competitive academic record. Add on top of that the fact that UCSB had a reputation as a party school, and one might see how my initial opinion regarding the school might have suffered a bit. I was moved, however, that UCSB welcomed me warmly by awarding me a position in its Honors Program. So I decided to visit the campus and was impressed with its beauty and friendly atmosphere. These considerations cemented my decision to enroll in UCSB.

I had enrolled as a Statistical Science major, and as such, I had to take a course in CS as a major prerequisite. I had a bad memory of CS once in high school when I, naïvely, signed up for an AP Computer Science class (kind of as a joke; I wanted to be in the same class as some good friends of mine) even though I had previously had no exposure to programming before. Needless to say, I got absolutely wrecked and dropped the course before long. I decided, at the time, that CS was not for me.

Given such an experience, one might imagine my unease about having to take a CS course (a college-level one, like AP CS, nonetheless!). So, even before the first quarter of classes started, I spent the summer break studying the CS textbook. By the end of that summer, I had read through the textbook once and had taken copious notes. When the course actually began, I found myself thoroughly enjoying myself and having a blast because I got to be that student who always raises his hand for every question that the professor would throw at the class and answer everything right, even going into further details than necessary from time to time. On top of that, the cute girls in the class would come and ask to study/hang out together! Thanks to that class, I got to meet amazing individuals (including the professor) and had so many fun adventures. I was also able to get a glimpse of the potential that CS offered: by assembling the available pieces/tools together in a certain way, I would have the power to make some cool idea in my head into reality. This experience would stay with me long after the quarter was over.

Looking back, being able to study in a place like UCSB was quite a blessing. Even apart from the academic aspects (which were wonderful in their own right), UCSB offered a beautiful environment in which students could also enjoy being young people. Need a short break from your studies? Get outside and walk for five minutes and you're at the beach! I never really got into the whole party scene which did indeed exist at UCSB (not as big as people think, though; if you really want to focus on academics, you can go through all four years without coming into contact with the party culture). I also got some excellent exercise during those two years since I lived some 30 minutes' distance away by either bus or bike. I usually chose to bike the 5 mile distance since the scenery (which started with a forest and ended with the beach) was quite breath-taking, but the fact that the route was an uphill climb kicked my butt a fair bit in the beginning. Overall, UCSB was an awesome experience that still stays with me even after all this time.

My adventure in UCSB would come to an end after two years, on June of 2015. Since the beginning of my freshman year, I had held one ambition very close to my heart: I wanted to study hard, prove to myself that I could excel, and then transfer to UC Berkeley. Then, at the middle of my second year, the stars had seemingly aligned themselves for my transfer: my housemates were all graduating so I had to move out soon, I had finished up all of my General Education requirements which was required for the transfer process, and my parents had moved up to Berkeley to live with my brother (as he was a student at UC Berkeley). So, with all this in mind, I took that fateful step and applied to UC Berkeley and UCLA. The stars were not aligned quite perfectly though, and I had to take a few more units at my last quarter in UCSB to fulfill the unit requirements. That quarter, I ended up taking the maximum number of course units (which was 21) in order to get above the transfer unit threshold. The pressure went through the roof during the last quarter, but I was able to pull through by the grace of God.

I had been accepted into both UC Berkeley and UCLA.

Through two years of hard work, good fun, support from friends & family, and God's mercy, I was able to achieve my goal in the end. I felt slightly wistful when I fared my friends well, but the time was right since a good number of my friends (who were of various ages) were graduating. I would go on to continue my journey in UC Berkeley, but the memories and lessons I learned in UCSB would always stick with me.

Go, Gauchos!