UCI Survival Guide: 2023 Fall (12/26/2023)

 Remember when I said that last quarter was my most busy quarter? This quarter almost pretty much matched it from start to finish. Just coming into UCI everything was a grind starting from week 0. Here is a screenshot of a typical week of my schedule. I'll explain everything below:

Of course, I had my commitments from last year coming into this year. I am now the president of BBA, I decided to play IM volleyball again, I was in STMS again, and I had my chemical engineering major. Compared to last year, I did drop CATT, because I simply did not have enough time.

However, I also applied to the Learning Anteater Resource Center (LARC) last year over the summer, and I somehow got in. LARC is basically a division on campus that is in charge of tutoring traditionally difficult classes, and they hire students to be tutors. They actually pay one of the highest amount of money compared to any on campus job, but in exchange you do have to put work in and you also have to do some other extra stuff. That being said, I didn't regret joining the LARC this year at all. 

Each week I'd spend around 10-14 hours on LARC. You have to teach 6 hours of tutorials, plus 1.5 hours for prep for those tutorials. You also have to go to lectures, which take up 3 hours. This means that at a minimum you will probably be working 10.5 hours. However, there are occaisonal meetings that you have to go to, and you also have to host 4-6 hours of review sessions a quarter, which serve as longer tutorials.

I'd say the nicest thing about the LARC is how supportive they are (aka the benefits I guess). You get to just chill in the LARC office, where there is usually just like free snacks and water. I would basically go to the LARC office to take naps and refill my water bottle like every day. The people are all pretty chill, and I do enjoy socializing with them even if I'm not super close to them. To be honest, meeting them was a bit of a culture shock compared to all of the other spaces that I've been on campus, but adjusting wasn't that bad. There's like 40-60 LARC leaders total I think, so it's like almost impossible to know everyone, but I have been slowly getting to know certain people so that's cool.

With BBA, I almost felt like that has just become a part of my life. What I mean by that is that even though we do do a decent amount of work, to me I feel like I never thought of it as work, I guess. For example, we had to organize All IDC, and we also decided to make posters and visit every dance team's auditions, which took time. We also had other outside events such as a workshop taught by a bboy from Taiwan, two fundraisers, but for some reason I just didn't feel super super stressed about it all. Our fall quarter battles this year was a really big sucess, we had so many people come out from like different schools and even other IDC dance teams (by teams I mean 1: MCIA), and that was super cool. BBA is only continuing to grow and I'm really happy with the way that it's going right now. It almost feels like it has started to grow out of my control and I'm pretty happy with that. I guess I feel like since I'm a fourth year, I have to start letting go and letting the club exist without me, and I think that that has been happening so I'm happy. People are just randomly hanging out and sessioning with each other and that has been my goal since I entered UCI and saw what BBA was at that time.

There was some slight dance team drama but that shit was super minor and I'll write another blog post on that later lol.

IM volleyball was fun, I only went to one regular season game but I went to all of the playoff games and we actually managed to win the lower division, which was cool. It's not the higher division, but there were some pretty fun games that we played so I think it was pretty worth it.

Something else that I almost forgot I did was that I also tried to DJ a lot more. I did end up doing a decent amount of events (5-7 depending on what you count), and I even got paid $150 for DJing Kaba Modern's auditions. I did some amount of parties, and I had a lot of fun at some and then not as much fun at some. I personally had never actually not had fun DJing any party before that one party, but I think I learned a lot about DJing and I'm glad I have this avenue open for me for the future.

As for my personal life, I really didn't have much of one. I would go home at night and YouTube or TikTok or Valorant till 3am, then wake up right before either class or my LARC tutorial at 10:30am each day, then go out until night again. Any spare time I had I usually went to the ARC to play volleyball or to just session. Because of this, I barely spent any time at home.

I'm living in Camino this year which I don't like as much as Plaza, mainly because my new place is dirtier and because of the stairs. There are two reasons why my place is dirtier this year: carpet floors instead of wooden floors, and because my housemates were avid party throwers. Because they threw so much in the past, we just wear shoes in the house, which contributes a great deal to the dirtiness of the overall place. However, we got two warnings during Week 0 for throwing a huge party, and then we got investigated by Camino, so my roomates don't throw anymore.

I was doing pretty well this quarter until I got sick after staying out super late twice in a row during Halloweekend, which is when I started to experience some mild-ish burnout. At that point, I just started to kind of slog through everything, but I still made it out of the quarter alive which is cool. Overall, I think I had a pretty good time this quarter. I was able to hang out with some people that I didn't super hang out with before, and I enjoyed those hangouts a lot. I still stayed out late, and I made some pretty good memories. Perhaps I'm numb to this lifestyle now, but looking back it was a pretty good quarter, even if I hit a bump towards the end.

Classes Taken:

CBE 145 (Chemical Process Control) - Tayloria Adams (B+)

This is the last actual "class" in the chemical engineering curriculum at UCI. It's kind of a weird mix in between CBE 40A/B (balances) and CBE 110 (reactors) and just solving weird math problems, but it was a decently interesting class. It's another one of those classes that just feels kind of weird and you have to almost think differently to do it, but once it starts making a semblence of a sence it feels kinda satisfying. Typical chemical engineering stuff. Adams could be a better professor, but it is what it is. The main thing to be wary about in this class is that Adams has such a fuck you figure it out mentality, and since "we are seniors we should be able to know how to learn how to solve everything." While it is true that we are able to usually figure everything out given a couple hours to days, it still sucks because you still have to put in that effort in order to actually understand what you are doing. I'm kind of sad I got a B+ in this class, I really thought I would get an A but I kind of choked towards the end of the quarter because I stopped giving a shit.

CBE 140A (Chemical Engineering Lab I) - Erdem Sasmaz (B+)

This class is a bit complicated to explain, but I will try my best. First off, there are biweekly lab times and discussion times. For the labs, they start week 2, and half the class rotates in each week, such that only half the class goes into lab each week. On the week that you are off from lab, you have to have a 15 minute meeting with Sasmaz and you also have to write your lab report for the lab you just did last week. For the discussion, the first two weeks are lectures, then after that the group leader of each experiment run has to present once on their labs that they finished the week before. Teams were made of four to five people, and everyone has to be team lead for one experiment, meaning that everyone will also present.

Everything about this lab was cancer. Doing the labs was cancer. You just sit there and even if you finish early you aren't allowed to leave early. The lab reports were even more cancer. You have to sit there in front of a screen and try to analyze all the data you gathered and then you have to write the long ass report, which usually ends up to be at least 40 pages. Granted, perhaps around half of these pages are taken up by data or graphics, but even so that is still around 20 pages that you have to write. So much work for this stupid fucking class, and I'm not even counting the week where you have to actually do the presentation.

There was also a final for this class where the average was like 40% (I got 47% I think?). You could print out whatever you want for the final, but there was like no information given on the final and I think everyone just did not give a shit anymore.

I fucking hate labs so much. I'm still kind of sad that I only got a B+, but considering how low my grades were throughout the quarter for this class that's actually pretty good.

MSE 158 (Ceramic Materials) - Kai He (A)

I did not give a shit about this class at all. I'd just show up for the attendance, and then play video games in the back the entire time. We got like two homeworks the entire year, which only took like an hour each if that. Besides homeworks, participate, a group project, a midterm, and a final are your main grades.

I did absolutely terrible on the midterm for this class, but I still somehow got an A. For the midterm, he said that you wouldn't have to memorize anything, but in actuality you did and I just ended up doing really bad. I did do below average on this test, which makes me feel like perhaps everyone else just studied harder than me for the midterm. The final report wasn't that bad, and I just spent like a day writing my two page report plus making my presentation slide. My team said that we would meet up to practice but we never did, so we just ended up winging it and it somehow worked (at least for me, because I think I'm a pretty good presenter).

The final was take home, which was pretty cool. I spent also like just a day (maybe a couple hours) finishing it up, and I did pretty good on it, which is how I think I got my A.

Uni Stu 175 - Staff (Pass)

Class that I had to take to be a LARC teacher. It was about halfway useful. If I could've I would've liked to just ditch the entire thing, but I liked the LARC people enough for me to still go and I also liked how this class kind of served as a little break in my day. It was only once a week, and I had to leave like twenty minutes early anyways to go to my next class, which was CBE 145.

ENGRMAE 199 (STMS research) -  Advisor: Khalid Rafique (A-)

Same old STMS bullshit. I somehow got an A- in this even though I put in like literally no work on this LOL. We recruited two new people this quarter, who are both very capable and chill people, but I decided to leave STMS this quarter because it was the thing that had the lowest amount of priority in my life. I was starting to really hate my time in the lab, and I would just want to go home towards the end of everything. I'm glad they still gave me an A-, however, because I probably put in C level work if I'm being honest.