I miss writing essays — creating my own thesis and possessing the creative freedom to construct an argument, culminating in a piece of prose that is all-in-all mine.

I miss being able to debate different perspectives with one another, learning to put myself in others’ shoes not only to convincingly persuade them but also to broaden and reevaluate my own point of view.

I miss being treated like a human, an imperfect being with changing needs and circumstances, rather than a data point.

I hate that as I write this, I’m highly cognizant that I’m taking time away from studying for my upper-division engineering classes’ finals.

I hate that when I tell friends that sometimes I wish I were studying sociology or psychology the reply is “but Bioengineering sounds sexier.”

I hate that I still believe getting a harder, technical degree is more worth my tuition money.

I’m tired of being surrounded by males, professors and peers alike.

I’m tired of trying to beat the curve simply for the sake of feeling better about my GPA.

And I’m tired of feeling ashamed of falling behind because I’ve instead spent time on meaningful side projects, meeting diverse new people, strengthening incredible friendships, discovering new music, and journaling about who I am now and where I want to be in the future.

Don’t get me wrong, my classes still fascinate me. Just today, I learned how to derive the chemical equilibrium constant equation in thermodynamics and the use of operational amplifiers in dynamic, physical models of differential equations in circuits. Science and math are still subjects I hold very close to my heart and I will gladly nerd out with any classmate about the beauty of linear algebra or just how much of a phenomenon the nephron loop in the human body is to regulate blood volume, pressure, and pH.

But we are raising some of the brightest minds to become masters of problem sets, near-robots who can spit out equations and code up a storm. We need to also cultivate thinkers, dreamers, eloquent speakers — yet there seems to only be continuously dwindling morale and passion in students as I continue my education in the school of engineering.

I need to remind myself that my worth is not only derived from my academic success. That my ability to lead, think critically, and innovate isn’t determined by a failing midterm score. And that I’m capable of doing all that I dream of, and more.

Signing off,

Alexandra

(inspiration from this comic and the result of me being tired of my 6-hours-of-lecture Mondays)

📝 Read this story later in Journal.

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www.alexandrahli.com

Last quarter, I decided to create a personal website as a part of my accountability passion project alongside school, work, and other extracurriculars. The problem: I didn’t know any HTML/CSS/javascript, and had essentially no web design experience.

Why not a different project?

This has nothing to do with Bioengineering, Alexandra.

If I’ve learned anything this year, it’s that involving myself in wildly diverse experiences and perspectives make me a lot happier than simply limiting myself to one area of expertise. I tried to ensure that this project was something I actually wanted for myself, enough to commit a significant portion of time to work on it.

Why do you want to do this?

• learn more about design & simple UX principles
• gain more coding experience
• have an outlet to be digitally creative
• pursue something on my own I genuinely enjoy doing
• motivate myself to build a digital portfolio in the future
• figure out how best to portray myself and my experiences

Is this the best way to achieve these goals?

I could definitely gain a more formal education by taking online courses in product design, HTML/CSS/Javascript, and other various coding principles, but I knew I wouldn’t enjoy it enough to prioritize it over my other commitments. The thing that excited me about this project was the control I had in the creation process, as well as the fact that no one else could do this. Only I could truly voice my own thoughts and decide the content, organization, and visuals of a site.

What are you going to give up to pursue this?

My time each quarter is finite. If I wanted to dedicate my time to this project, I would have to detract time from other tasks. I vowed to spend less time scrolling mindlessly on social media and to be more disciplined with my daily schedule. I told myself to be more comfortable saying no to others to preserve my own time. I’d give up some more spontaneous experiences that dominated my previous quarter to ensure I’d meet project milestones.

The Process

The site was hours upon hours of thinking, drawing, planning, and painstakingly using my finger to digitally create icons on Paint 3D (I’m in need of funds to invest in a stylus and good design software). But I didn’t want to let lack of access to software stop me from pursuing digital creativity.

Website builder vs. coding from scratch

I ended up adding another project as a part of my accountability goals, Vita, in addition to the website, so I chose not to build my site from scratch due to sheer time constraints. Instead, I opted for Squarespace (students get 50% off), which allows for customizability with custom code blocks. It also includes preloaded templates for simple navigation and basic content insertion.

Style Guide

I got inspiration for the color scheme from Color Hunt, and ended up settling on a simple light blue background color and darker, muted blue accent. For the text, I didn’t want to use a true black because it is rarely seen in nature, and oftentimes I find pure black much too harsh for my eyes.

I wanted to make hand-drawn elements a motif in my site, an idea I drew inspiration from Bill and Melinda Gates’ annual letter. Their small handwritten notes in the margins made the experience more personable, and I felt more connected with their personalities.

With subtle colors, simple font, and imperfect digital doodles, my site aims to portray my authenticity and willingness to be open with myself and others.

UI/UX

A recent UX trend I’ve noticed is the one-page website, complete with parallax scrolling. I’ve seen it in personal sites, product pages, and digital essays. However, with the volume of information and categories I had in mind (and lack of coding experience), I opted for a simple navigation sidebar to allow for ease of access and ability to segregate distinct aspects of myself.

One of my main focuses of the UI was to keep the user engaged. The main way I kept my pages dynamic was having images change over hover, encouraging the visitor to explore each page with their cursor and to feel the satisfaction when they noticed the animation or color change or addition of handwritten text.

Another way to keep a visitor engaged on a website is to have a customized 404 page. This way, if you somehow created an error for a page URL within your website it’ll prompt the user to keep exploring rather than just giving up and clicking out of the page if it were the default 404 error page. Lots of websites use this strategy, with some very creative outcomes. My page, complete with a continuation of the hand-drawn character of myself, was intentionally created to be lighthearted, personal, and conducive to prompting feedback.

Takeaways

A journal entry during the stretch of time I was working on this: “Reminder to self: you can’t use a side project as a way to disguise the fact you’re neglecting your classes. It’s called a side project for a reason.”

I found out during those 2 months that I’m a huge perfectionist. I would stay up until the early hours in the morning perfecting one of my icons or pixel pushing the custom code to meet my high expectations. When exam or work deadlines came up, however, it was simply not worth the sacrifice to my sleep. I must learn to prioritize and manage my time better because I cannot say that I was proud of my academic performance during Spring Quarter.

There’s a lot of resources at UCLA I wasn’t previously aware of that I could be taking advantage of. My accountability partner focused on profiting off elaborate laser-cut wood pieces and I accompanied him to the Maker-Space (just a 3-minute walk from my dorm) so we could keep each other accountable. Sitting there in the space, I observed students enter and exit, taking advantage of the 3D printer, laser cutter, sticker maker fully free of charge.

Self-discipline: compared to winter quarter, a lot more weekends were spent on campus rather than going out to a bunch of different things. While I don’t regret having all of those experiences, I learned to completely beat my FOMO and be perfectly happy spending a Saturday night discovering new podcasts while trying to figure out that stubborn Html code that didn’t work the way I thought it would. Admittedly, I didn’t have enough self-discipline to stay completely off social media.

Giving myself more credit. Coming from a very academic and research-oriented background, I’ve always had impostor syndrome when it comes to anything software or product-related. This website is the way I’m portraying myself to the outside world — a way to highlight and showcase accomplishments while building new skills. In compiling all my experiences, I had to come to terms that my achievements are impressive and I’m very grateful to have had the means to pursue and study all that I have. I think it’s important to remain genuine in your portrayal of yourself but I also think we tend to overlook how great our own successes are. We all value humble people, but I believe a healthy dose of narcissism is important to continue growth with confidence.

Self-exploration: I have a wide variety of interests, but explicitly having to narrow down topics I care about and activities I enjoy doing on the site really helped me figure out what means most to me. (Did that one Chinese American org really make an impact on me? Did I take that class because I genuinely enjoyed it, or did I want to prove my academic prowess?) I’m not a specialist, but I don’t want to be devoid of true passions either.

I quite enjoy graphic design and design thinking. As a child, I wanted to be an artist but I never took formal classes; this project helped me delve more into the creative world and I now am a fan of Behance, Pinterest, and Dribble. I realized I thrive off creation — whether it be writing, drawing, or digital design. My journal has since been populated with various sketches and art alongside my thoughts. I had forgotten about this side of me when I stopped doodling and reading for pleasure and focused on STEM during high school. I definitely want to pursue more of this in the future. :)

Have fun exploring the website! I sure had a ton of fun creating it. It was the first time I found work that didn’t seem like work.

Signing off,
Alexandra

Building a Personal Website in 2 Months was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I was introduced to the idea of an accountability group while attending my entrepreneurship fraternity’s Town Hall, a space where members impart feedback and ideas to better the organization. Accountability was actually attempted in the past, a program intended to uphold the mission of “transforming individuals into starters who follow their passions, developing lasting meaningful relationships, and creating value through innovative pursuits.” Adapted from the concept of mastermind groups, Sigma Eta Pi (SEP) Accountability was meant to not only keep each other liable for pursuing their own passion projects but also to educate the active body on good goal-setting and self-discipline. However, the vision fell short and the program quickly discontinued after a few months.

It was time for an Accountability Revamp.

One of my close friends in the fraternity reached out and spoke to the original founder of SEP Accountability and shared the insight he gained. Excitedly, I offered to help flesh out plans for running a revamp for Spring 2019. I constantly look for ways to improve myself mentally, professionally, emotionally, and socially — this group seemed to just fit my needs.

We began to brainstorm, listing why we believe the program failed in its first try and how we could set rules in place to avoid them in the revamp. We concluded that members’ goals weren’t as important as other aspects of their lives, leading to group apathy, bad goal setting, and/or poor implementation.

So, we decided on a long google form with lengthy questions to help dig for the most meaningful goals and to ensure applicants would be committed to the program. We rid the barrier to only focus on professional related pursuits. And we prompted the why by asking rooted questions that encouraged reflection about abstract purposes to improve, rather than just the action or implementation, i.e. do you want to work out to look better or to be healthier and happier? Is that the best way of doing so?

Applicants had to agree to front $70 at the start of the program, which would be returned in full given that you and your partner accomplish your respective goals and attend each bi-weekly meeting. The more that some people fail to meet the attendance or goal requirements, the more valuable the organization becomes to everyone else, as the extra money goes to better the experience for those who do meet those goals (i.e. snacks, celebratory dinner).

By the start of Spring Quarter, we had 8 members, each of us with diverse goals — from starting a small e-commerce business to meditating daily to learning about American and Indian politics — aiming to hit at various parts of personal development (professional growth, self-discipline, intellectual curiosity).

Through trial and error, we found we could best ensure people meet their goals through…

• Deep dives: choosing one member at random and interrogating them about what they were supposed to achieve by that meeting. Have them pull out evidence.
• “Punishments”: while everyone else shares their progress in small groups, those who did not complete their goal were forced to do punishments created by the co-leads. These were pretty entertaining — having to sing an explanation for not meeting their promise accompanied by the member whose goal was learning guitar or going on a mini scavenger hunt in UCLA’s sculpture garden to find that the “clue” was just a folded piece of paper which read “if you keep missing the train, did you even want to get on it in the first place?”
• Accountabili-b*tches: people who didn’t meet their weekly goals were also designated accountabili-b*tches. Until the next bi-weekly meeting, they had to check up on every other member and update the google sheets we used to keep track of the goals and corresponding money losses.

The meetings have been a highlight of my quarter. Each at a different location in Westwood/UCLA campus, sessions composed of 8 of us sitting on the grass, discussing topics like correct goal-setting, our ideal lives, and effective altruism. Evenings in spring become especially magical with good conversation, meditation sessions, and realization of continual progress.

By the end of it, we were able to have a greater understanding of the different ways we motivate ourselves, how we could maximize focus and purposeful action in our lives, and how to plan and run meetings efficiently. We celebrated a member receiving an internship and another a full-time job after they fulfilled their goals of applying and interviewing relentlessly. Perhaps even more gratifying, we witnessed a member find more direction in what type of work gives him happiness — resulting in a switch in major and exploration of a new career. And I was able to see the hours devoted to my personal website and Creative Labs project, both of which exposed me to new skills and meaningful experiences, come together as the quarter drew to a close. On the quarter system, it’s difficult to try to allocate time within 10-week window while balancing exams and other commitments, but had it not been for this group, I wouldn’t have achieved or even tried to begin the projects which have just wrapped up. There still are many improvements that can be made to the program, but I’m happy to have re-established the “go-getter” culture and I look forward to continuing leading accountability in the future.

The first interaction I had with SEP before joining was a short conversation at the Enormous Activity Fair at the start of the Fall 2018 quarter. I described my interest in the fraternity’s values, particularly chasing passion and carving one’s own path, as well as the realization that I actually didn’t love the career path I worked so hard to pursue my first year of college. The response:

“You just repeated the exact pitch we give everyone…some love their majors, but many others pursue meaningful side-projects outside their studies.”

How cool, I thought.

Less than a year later, I’ve gone from complacency to grappling the balance between self-care and productivity to finally pursuing side projects I care about. I definitely would not have achieved this much had I not been pushed by Accountabili-buddies. I’m excited to see how this program can grow in the coming years and what other things we’ll accomplish.

Signing off,
Alexandra

Accountabili-buddies: Creating a Peer-to-Peer Goalkeeping Group was originally published in UCLA Sigma Eta Pi on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I stared at my phone screen, tears dripping onto the chat bar. My eyes frantically scanned any familiar profiles and gulped….

“hey”

.

“my depression is like really bad right now so i just need someone to talk to for the next 10 minutes or so till i need to leave for class”

.

.

“i hate this so much”

For someone who constantly reached out for help for nearly a consecutive year, I found being able to help others all the more satisfying once I was well. To be able to switch from “help me” to “go seek help, from me, from CAPs, from any friend you trust” was empowering. I quickly found that everyone feels like a burden when taking the first step in admitting they’re not okay, which leads to even more suppression of problems and negative emotions.

I know what it feels like to be ashamed to ask for help. I know what it’s like to be in denial that my mental well-being was far from alright. Perhaps that’s why so many felt comfortable to ask me to advise them. And I’m so glad they did — I had important conversations regarding detecting anxiety and depression, and I convinced a good handful of my friends to start therapy. It helped me to not only witness others regain happiness, but also grow my emotional maturity. I felt like I was doing my part in my passion to destigmatize mental health.

Soon, however, it felt less and less rewarding. As the months passed, I realized that while I loved being able to educate others and push them towards a better journey to good mental health, I lost sight of prioritizing myself.

Thus comes the dilemma: we’re all going through a lot, especially as college students. How do you evaluate who to reach out to, to ensure you’re not bottling up your demons? The people who understand you best? The people who are best emotionally suited to be able to help you?

It’s difficult, but in retrospect, I don’t think I should have halted my therapy sessions. Even when I was feeling quite well, taking an hour out of my week to discuss how to better my mental health helped immensely. I’m not afraid to exclaim I love my therapist! because I believe every college student should go to therapy, just like how we should regularly visit our optometrist, dentist, and physician. As a bioengineer immersed in the healthcare and biotech industries, I see preventative physical care emphasized so often, yet we all overlook the fact that most don’t seek professional mental care, if at all, until things get serious. If we twisted our ankle, we wouldn’t wait until it was life threatening to go to the hospital. The earlier professionals can intervene, the less time and resources would be wasted in helping you heal. [inspired by this article]

I’m aware that there’s many financial and social barriers in receiving regular therapy — and that needs to change. For now, however, I believe in never being afraid to reach out but just as importantly, never being afraid to prioritize yourself and saying no to others. At the end of the day, people’s emotions and actions are theirs, and you shouldn’t feel any responsibility for them. (Don’t be so indifferent to the point that you’re a bad friend though.)

A friend recently pointed out to me that people applaud you and call you brave for confessing your struggles with mental illness after you’ve conquered them, but rarely know how to react while you’re in the midst of it. I hope we can collectively take steps to sympathize with those when they’re mentally unwell and try to actively be cognizant of our own mental state. [Practice emotional first aid!]

Much love,

Alexandra

I set a few goals for myself this winter break to be more productive. Not necessarily productive in the sense of studying or earning scholarships or applying to internships, but in the sense of really identifying how to best use my time for myself and others. Knowing how best to take care of my overall well-being. Establishing daily habits of what I always knew was good for me, but never took action towards achieving. Becoming a more genuine, cognizant person content at where I am while still recognizing I have many flaws to work on.

In order to combat this, I had to come to terms with a glaring addiction of mine: my phone. While waiting for my plane back home after finishing up finals, I was writing my mom a birthday card when I realized everyone around me was on their phones. It felt like one of those sci-fi movies where everyone was brainwashed by technology and I was the odd one out who could actually perceive the real world. Even scarier, I realized that had I not planned on writing that card, I would have been one of them — and wouldn’t have questioned anything. I vowed to become more present and was curious to see how I could change my life by not checking my phone every five minutes.

On the plane ride, I reflected on how my phone and social media slowly took over my life over the years. My freshman year, I constantly thought about what interesting thing about my day I would document and show all my friends through Snapchat. I became unable to focus and study for an hour without having to check my phone instinctively. In general, my attention span shortened tremendously. And so, I deleted my social media apps, told myself to not look at a screen an hour before sleeping, and created a checklist of other tasks I wanted to focus on.

The first test came when my mom asked to take a walk with me, and I set my phone down on the counter before embarking on our stroll. I felt naked without the familiar device in my back pocket. Nevertheless, I loved every moment sauntering along the trail, from learning more about my mom’s experience immigrating to the United States to reminiscing on old memories only we knew to pointing out various wildlife hidden in the cattails. I no longer longed to be with my high school friends or felt jealous of all my college friends since I wasn’t blindly tapping through Instagram stories. Because I’m pretty damn lucky to have my own room and home cooked meals, and more importantly, to be able to spend this time with my parents while they’re still completely healthy.

Rather than scrolling on social media for hours a day, I take the time to call people who matter to me. In situations when I’d usually post on my story, I take regular old photos and text them to people I know really care. Instead of trying my best to savor my three free Medium articles to read a month, I borrowed books from the library and created a Goodreads account. All of these seemingly “old school” things were the norm just a few years ago, but to me, these differences changed my world. [Inspired by this article.] Eventually, I’d like to be able to still take these priorities without having to completely cut myself off from social media in the first place.

And yes, I have had some relapses (no joke, I have re-downloaded and re-deleted the Instagram app a few times already), but I’m glad I stuck to my vow. I hope I can not only continue this habit but also use this extra free time to build on other aspects of myself. Three months after not knowing what to do with my time besides study, work out, and scroll endlessly on my phone, I’m starting to find joy in the ordinary, and feeling more grounded as a result.

//Side comment: tech is double-edged sword. I recently read articles on how product design could be used to make social media ethical as well as help save those desperate enough to google “how to kill myself”. It’s easy to denounce the rise of tech as completely dangerous and detrimental to society but I’m still having trouble grasping whether its definite good outweighs its bad, and how users can be taught how to maximize its good. (Also I could easily fill this entire article with side comments so hit me up if anything in this post strikes you and I’d love to discuss it with you!)

So no, I was never addicted to smoking, alcohol, drugs, etc. (I gotcha with the click bait didn’t I haha). But taking steps to identify and take action against some bad habit in your life can really make a difference in the long run. I do feel like I am more productive with my time for myself.

Much (self) love,

Alexandra

P.S. I am fortunate enough to even consider this phone addiction one of the biggest factors negatively impacting my well-being and happiness. Sometimes it’s hard to take a step back and realize that, while extremely important to discuss and not without real impact on actual humans, all this debate about the ethics of tech can only be relevant to those who can afford to have it.

If you made it this far, I’m going to shamelessly promote my frat, Sigma Eta Pi. If you go to UCLA, please consider coming out to rush!! Joining has definitely encouraged me to continue to think as I do and continue writing on Medium.

Personally, I really enjoyed studying chemistry in high school, and I excelled in it much more than I thought I would. And even though I didn’t enjoy my Biology class, I was interested in using a chemical understanding to modify and solve problems within the human body — helping people! So when I was applying to colleges, I put down Biochemistry as my intended major and figured I’d either do some sort of professional school in healthcare or pursue a PhD to work within medicine. I was even awarded the “Most Likely to Cure Cancer” superlative when I was a senior in high school. I was destined to go on to do great things as a scientist, and prided myself in doing so.

All the factors were pointing to the fact that science was my “thing” — my parents and sister pursued it in their careers, studying it excited me, and I found it easy to succeed in it academically. So why am I completely turning away from a job in pure science or engineering?

Studying science was my thing — not doing science.

There is a large disconnect between excelling and enjoying an academic subject and the careers that correspond to the degree. Some people absolutely love research, but the daily tasks of running reactions, pipetting, cleaning flasks, running gels, etc. only drained me. Yet research essentially is the direct application of most STEM majors. If not, one would work straight out of college or use the degree as a stepping stone to medical school, law school, an MBA, or some other professional school. Very few people actually use all their knowledge from college in their career. So why should we expect ourselves to unconditionally love our major? It may result in a fulfilling college experience, but a terribly unfulfilling career.

Rather than encouraging students to just major what they enjoy studying, we should ask them to consider what career they’d be happy doing (not only what you do, but also hours, salary, and the necessary steps to get there), and think of a major that would best fit that.

One of the reasons for this disconnect is the lack of knowledge of not only academic subjects, but also types of careers. How would you know that you would love X job if you haven’t even heard of it? It doesn’t help that Asian immigrant parents glorify high earning jobs, citing money and status as the indicating factor of success. We get trapped in a box; the idea has continually been instilled in our head that this is the only way we can be successful. But there’s no point of being a millionaire if you don’t enjoy the majority of your waking hours.

There’s a reason why certain jobs are so high earning — they’re difficult. Difficult to attain, difficult to do, difficult to enjoy, difficult to balance life with, or any combination of the above.

Not everyone goes into academia (or software engineering or pre-med or pre-law or investment banking), and I’m not putting down people who truly wish to do so. It is simply concerning that we put on a pedestal a certain structured life path: good test scores, prestigious college, internships each summer, maybe professional school, then that full time job. And you settle down and get married and start a family somewhere along the way. This sort of narrow minded way of thought that this is the only way we will have “made it” stifles time for growth and self-discovery. So many people yearn for that idea of a stable career, equating it to happiness, that potential passions are left untouched.

Impostor syndrome is very much real — everyone seems like they know what they’re doing, are constantly doing something to better themselves on their career goals, and seem to have the best grades, resumes, board positions, mental health, and relationships. Sure, someone may have an impressive resume for, let’s say, investment banking, but how do you know if they’re actually passionate about it? Or if not even passionate, how do you know that they will be happy once they begin working those ridiculous hours in a non-sustainable work hard, play hard culture? How would you know how many life experiences, events, and friends they missed by sacrificing everything for building their career path? How would you know if they were dealing with anxiety and depression as a result of neglecting personal growth? (ahem me)

When I walked into the Career Center for the first time this summer, my counselors were extremely understanding and reassured me I had time to figure things out. They told me that there were countless recent post grads booking first time appointments with the Career Center absolutely panicked about what they were doing. If we accept that after high school there should be no expected structure to approaching life and having it all figured out, there wouldn’t be as many panicked students rushing to the Career Center to figure out their crisis for them. Everyone has different ideas of the way they would like to spend their time and the type of lifestyle and relationships they’d want. Everyone takes a different amount of time to figure out those values and what they enjoy doing. There’s no rush.

But how do you know what you actually like? Exposure.

Try out new things, take classes you don’t need to, and engage yourself in diverse activities. Accept that 0.3 hit to your GPA in order to learn a new skill or meet a new friend you can grab coffee with every week.

You can be perfectly capable of a lot of things like achieving a perfect GPA, but at the end of the day, think of what you value. In a time when all seem to worship those with everything together and “figured out” (highly doubtful), we seem to toss away our personal values, whatever they may be, and what really is important to us. Think of what sort of things truly keep you grounded, and hold onto them tightly.

At the end of the day, we would all like to be happy. Perhaps being a doctor or investment banker will get you there, and delayed gratification should not be something we drop entirely. I simply encourage everyone to hold onto their current passions and try their very best to try to discover any others. It is often the things that have no relation to our professional goals that give us the most peace and happiness.

…and this is why I am publishing a Medium article at 2:30 am rather than preparing for my 8am.

Much love,

Alexandra

Two days after working full time in my lab, I decided to quit it once summer ended. The first month of research was nothing as I expected: I hardly saw anyone other than my roommates and my lab mates, I stayed on campus from 9 am to sometimes 8 pm, I had to study for my class in the evenings after lab, and most importantly, the day to day work didn’t excite me, even though the premise of the project itself did. As someone who identified heavily as a chem nerd, I started questioning my entire identity. “Do I even enjoy chemistry?” “Do I like science?” “Why am I switching to bioengineering if it’s so research heavy?” “Why am I making myself suffer for no reason?”

“What even makes me happy?”

On paper, it looked like I was doing just fine — excelling, even. Getting paid to do research, learning to live independently, getting ahead of the game for engineering. People reassured me that I was doing more than most other first years, and that I had time to figure out what to do with my life; at least I wasn’t working some minimum wage job all summer!

But really, I had been filling my time solely with classes, academic clubs, research, exercise, a handful of friends, and sleep. It wasn’t just that I didn’t know what career to pursue, I lost a sense of identity by putting my all into academic growth and none into personal. Perhaps it was the competitive high school I came from and the highly structured game I played for college admissions, but I somehow believed that if I stuck to my nerdy and overachieving identity, I’d end up successful and thus happy. I was overloading myself to distract myself from my growing anxiety and depression.

Fast forward a few weeks and add on some other factors, I woke up without any desire to go to class, go grocery shopping, learn, meet new people, exercise, or anything else I “enjoyed” (out of the very few things I actually whittled down my daily routine to). My thoughts raced, tears emerged spontaneously, and I couldn’t even walk around without wondering how everyone else around me was functioning normally. Even then, it took me days to schedule an appointment with my psychologist. I didn’t know it, but I was already experiencing moderate depression during the school year, and let it manifest into severe depression come August. Depression is one of the worst things anyone can experience. I couldn’t do anything for days except eat emotionally, lie in bed, call home constantly…and dance.

I joined Foundations, an organization for beginner dancers, at the beginning of C session, and wondered how I’d juggle Chem 30B (organic chemistry II for the physical sciences aka real death), lab, and 6 hours of dance practice a week. Still, I stuck through with dance, and when I found joy in absolutely nothing and my steps were heavy and all I wanted to do was go home, dance and the people I’ve met always made me feel more normal at the end. It honestly was the only thing I had that could get me back to feeling normal.

For a full month, I was barely human, living to my next therapy or psych appointment, dragging myself to chem class, trying to negotiate hours in my lab while still remaining professional. I felt helpless, worthless, and guilty for dropping the commitments I promised myself to do (and was getting paid to do) all summer.

Eventually, the antidepressants kicked in and the sense of community and creative outlet I found through Foundations lifted my mood. I felt comfortable enough with my team to confess that I had been dealing with depression the entire summer and was met with immediate warmth. A member of my team reached out to me saying she had a similar experience, and we spoke for hours regarding major, happiness, and how we approached living life in college. The thing that stuck out most to me was this message:

“Just because something interests you, doesn’t mean it’ll make you happy.”

I freaking love science and math: the logic and problem solving, the ability to understand the way the world works, the aha moment when you finally understand a concept or finish a long proof. It’s fascinating. I’m a huge nerd.

But doing science as a career (research or coding or pure engineering) won’t make me happy. Not only am I a huge nerd, I’m also an extrovert and quite introspective. Though I know I can succeed in a technical job if I put in the time and effort, it is not the right path for me. I now have identified some things I love and enjoy: long conversations, presenting ideas and arguments to others, being vulnerable to friends (if they learn something from it), allowing people to see a new perspective, and working with (and meeting) all types of people. People oriented things. And I have no idea exactly what career that’ll lead me to but I still got some time to figure it out.

My sister and my roommate for the summer both told me that in order to truly be happy, I had to find happiness in things that weren’t relationships or professional things (cause I definitely leaned on people the entire time I dealt with my mental illness, more than I’d like to admit. Hopefully I wasn’t a burden!) It wasn’t possible for me to think of those things in a state of depression, but now here’s a list I’d like to do for pure personal growth and happiness in the next few years:

• Start writing ✔ (Sept. 2018)
• Do Foundations again
• Join a mental health organization on campus ✔ (Reslife! Sept. 2018)
• Learn a new skill/hobby I’d never expect myself to ✔ (Uke, Dec. 2019)
• Read more ✔ (Dec. 2018)
• Try eating vegetarian/vegan for a week (or month!)
• Join an IM sport
• Volunteer more

I’ve been burnt out —mentally, emotionally, and physically. I’m ready to face the next three years of college pursuing what I’m truly passionate about and doing things that genuinely make me smile and inspired. I haven’t been myself for quite some time but I’m looking forward to all the opportunities and whatever other curve balls college will throw at me. UCLA is a place for me to grow in all ways possible, and that means carving my own path for my own professional, academic, and personal well-being. And I can’t wait to see what’s to come.

Shout out to modern medicine for helping reach happiness and mental clarity for the first time in over a year. It truly is important to seek help when needed, and as soon as possible. I’d also like to thank the multitude of friends I’ve been leaning on during my entire mental health journey. It’s time I stop constantly asking for help, and to help & love myself too.

Much love,

Alexandra

(I have a final at 8 am that I am very much not prepared for but I didn’t think I could focus until writing this first. This also isn’t the full story but I’m happy to talk to any friend about it, please reach out!)