Submission: Make the most of your time, youth while at UCLA
I’m no Moshe Cavalin, the precocious math student who started strolling the halls of UCLA at 11 years old. In a way, he is probably more accepted than what I am. He’s not stumped when people ask, “What year are you?”
When that question arises, I usually bypass with “I’m graduating!” avoiding the prickly subject altogether. I am graduating in 2013, it’s true. But at only 20 years old, my heart belongs to my classmates – the class of 2014.
Because of my AP credit from high school, I have always had a three-year college plan. I packed my classes, at 20 units per quarter, and even took on a minor. And while I just signed a lease for my first apartment – where I’ll be living in a sardine tin of a room with no air conditioning while trying to strategize my post-college life – I still feel unnaturally rushed.
I’ve done the college experience – gone to class, joined a club, obtained a part-time job, completed two internships and organized various individuals to do various activities at various times. … You know – the basics. But the list of my have-nots is far greater: Attending a frat party, eating greasy pizza at midnight, cheering on a collegiate sports team and running around in the buff are just some of the boxes I left unchecked.
So I can’t help but wonder: If I had one more year, would I be able to squeeze in these college delights? Would I be bolder? Would I meet someone who could change my life? Would I finally be able to drink with my friends at BrewCo.? (By the way, BrewCo. is closing – so that last wish can never come true.)
I don’t know what I will do when I graduate. June 16, 2013 is going to be the first day in the past 15 years where I will have absolutely nothing to do. No homework. No chores. No obligations. I will be by myself, a little sardine in the big lake that is Los Angeles. I will be, as I often tell those who inquire, fun-employed.
If I can give any advice to those of you still in college: Do the thing you want to do now, before you can’t anymore. You will never be as young as you were when you started reading this very sentence. With every second, you are just that: one second older.
Don’t waste your time here sitting in your room and playing Minecraft. Go to the Activities Fair and join a group. Go to the John Wooden Center and move your supple muscles. Eat every entree at Feast at Rieber. Twice. Make the most of this once-in-a-lifetime chance to be in the best college, in the best city, on the best planet in the universe.
I’ll see you, Bruins.
I’ll be around.
Rabinovich is a third-year
Design | Media Arts student.
