Just like data, life is messy.

It presents us with an abundance of information and experiences, interwoven in intricate patterns – both visible and hidden. And amid this complex web, we face the challenge of somehow making sense of it all.

Throughout my four years at the Daily Bruin, I’ve had the privilege of exploring this parallel. I initially joined during the fall quarter of my first year as a Copy intern. I had been a copy editor for my high school’s newspaper, so I thought it would serve as a familiar constant as I navigated the newfound chaos and uncertainties of my college life.

I fondly recall my first moments in the Daily Bruin office, sitting at the long table that the Copy section called theirs, captivated by the conversations around me. I would overhear the seniors sharing their aspirations for law school, juicy stories about their personal lives and the palpable mix of excitement and trepidation that colored their post-grad lives.

At the time, it all seemed so distant.

Eventually, my journey with The Bruin changed course to The Stack, the data journalism blog. Immersed in a sea of rows and columns, meticulously sifting through raw data to transform it into meaningful insights, I began to understand how this process mirrored the complexities of life.

Numbers alone never tell the full story, and I quickly learned the importance of context as a data journalist. Life demands a similar nuanced perspective – it requires us to look beyond the surface and consider the underlying circumstances that shape our experiences.

I could share a myriad of statistics that represent my college life. I published a total of three articles and participated in two college trivia tournaments for the Daily Bruin. Of my 12 quarters, I only spent 6 1/2 of them on campus. I walked an average of 7,574 steps a day, and I ate orange chicken from the Ackerman Union Panda Express an unknown, but undoubtedly high, number of times.

But this hastily compiled data set could never truly encapsulate the last four years.

The number of bylines I have for The Bruin doesn’t capture the thrill of coasting down the hill by Janss Steps on an ice block for a Stack social or the admiration of listening to a fellow UCLA student speak passionately about their self-produced short film during an interview. It also cannot measure the annoyance I felt whenever dozens of my emails for data or interview requests were ignored.

My quarters on campus were a whirlwind of late-night academic breakthroughs, periods of procrastination followed by regrettable exam scores, and serendipitous interactions that led me to my closest friends. The quarters that I spent in my childhood bedroom during the COVID-19 pandemic facilitated a time for deep introspection and Jackbox games with The Stack over Zoom. And then, my quarter-long study abroad experience in Italy exposed me to the richness of the world and left me with some of my best stories to tell at future dinner parties.

And that average of 7,574 steps? Those footsteps represent the tangible movement of my college experience. They carried me to my classes, to article meetings in Kerckhoff Hall for The Stack, to Tuesday trivia nights at Barney’s Beanery and to moments of quiet reflection as I wandered the paths of campus at night.

Life, like data, cannot always be distilled into neat figures and numbers. It is messy, defying any attempts to quantify and categorize it. It is in those unquantifiable moments – the practically painful laughing fits with friends and the moments of vulnerability in the face of adversity – that the essence of life lies.

Looking back on the memory of my first moments in The Bruin office, listening to the seniors talk, it no longer feels so distant.

As I stand on the precipice of my own post-grad journey, I’ve learned that life is a continuous process of embracing messiness and forging our own story.

And so to the Daily Bruin, thank you for illuminating the messy brilliance of life.

Luk was a Copy contributor 2019-2020, Stack contributor 2020-2022 and Stack staff 2022-2023.