Sitting around a small fire in a friend’s backyard during winter break, I spun a marshmallow in my hand, unsure of how to answer the question: “How would you say you’ve changed over your first quarter of college?” Old friends, people I haven’t seen in months but have known for years, watched me as I fidgeted. What’s the difference between the me sitting here and the me they knew before I called UCLA home?
Answering the question wasn’t as simple as answering the linear algebra questions I had encountered all quarter or telling a dining hall worker what toppings I want in my omelet in the morning. How does one solve the matrix of their own personal development? Besides solving math problems and perfecting omelet ingredient combinations, what have I really accomplished as a new college student?
Thinking through the timeline of my development, I realized growth can reveal itself in unconventional places. In my case, it is revealed through the changes in my online purchases.
I first noticed this when I made one of my more notable purchases: a poster. I bought a colorful and eccentric art piece that welcomes uncomfortable stares from visitors but radiates happiness for me. I finally clicked checkout on something that had been added to a virtual cart for months.
It was a simple online purchase, just a few clicks on the computer and a confirmation email. This process is something that I am unhealthily familiar with. I wouldn’t consider myself obsessed with online shopping, but I can admit that I am a frequent visitor of the mailroom. I’ve walked out with Amazon bags, Target boxes and a package from an international artist. The more I think about it, the more I realize that the timeline of my college career thus far wouldn’t be organized by my number of friends made or my exam scores, but rather bookmarked by the items I carried out of the mailroom, my online purchases.
It all started with a loofah.
After the overwhelmingness of move-in day, after the long goodbye hugs and extensive room organization, I was left alone in my room with the items, new and old, that would compile my new space. I had everything: a desk lamp, a box full of granola bars and Goldfish crackers, a pair of scissors, a sheet of stamps and my favorite tea. But, upon walking into the shower in my new shower shoes, I realized I didn’t have a loofah.
Naturally, it wasn’t a big deal. I live in a family of “borrowing,” in which I can snatch an item from my parents’ or sisters’ bedrooms, sometimes to borrow but usually to steal. But I was learning that a walk down the hall didn’t lead to the beautiful stability of mom’s closet anymore. Instead, it led to a couple of elevators and a lounge full of nervously socializing college newbies.
So sitting on my uncomfortable wooden chair at my unfamiliar wooden desk, with my shower shoes still on, I made my first purchase as a college student, solving my first problem while being truly on my own. And two days of free shipping later, I had a loofah.
With that, my clicks of the checkout button continued. Generally, clothing is my favorite purchase to make; I love connecting with something unique and accepting it into my life as a piece of self-expression. But during my first weeks at UCLA, my wearable purchases weren’t aligned with my self-expression.
Maybe it was because I was unsure of where I stood within UCLA’s student body, or because I was struggling with a classic coming-of-age identity crisis, but I bought clothes that I thought would make me fit in. And as I wore the same subtle maroon stripes that I saw around me, it felt like it was working.
At the time, though, I was feeling already hopelessly lost in my classes and like I was drowning in my perfectly striped, easily acceptable shirt. I didn’t resurface until weeks later when I took an inexplicably impulsive break from studying for my first college midterms. After days of studying and hours of ignoring the time, I shut my math textbook, opened my computer and bought a set of hoop earrings. These weren’t your average ring-sized hoops that sit daintily at the ends of your ear – the hoops were big and silver and unapologetically bold.
For the first time, the purchase wasn’t premeditated, nor was it an obvious necessity. Big, silver hoops weren’t designed to make me fit in. With accessories, I was choosing to welcome attention, adding personality to my appearance. With this small purchase I started to feel like I could belong here at UCLA, and I could confidently figure things out without the comfort of my mom’s closet.
The story of my growth as a college first-year could be narrated through the perspective of the mailroom at UCLA. Like me, students across UCLA’s campus are the protagonists of their own memoirs, but their stories could be narrated by unexpected somethings unique to them.
Naomi Eve describes her closet as a capable narrator for her memoir, saying that it’s organized “autobiographically.”
The third-year cognitive science student happily walked me through her biography, giving me the grand tour of her closet. The first things she pulled out were eccentric and diversely designed pieces, each one accompanied by a story as if it were a tangible recollection of a time in her life. As she pulled a flowy polka-dot dress, she reminisced about a happy shopping trip from summer and a growing connection to her femininity. As she picked up a rugged pair of hiking shoes, she recalled a specific sale at REI and the blissful memories from trips with UCLA’s Outdoor Adventures program.
While going through her closet, Eve said she could see that through her transition into college and her growth over three years, the items inside have, and continue to, evolve.
Unlike the unique colors and textures you see when you open her closet door now – the blues and pinks and maroons, corduroy and denim and satin – years ago you’d see duller colors and consistent brand names. Throughout high school, Eve said she followed the trends. She walked the hallways in the classic North Face jacket, Lululemon leggings and Ugg boots – what she described as the staple outfit of the girls at her school. As she pulled a beige shirt out of a bag of clothes she was planning to donate, she thought back to the low self-esteem she felt during her Ugg boots days.
“I had a pretty negative self-image and I wasn’t confident in myself,” she said. “I was so focused and consumed on my external appearance, and what I was feeling inside wasn’t matching what I was projecting.”
By the time Eve was settling into her first year at college, her closet no longer stored the expensive high school clothing she used to rely on, clothing that she now refers to as wasteful due to the hefty price tag and lack of individuality. She said she was excited by the idea to start fresh and was motivated to make internal and external changes.
It was an awkward evolution, Eve said, as she still struggled with self-assertion and finding her place. But two years later, she said her closet holds something that represents everything she was afraid of as a first-year. In between feminine dresses and hiking boots, she stores what she considers her current favorite piece of clothing.
“I call them my ‘Western disco pants,’” she said.
She said the pants, a bold shade of maroon with intricate gold embroidery dancing down the sides, make a statement in every room she wears them in.
“They’re just so magnificent and I’ve never seen anything like it before,” Eve said. “I feel comfortable in them, I feel confident in them, I welcome attention in them.”
Eve said wearing these pants and the confidence she feels when donning them remind her of how far she’s come. She partially attributes her growth to the memories and experiences in her rugged hiking boots, which became a closet essential when she joined the Outdoor Adventures program.
During her first trip with Outdoor Adventures in fall 2017, Eve said she acquired a newfound connection to her self-confidence within the beautiful scenery of Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks. Eve remembers watching the trip guides bantering about whether they would jump into the lake by their campground. While they chatted, she quietly snuck into a tent, changed into her swimsuit and sprinted into the freezing cold water. As she submerged into the shocking cold, surrounded by breathtaking scenery, the guides ran in after her and, together, they swam.
“I had that moment (in the lake) and it reminded me of my satisfaction and fulfillment with the present moment and not worrying about what the future held and what the past has dealt me,” she said. “It reminded me to just enjoy ‘now’ and that does reflect my buying habits since they can be spontaneous.”
Spontaneity has become a beloved addition to Eve’s closet, as she said it brought a newfound diversity in her pieces and reflection of the different aspects of her identity.
As she closed the closet door, Eve said she recognizes that the contents will continue to change as her memoir grows, more pieces will be added to the donation bag as she lets go of phases in her life, and more will join the Western disco pants on the hangers as she explores new aspects of herself.
“It’s exciting to me that my closet is disjointed and random and full of pieces that would never talk to each other in the same store,” Eve said. “It is an outward expression and it’s just all the versions of me. It’s all me.”
Joseph Aleshaiker timelines his connection with his identity through an unconventional lens, something less tangible than a closet. He best accounts for the changes in his life through the evolution of his stage name.
Aleshaiker, a fourth-year civil engineering student, started his journey as a musician with his first band, The Skullz. The band, consisting of his 9-year-old self and his younger brother, performed original songs, including one about the woes of being so hungry and so thirsty, for parents and anyone else who would listen. Aleshaiker remembers that those songs, as silly as they were, created a love of songwriting for him.
Since The Skullz, Aleshaiker has played music under a variety of stage names, going from The Oscars, to his real name, to Memo 71 and encountered a variety of feelings about himself and his music. As a 13-year-old, Aleshaiker performed with and wrote songs for a band full of schoolmates. The band, The Oscars, was successful during its lifespan, and was the birthplace of “All Over Again,” a blues-rock song Aleshaiker said was the first number he was truly proud of.
Though The Oscars led Aleshaiker to write a song that still impresses himself to this day, Aleshaiker said his visions as an artist didn’t end up lining up with his bandmates’. Eventually he left the band to pursue music on his own, as The Oscars wasn’t for him.
Following his separation from the band, Aleshaiker began a more flexible musical lifestyle and separated from names in general. He spent most of his time playing music just for fun with close friends or anyone who would play with him. He said these nameless days strengthened his passion for music and motivated him to not give up on pursuing it.
But, pursuing music as a career forces an artist to create an image. With Aleshaiker’s journey as a college student, his image as a musician and mindset about the future changed. According to Aleshaiker, the way he presented himself as an artist went hand in hand with the connection he felt to his personal identity.
During his second year at community college, Aleshaiker started to take his professional goals more seriously. At gigs he introduced himself and his music together the same way he heard many famous artists do: under his real name. After the gigs, he bombarded crowds with merchandise, such as wristbands and pins branded with “Joseph Aleshaiker.” In these situations, Aleshaiker said he felt disconnected from, and even annoyed with, himself.
“I felt like I was losing my own identity,” he said. “I don’t want to be a brand, I want to be myself. During my gigs over the summer I felt like I was being super fake because my name was attached to the music.”
Aleshaiker said he was struggling with his sense of self. He knew he needed to create a stage name.
As he stands on stages now, behind a guitar or a keyboard, he takes a deep breath and introduces himself as someone else: Memo 71. Joseph Aleshaiker is a human, and Memo 71 is his music.
“Now that I have Memo 71, I feel that disconnect like I can go hang out with friends and feel normal but I can also go on Memo 71 and have this image,” he said. “I don't care if people remember Joseph Aleshaiker for the music, I care that they remember Memo 71.”
The inspiration for his stage name came from an unlikely place, from a time in his life when he said he was struggling the most. The struggle started during his transition to UCLA as a transfer student, during which he said he encountered various difficulties and found himself feeling depressed.
As an overall hopeful person, Aleshaiker searched for a way to deal with his feelings, and he started coping by writing down everything that was filling his head during the dark moments. Whether it be the transition into UCLA, the difficulty finding time to create music while being an engineering student, or any other stressor in his mind, Aleshaiker documented his feelings in a series of memos on his phone. During a particularly dark time, Aleshaiker said he wrote the memo that would soon inspire his latest stage name.
“It was my lowest point,” he said. “I was feeling so depressed.”
But, releasing the emotion led to a realization.
“As soon as I wrote it I just knew that it was a perfect stage name. It was catchy and easy to remember and it was so symbolic,” he said.
Since that night, Joseph Aleshaiker was again a human, a personality, and Memo 71 was the brand. When he talks about Memo 71, Aleshaiker holds hope and excitement in his voice and enthusiastically elaborates on all of the possibilities for the future.
“You can have moments when you're doubting yourself, and you can have moments where you're just very depressed, and it's OK to feel that way. But the message is that things are always going to get better,” he said.
Looking back, Aleshaiker has come a long way in regards to how he represents his music, and he says this development toward Memo 71 reflects how he’s changed.
“It shows that I was starting to understand myself as a person,” he said. “I realized that my identity is really important to me, and I didn’t realize that before.”
***
Identity presents itself subtly. Maybe it’s a name on a guitar case or a pair of pants in a closet or a stack of Amazon boxes. Eve’s unique identity is laced in her hiking boots and in the embroidery on her Western disco pants.
As for Aleshaiker, clothing isn’t on his mind when he presents his music; he stands behind the mic and behind a stage name, grateful for all the names and phases he’s gone through to get to where he is now, more in tune with his goals and with his identity. Looking into these unconventional identifying factors, students can really learn something about themselves, and even answer those impeding questions that are asked by friends while sitting around fires.
So as I hung up my most recent purchase, an art piece that I bought for no one else’s approval but my own, I realized I have undergone plenty of change throughout my time at UCLA. Next time I’ll know to put down the marshmallow, pull up my growing collection of purchase confirmation emails and answer the question. I understand that with many quarters to go, exams to take and passions to acquire, I’ll continue to click the checkout button. My timeline will continue to develop and I’ll continue to grow, and as I think about my future visits to the mailroom, I’m excited to see what’s inside the packages.