Monday you can learn to swing, Tuesday, Wednesday go see THING,
or Thursday hear artists at Fowler sing; then it’s
Friday’s cheap movie.
All these things are activities that will be offered for
students to experience in the following weeks at school. In my
experience, one of the best things about UCLA is its huge variety
of groups and organizations, and all the untapped culturally,
intellectually and entertainingly stimulating events that occur
daily. I often wish I were able to split into five different
directions so as to attend everything that interests me.
Sadly, though, I call these attractions untapped, as I sense
that we as students do not take full advantage of what is being
offered at this school.
It may seem hard to believe, but midterms will be over soon. For
some students, they already are.
And while someone out there might react to such a sudden freedom
with premature studying for finals in an attempt to stay caught up
with the material, most who I know are looking instead for
something to procrastinate with.
On such a huge campus, with so many things going on, it’s
easy to feel overwhelmed with the choices. It’s too tempting
to revert to the boring old TV or other predictable pastimes that
will be there for us in some form or another for the rest of our
lives.
And it’s easy to blame the lack of advertising on campus
as a reason you or I did not know where and when to go, and thus
reverted to the TV.
The lack of advertising is not the problem, though. The
advertising for these events is everywhere. There are the
traditional forms of advertising ““ such as fliers and
signboards everywhere on Bruin Walk. The Daily Bruin prints lists
of events both on the front page and in the dB Magazine.
Furthermore, there are a slew of Web sites you can check,
including “Today’s Events” on the MyUCLA portal,
the campus events or athletics department Web sites, the sites for
the Fowler and Hammer Museums, and UCLA Live’s.
The Central Ticketing Office also provides easy access for
buying tickets. Recently, UCLA has aggressively advertised its new
site, happenings.ucla.edu, which attempts to give a comprehensive
overview of upcoming events, as well as links to the sites I listed
above.
Through these avenues of information, you could find almost
anything, and certainly something that interests you. As a campus
we have a nice balance, from popular forms of entertainment to the
more obscure, which is to my personal liking. There is also a nice
balance between free opportunities and more expensive.
For example, as most everyone knows, there are opportunities to
watch current movies (sometimes free sneaks, sometimes cheap $2
movies) in Ackerman, but there are also more obscure, subtitled
free movie screenings at Melnitz. Sports games abound all around
campus, ranging from those with high attendance, like basketball,
to many less-attended sports.
There are opportunities to listen to bands or live music all
over UCLA. For those visual learners, there are art and other
museum exhibits at the Fowler or Hammer Museums. There are
constantly theatrical performances presented here, some famous,
some infamous, some neither.
If you like to participate, you can learn to dance. Or if you
want to just relax, you can gaze at the stars on Wednesdays at the
UCLA Planetarium and Telescope Shows.
I list these things extensively in the hope that I can catch
somebody’s dedicated interest. UCLA is a huge campus, and
with so many things occurring simultaneously through different
departments and organizations, it’s hard to imagine a perfect
way of reaching all the students with all the information.
But the school has made attempts. All we have to do is put a
tiny amount of energy into opening ourselves to these events.
It’s always good to “get out of Westwood,” as
everyone likes to say, but don’t completely ignore the great
resource that is UCLA either.
So when you’re walking up Bruin Walk, turn the volume down
a little on that iPod, and take in your surroundings. Accept with a
smile an interesting flier or two. Glance at the sidebar on the
Daily Bruin, or at the signboards on your way up to class. Or if
you’re feeling bored at your computer, use the magical World
Wide Web and check out the happenings.
This isn’t high school anymore. Make college about
broadening your experiences. After all, “you can never get
enough, enough of this stuff.”
The Cure stuck in your head too? Hashem understands.
Complain to nhashem@media.ucla.edu.