I was told to smile at a large black camera by a student I did not know. Seconds later I was looking with mild discomfort at a slightly awkward picture of myself halfway through some indiscernible facial expression.
The mug shot was to go beside everything I wrote for the Daily Bruin, I was told. At the time, being completely intimidated by the chaos and the flurry of the newsroom, I consented to the odd picture and looked around the photo department wondering exactly what I was supposed to do next. When I think back to that day, I know that awkward picture was my initiation into Daily Bruin-dom and ever since then, whenever my thoughts stray toward UCLA, they first stop at the Viewpoint section of the Daily Bruin.
I have heard that it is a columnist’s job to convince someone, anyone, of a certain viewpoint and I am wondering if it still counts if that person was me. Some months ago I wrote a column highlighting the opportunities of youth, of discovery, and of studying abroad while at UCLA. Doing research for that column included interviewing students who had returned from foreign lands, students who wished desperately to go, and of course, the EAP counselors who make everything possible. In the end, I realized that I had convinced myself completely and now, sitting in my teal-walled bedroom on Kastanievej 5 in Copenhagen, Denmark, I am still rather in mild shock of what I have done.
I think of UCLA and of the newsroom and still see shadows of them around in my travels. The brick buildings of Madrid, for example, can have an uncanny resemblance to Royce and Powell. As for Kerckhoff, Studenterhuset has a similar atmosphere … maybe a bit more jovial considering it is a student bar by night and coffee house by day.
However, what I have learned in these couple of weeks is that, surprisingly, you are never that far from a Bruin. In fact, I have unexpectedly run into Bruins and UCLA alumni almost everywhere I have traveled to so far and consequently, have had friends from other countries believing that we are some sort of giant cult rather than a university.
As a mini-cult within that larger one, the Daily Bruin has definitely required some strange rituals over these past two years. The program has included chasing potential interviewees into dark parking lots, tracking down hypnotists in the Los Angeles area, fighting off hate mail and odd Facebook messages, and vying for a seat in the large off-balance chair that is living out its last years in the newsroom.
I have lived on the Hill both of my years at UCLA and so just getting to that chair in the newsroom was a hike but the route there is representative of the campus at its quirkiest.
First, you usually pass the resident acrobat vaulting off something. Then you go past all the students coming back from Wooden smirking inside at anyone who hasn’t visited the gym that day.
After making your way through Bruin Plaza and past the stand of kettle corn, you are bombarded by the erratically enthusiastic flier-mongers of a thousand different clubs (and plastic baby fetuses for those of you who remember that day). A true Bruin by now has mastered the stone-faced look of disinterest that is the only defense while traveling in this area.
As you make that right onto the Kerckhoff steps you have to weave your way through the group of students that basically live there now (they have a Facebook group admitting the same).
Then finally, there is always a group of prospective Bruins waiting for their next tour silently staring as you open that door to the office and walk into the too hot atmosphere created by ever-changing news and leftovers from Greenhouse and Sbarro.
That has become UCLA for me, the familiar characters and the routes that wind through the campus.
I will return in the winter as the assistant editor of the Viewpoint section and no more will I be going to school on a used pink bicycle or looking for cheap food in Nørrebro. But I will settle once more into the same chaos and flurry that had intimidated me two years ago. Till then, I will soak in Copenhagen with its bakeries, its colorful houses, and its canals to my heart’s content. It will all probably make for a good viewpoint piece.
Joshi is the 2008 assistant Viewpoint editor. E-mail her at rjoshi@media.ucla.edu. General comments can be sent to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.