In eighth grade, Viktoria Lovy explored flea markets in her hometown of Budapest, Hungary, and marveled at the colorful, UCLA sweaters that had been smuggled into her then-communist country.
“We had no idea what (UCLA) meant, but we associated it with something very distant and very free,” Lovy said. “We wanted to be like the UCLA sweaters. It was the coolest thing you could buy.”
In fall of 2015, 49-year-old Lovy entered UCLA as a gender and religious studies student. Her return to higher education followed a two-decade hiatus in her academic career.
Lovy attended trade school for sewing in Hungary, but realized she wanted to pursue gender and religious studies to understand her upbringing in a communist Hungarian village with her single mother and grandmother. She added her mother worked at a state-run tourist agency and supervised several male employees, an unusual position for Hungarian women at the time.
“(Hungary) was a very patriarchal, male-centered society,” Lovy said.
Lovy said she turned to art to combat the social and political norms of her time. At the age of 20, she joined an acclaimed Hungarian pop band R-Go as a dancer in 1987. Lovy said she was able to travel with the band across the Berlin Wall to France and Germany, despite political turmoil in the region.
Shortly after, Lovy came to America with her now ex-husband, who was a Southern Californian native. She said her limited English skills and lack of education made her feel alienated when living in America for the first time.
“If you start your life as a young adult in a new country, you have to start to build your identity up again,” Lovy said. “I was really scared to pick up the phone because I couldn’t understand anyone.”
Lovy said she took night classes to learn English at El Camino College, but stopped attending after she gave birth to her second daughter and decided to focus on motherhood.
Her education was further interrupted when her then-husband’s work relocated their family to the Czech Republic, Turkey and Hungary. In 2011, Lovy and her family moved back to California, and she returned to her artistic past by starting her own folk-style band, BarbaraCafe.
“I went from the kitchen, after washing a million plates as a housewife, to the studio, where I put my music together,” Lovy said.
She added the music and lyrics she wrote reflected her perspective on femininity, spirituality and political ideology. In 2008, Lovy released an album with EMI Music.
Despite her musical endeavors, she still felt a lack of fulfillment and desired to further her academic career, Lovy said.
“I just felt a void – I always wanted a diploma,” Lovy said. “I don’t know if it was for my daughters or for myself, but I really missed it.”
Lovy returned to school in 2012, enrolling in Pierce College. Initially, she worried her years away from the classroom and the language barrier would hinder her academic pursuits, but her first A in community college gave her the confidence to pursue her education at a four-year university.
Miguel Endara, her professor for a critical thinking and composition course at Pierce College, said he remembers Lovy for her work ethic and open-mindedness.
“(Lovy) takes positions on controversial issues,” Endara said. “But she was always open-minded enough to consider the arguments from the other sides.”
Lovy said she applied to California State University, Northridge and UCLA as a transfer student. After being accepted to both, she nearly chose to forgo UCLA, her dream school, for financial reasons.
She ultimately chose UCLA after receiving the Bernard Osher/Marcia Berger Foundation Reentry Scholarship, an award granted to students aged 25 to 50 who are re-entering the higher education system.
Angela Deaver Campbell, a director at UCLA’s scholarship resource center, said Lovy was selected for the scholarship for her maturity as an older student.
“(Lovy) was a student who really had a lot of time to think about what she wanted to do, and connected with a school where she could do it – here at UCLA,” Campbell said.
Lovy’s daughter Sofia, now a first-year student at Pierce College, said she hopes to attend UCLA in the future, to study global studies or political science. She added she was not a good student in high school, but witnessing her mother’s success has made UCLA seem within reach.
“(My mother) made me feel good about my future, because even if I don’t make it now, I can make it later – like she did,” Sofia Lovy said.
Lovy said her plans for the future include getting a master’s degree and opening a counseling practice for women. She added she believes education is a lifelong pursuit fueled by self-motivation.
“No one could have forced me to go back and keep studying,” Lovy said. “I think it’s most important to find your own way, whether it takes five years or 20 years.”
Email McCormick at emccormick@media.ucla.edu or tweet her @emilymcck.