Men’s volleyball aims to justify ranking with win against UCSB at home

The Bruins have a chance to clinch their first win against a ranked opponent this season.

No. 6 UCLA men’s volleyball (4-1) will face No. 12 UC Santa Barbara (3-2) at Pauley Pavilion on Wednesday night. The Bruins dropped four spots in the rankings after being ranked No. 2 through their first five games of the season.

“My only thought on the rankings this year is that we’ve been ranked probably too high considering our turnover,” said coach John Speraw.

After returning from their Midwest road trip with two wins – sweeping both McKendree (1-1) and Lindenwood (0-2) – senior setter Micah Ma’a said UCLA hoped to find its rhythm and continue its win streak.

“We struggled a little bit, even the whole road trip, despite what the sets say,” Ma’a said. “We’ve got a lot to get better at, so I think we’re just trying to do as much as we can do.”

UCLA is undefeated at home this season – with wins against Princeton (1-5) and UC San Diego (2-2) – and averaged a .373 overall hitting percentage. The team hitting percentage dropped to .344 in its following three games on the road.

The Bruins have also averaged 14 errors per game, with a season-high 17 against the No. 10 CSUN Matadors (4-1) in their only loss of the season.

“We’re not that good right now,” said junior middle blocker Daenan Gyimah. “The team as a whole has to get better at serving and the little things, like passing free balls perfectly.”

UCLA beat UCSB in straight sets at home in March and held it to a .099 hitting percentage. The Bruins recorded 10 blocks, seven errors and a .446 hitting percentage in the match compared to the Gauchos’ three blocks and 21 errors.

After winning their first three games, the Gauchos lost their last two, both against the Pepperdine Waves (4-0). Outside hitter Corey Chavers has led UCSB this season with 60 kills and nine blocks, averaging 12 kills per match.

Despite some recent struggles, the Bruins remain optimistic about the potential and future of the team.

“Where we are right now and where we could potentially be a few months from now are potentially very, very different teams,” Speraw said. “For us it’s just about time and getting to be better volleyball players and a better volleyball team.”

UCLA professor and pioneer of media archaeology reflects on sharing work abroad

A manually driven car may be as antiquated as a landline telephone in the future, Erkki Huhtamo said.

Huhtamo is a professor at UCLA’s department of design media arts and a founder of the field of media archaeology, the discipline that seeks to understand new and emerging media through examination of the past. He has curated a number of art and design exhibitions, and was once an adviser on an episode of the television show “Storage Wars.” He recently gave a series of lectures at several universities in Japan titled, “Media, Transportations, and the Challenges of Posthuman Culture.” Huhtamo recently spoke with the Daily Bruin about the nature of evolving methods of transportation, and how technology both to serves and distracts the modern human.

Daily Bruin: What inspired you to do a lecture tour in Japan? What did you discuss?

Erkki Huhtamo: One of the reasons for this kind of lecture tour is the fact that in 2015, I published a monograph – a book about media archaeology – that I wrote for Japanese readers. It was obviously translated, as I’m not able to write in Japanese myself. The title of the book in English is “Media Archaeology: Dialogues between the Past, Present and Future.” This book has been adapted quite widely at the universities in Japan as a textbook, and since I’ve been active in Japan in various media roles for quite a long time, it’s created a demand for these kinds of lectures.

But I did not simply want to speak about what I already wrote in this book. I talked about my current research, my new interest in which I was looking at relationships between systems of transportation, media culture and the idea of the posthuman, which is a hot topic today among media scholars.

DB: What examples of media culture relations might residents of Los Angeles or UCLA students be familiar with?

EH: Think about a simple media machine like a film projector, a video camera or even a smartphone. These devices have certain ways of sensing and recording the world, often sending out information. Self-driving cars actually need to be media machines to function. This means that it is provided with all kinds of sensors including LIDAR – which is a kind of panoramic sensing system – radars and other devices that at any moment create an idea or mapping of the surroundings around the car. But the self-driving car also sends out that information to computer databanks at any moment, which put on various layers of mapping from the immediate surroundings all the way to a kind of global mapping of where that car is situated.

And the important point here is the mobilities, the idea of things in motion and media culture are merging with each other. Of course, mobilities also have to do with smartphone users walking on UCLA’s campus while texting or riding a Bird scooter and doing the same thing, so it exists on many different levels. But these were the kinds of things that I was talking about in my Japanese lectures.

DB: What about the cultural effects of the convergence between media and transportation?

EH: I’m always conscious of the cultural effects of these things. Obviously, anything gets a meaning within wide and broad context. There are cultural differences, and I think these cultural differences are really important to take into account. In my lectures, I also talked about the planned application of self-driving cars to the ride-hailing systems. These days, we have people driving Lyft or Uber cars, but we also know that Uber’s dream is to get rid of these drivers.

I’m waiting for the time when Uber is going to be fully self-driving. This is, of course, already happening with the Waymo system, which is the Google self-driving car.

In Japan, for example, the need for this kind of service is different in the sense that Japanese people are served by an extremely dense and effective railway network. Even an idea of last-mile mobility by means of e-scooters probably would get a different response in those cities where people don’t need to walk long distances between railway or subway stations and their destination.

DB: How much have cultural or language differences affected how you communicate with audiences around the globe?

EH: If my students ask me, “Well, professor, I have a little bit of extra time, how do you think I should spend it during my studies?” And I have a clear answer, my first answer: “Learn a language.” Learn an extra language – whatever language you’re interested in. Second point: go and take a course on the history of philosophy. These two things apply to anybody. The more languages we know, the more opportunities we have to understand worlds and focus our lives and research. I am fluent in many languages, and this is essential for my work in media archaeology. I don’t see it as an excuse to leave out certain important elements because I do not master the language.

The problem is that the Japanese language is so complicated that I am able to master it on a very superficial level. It’s not enough really to do research on the Japanese culture as much as I want to. This also means that we are, in a certain way, limited by the range of languages and cultures. If I think about doing my life over again I probably would take Japanese and Chinese language seriously. But it was not such an issue at that age.

DB: Do you come away with a better sense of the culture where you’re speaking?

EH: When I do these kinds of lecture tours, it is, of course, always a learning experience: learning from the people listening to me, learning from the discussions, but also learning from what every city has to offer from its media culture. Of course, these are the kinds of things that interest me as a media archeologist. It always goes both ways: contributing something, but also getting something in return.

Authors consider own backgrounds in portrayals of refugee and immigrant experiences

In the early 1990s, writer Viet Thanh Nguyen read a book about the Mexican-American border he found timely: “Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border,” by Luís Alberto Urrea. Twenty years later, the two authors will join forces to discuss refugees and immigrants.

The two hail from drastically different cultural backgrounds – Nguyen is a refugee from Vietnam while Urrea, who grew up in Tijuana, has an American mother and Mexican father. Their conversation Thursday in Royce Hall will detail both their personal histories and the influences behind their writing. They are both known for writing about these topics, from Urrea’s “Into the Beautiful North” and Nguyen’s “The Sympathizer;” they also know each other, as they first met when they were finalists for the 2016 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Their desire to humanize the immigrant and refugee experiences grounds both writers, though the contrasting pathways that preceded their works lead to different writing styles, Urrea said.

“We both have a serious intent and we are always representing (immigrants and refugees),” Urrea said. “It’s important for us to make a stand for our people, particularly in this environment now.”

Urrea saw the arts as a way of understanding where he fit in. His background made him feel isolated at times from both Latinos and Americans, he said, so he pursued poetry, songwriting, drawing and theater. During his senior year of college, his father died violently in Mexico. Urrea didn’t have any way to process it other than writing about it, he said. His bilingual skills and firsthand understanding of the American-Mexican border gave him an opportunity to share new stories of immigrants.

Meanwhile, Nguyen’s family life also impacted how he interacted with the world. His family became refugees in America after they had to leave Vietnam, when Nguyen was just a child; the experience sparked his deep curiosity about his family and Vietnam’s history, as well as concern about what it meant to be an American, he said.

“I spent most of my life trying to make sense of all of that,” Nguyen said. “That’s what the storytelling is about – trying to connect both the emotional self and the political histories I want to draw attention to.”

With his ongoing interest in politics, Nguyen said he wants his writing to have a political impact. However, he said the emotional experiences of refugees are equally important as the history and politics of his Vietnamese background, and marrying fact and emotion is important in creating a compelling story.

“I wouldn’t be in this country if it wasn’t for (the) war that the United States fought in Vietnam, so my personal existence is shaped by politics,” Nguyen said. “In turn, I take my personal experience and inject it back into the world of politics through what I write.”

Urrea’s writing is also impacted by his upbringing and how he wants to interact with people through storytelling. He said he writes humor into his novels because he finds that laughter can be a strong way to bring people together, which is especially important when trying to humanize the immigrant experience to those who understand immigrants through harmful rhetoric in the news, he said.

“When you laugh together, it’s very hard to get up from that table and say, ‘Boy, those people are animals,’” Urrea said. “If you laugh together, it’s very possible that you will be able to cry together.”

The immigrant experience is particularly applicable to a large portion of UCLA’s student body. Jessica Ho, a third-year sociology student, first became interested in the conversation because of her personal background as an immigrant from Hong Kong. She had not been to a talk on immigration and refugees before, which is why she is looking forward to the event, she said.

Both have written multiple books and have received negative backlash, which is one manifestation of their different cultural backgrounds. While Urrea has received death threats to himself and his family over their strong opinions about Chicano/a people, he said, Nguyen hasn’t received as strong a negative response. This could be the result of harmful rhetoric that is being used particularly against Latinos and Mexicans because of the current border issue in America, Nguyen said.

Regardless of their different cultural and career backgrounds, both authors view their ability to represent the immigrant and refugee experience important, especially since it gives them the opportunity to bear witness to what is really occurring for those individuals throughout America, Urrea said.

“What you have to do is continually show people the humanity of other people in a way that is so compelling that they cannot resist any longer,” Urrea said.

‘LA Metro Project’ web series highlights unseen diversity of Los Angeles scene

Los Angeles is more than just one city – it’s Brentwood and Culver City, Santa Monica and Inglewood, Westwood and more.

However, the different sides of the city aren’t well represented in film, said Matthew Oquendo, director of “LA Metro Project,” a new web series that connects each episode by way of the Metro. The series links the points on the map with visuals of what Los Angeles has to offer besides its tourist stops, Oquendo said.

The web film series will be screened Thursday night at the James Bridges Theater with a Q&A featuring panelists from different fields, such as filmmaking and urban planning. The premiere will be hosted by several UCLA groups, from Melnitz Movies to Westwood Forward, that have an interest in promoting the Metro’s connectivity. Melnitz Movies program director Paul Kurek said they have chosen to host the premiere because the series speaks to transportation concerns and could have the potential to encourage more students to utilize LA’s transit system.

“We thought this event would be a great opportunity for us to create a synergy between filmmakers who kind of imagine how LA will be in the future, and for them it will be a city centered around public transport rather than just the car,” Kurek said.

The series presents an alternative future in which Angelenos rely on public transportation – a shift from the current prevalence of cars. Unlike in most urban areas, the typical Angeleno doesn’t get around with the Metro; instead, in LA there is a certain stigma associated with riding public transportation. People often assume transit users are low-income or homeless, Kurek said. Coming from Munich, Kurek said it was strange for him to live in a city without many public spaces, but the LA Metro system can satisfy this need.

“If you take the metro you might have to change stops, but you will also have to interact with other people,” Kurek said. “It just creates a new sense of community.”

Michael Skiles, president of the Graduate Students Association and the North Westwood Neighborhood Council, and chair of the NWWNC Planning and Land Use Committee, wants to shed light on the possibility for public transportation to change the way students live. If UCLA students start to take a second look at public transportation and incorporate it into their lives as a result of it being normalized in film, it could encourage the Metro to service the Westwood area more thoroughly, Skiles said.

“It’s not just about bringing the Metro to campus, it’s about making sure that people use the Metro and like the Metro and promote the Metro,” Skiles said.

Oquendo’s aim with the series is not just about promoting LA’s public transportation system, but to draw attention to aspects of the city that otherwise go unnoticed. Having grown up in LA County, he was frustrated by the typical scenes of Hollywood and the beach that populate LA-based films and TV. Oquendo used these episodes to show the different parts of LA that he grew up with and introduce different characters that one might find on the Metro. To honor the diversity of LA, Oquendo created ground rules that ensured shooting was done in typically underrepresented areas of the city. For example, the last episode of the series was shot at over 20 locations throughout the city, none of which were in West LA or Hollywood. Another episode tells the story of a man taking the Metro to a date for which he pays only in coins. Another follows a man across the city in search of a bathroom, while others are shot in Spanish and Portuguese. “I hope it creates an awareness of the space and an awareness of the communities that kind of lie in the sort of underbelly of LA, because most of the underbellies are serviced by the Metro stations,” Oquendo said.

He said it wasn’t just about showing the ethnic and cultural diversity of the city, but also about giving an indication of the expansiveness of the area. Oquendo said he wanted to give a more thorough and visually accurate representation of the city. For example, in LA, you can find the beach, the desert and the mountains, but film typically doesn’t do these aspects of the region justice.

Despite the common idea that the Westwood community is not well-serviced by public transportation, Skiles said he hopes the film series will show a different side of LA that isn’t ruled by the car, which diminishes the capacity for social interaction.

“I would hope that if anyone in Westwood were to see the series they would kind of look at Los Angeles as a sort of, not only ethnically diverse area, but a very geographically diverse area,” Oquendo said.

Establishing a creative writing minor will expand possibilities for UCLA students

Imagination is a hard thing to come by in one’s undergraduate studies. Putting pen to paper to write something imaginative can be even harder.

Right from the start, incoming students are made to fulfill general education requirements, including science and English literature courses, as well as a bevy of other courses, to complete their major. Some majors offer concentrations where students are able to delve into their more specific major-related interests.

The English department offers a creative writing concentration to students who have successfully completed three creative writing workshops of a given genre, which are writing-intensive, and rely heavily on peer discussion and review. Prior to enrolling in the workshops, students must complete courses that are aligned with those needed for the English major. Once the student completes the lower division coursework needed to be eligible for the workshops, they must apply for admission by submitting a sample of their work.

But being admitted into one workshop doesn’t ensure acceptance into another, so this process must be repeated a minimum of three times for students lucky enough to get in each time. And the creative writing concentration isn’t enough to give students the opportunity to explore their writing interests in depth.

Creative writing workshops cover general writing styles and works of literature – not always exploring topics of fiction like sci-fi or fantasy. The few creative writing workshops offered per quarter also make it difficult for students to enroll.

Frankly, the creative writing concentration isn’t creative enough to give students what they need.

The admission process for the creative writing concentration is subjective. It’s based on a writing sample and a couple of questions such as, “What are your favorite three short stories?” or “What book are you currently reading?” It doesn’t rely on test scores or grades from previous courses. Admission depends on whether the reader likes your story and responses, something that ultimately denies students willing to learn the opportunity to do so.

And still, the admission into one workshop doesn’t guarantee admission into another.

Moreover, a large number of students apply for around fifteen spots, with about two workshops offered per quarter. This creates an environment of competition and failure. Students who are denied acceptance may choose not to reapply. Those rejected can be left believing their writing samples or styles aren’t up to par with the rest of their peers’.

Making the concentration into a minor would result in the expansion of the entire department while easing the enrollment process for students. The admission process would happen only once, instead of the multiple times required for the current concentration, and rely on a more standard process, such as stipulating literature-based prerequisites.

Sarah Garcia, a fourth-year English student, said if there was a creative writing minor, there would be more classes available, and she wouldn’t have had to submit an application to three different workshops.

“(I would) hope I get in and hope I’m able to get these classes needed for the concentration,” she said.

In addition to creating more spots in classes, a minor can provide more detailed and specific course options. Creative writing students currently have two workshop options: short story and poetry. Very few workshops touch on specific genres or go in depth into any given literature, leaving students unable to explore fully the world of creative writing. A minor can result in a wider selection of diverse classes that specifically revolve around topics such as queer or multiethnic literature.

Christine Nguyen, a fourth-year English student, said while she has fulfilled all three workshop requirements for the concentration, she would still like to take additional courses. However, she isn’t looking to reapply because she doesn’t want to take up a spot needed by other students.

“I think it would be great to have more specific classes because my interests may not mesh with the interests of other people in the workshops, so they may not be able to give me as much good-quality feedback,” Nguyen said.

The English department has been working on creating a creative writing minor. Fred D’Aguiar, director of the creative writing department, said they hope to see a minor implemented within the next two to three quarters – after earning the stamp of approval from the needed academic committees.

The department also is trying to allow students to find cross-listed courses that satisfy the minor, such as film or Chicana/o classes, D’Aguiar said.

UCLA should support the English department’s efforts to expand creative writing. Not having the minor diminishes the opportunity for soon-to-be UCLA graduates to integrate creative writing into their diplomas.

A creative writing minor might seem unnecessary because it fulfills the same needs as the existing concentration. Yet, students outside of English or the American literature major, like STEM students, are unable to claim this area of study. A concentration also seems ill-fitting to any student who sees creative writing as a viable career option. A minor, on the other hand, can prepare any students for a future in writing, whether for their graduate school or career aspirations.

Having a minor would allow students to see the word “minor” on their diploma instead of just a series of elective courses scrawled across their transcripts.

It’s time to lend everyone a pen and paper.

The Quad: Tips to help develop healthy sleep habits, allow for a more restful night

A world in which we feel energized, have high GPAs and walk around with smiling faces may seem farfetched – but it’s actually quite attainable when we cultivate healthy sleeping habits.

An all-nighter is not an unfamiliar feat amongst college goers who have twice as many sleep issues as the overall population. However, the evidence of harmful effects over any perceived benefits of sleep deprivation should encourage students of all ages to seek simple yet effective ways to improve their sleep cycle, and therefore their mood, health and performance. This simple goal of improving sleep for the new year can help you begin to reach other goals, from making healthier food choices to focusing better in school.

A University of Minnesota study found that students who pulled all-nighters tended to have lower GPAs, but with increased and regular sleep time, students’ grades consequently tended to improve. The importance of sleep not only lies in academic performance, but in the overall energy, positivity and focus that follows a good night’s sleep.

In an interview for UCLA Magazine, neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried points to the fact that when individuals are deprived of sleep, both their motor abilities and their perception of the world slows down.

In 2017, Fried conducted a study observing the effects of sleep deprivation on individual brain cells details the mental lapses one experiences after an all-nighter – a mental lapse quite similar to driving a car or taking a test drunk.

Paul Macey, a neuroscientist and associate professor in the school of nursing at UCLA, said researchers have been seeing links between poor sleep habits, and issues from resultant depression and anxiety to more latent effects like diabetes or Alzheimer’s.

A board member of the mental health awareness club Active Minds, Elena Sternlicht said she feels social consequences from a lack of sleep. During times of low sleep, she recognizes her inclination to judge people, snap at others and feel more overwhelmed by general negativity.

“I feel fatigued in the afternoon without a regular sleep schedule, crash really hard and waste time trying to fuel my brain with food or distractions to stay awake,” said the second-year psychology student.

These consequences are effects of disrupted rapid eye movement sleep, the deep, dreamy state in which short-term memories become long-term memories. So not only are the memories of these four years at school at risk of being partially erased, but the memory of lectures of the day are also at risk, affecting academic life.

First-year public affairs student Amy Stanfield recalls the downward spiral stemming from decreased sleep quality and how it affected her work throughout her first quarter at UCLA.

“In the beginning of the quarter, I was overwhelmed with the social opportunities causing me to stay up late and … disregard my homework completely,” Stanfield said. “The amount of coffee I drank wired me well into the night, and didn’t make me necessarily productive, but instead made me super distracted.”

Luckily for Stanfield, Sternlicht and many other students, there are many ways to improve sleep length, quality and regularity, which are the key to maintaining a sense of calmness and regularity in daily routines.

There are tried and true ways to enhance your sleep, many of which are as easy as making your bed in the morning to create a comfortable, anxiety-reducing space for later, and allowing that space to be a sleep-inducing tech-free zone.

Given the melatonin-damaging nature of the blue light we interact with on our numerous screens, making conscious efforts to reduce light by wearing blue-light blocking glasses or an eye mask proves essential to a good night’s rest.

“Our brain associates bright light with daytime,” Macey said. “So, making the effort to plug your phone in somewhere before bed and giving yourself a period between phone use and rest to simply brush your teeth or read a book will remind your brain that it’s night, not daytime.”

Alongside the multitude of light sources, there are sound sources that can further disrupt a night routine on campus. Second-year international development studies student Maddie Cashel said the times that she doesn’t sleep well generally stem from having caffeine in the afternoon, but also from the noise of the piano right outside her window, which students often play despite quiet hours. To combat the loud melodies outside her dorm room at night, Cashel invested in a set of earplugs, which gave way to a much deeper, distraction-free sleep.

Additionally, caffeine acts as a promising stimulant to stay alert, but in practice, harms sleep patterns and ability to focus. Despite coffee’s omnipresence on campus, try and avoid caffeine at least six hours before bedtime in order to prevent it from impairing the quality of your sleep by blocking the “sleepiness” receptor in the brain. Instead of caffeine, you can incorporate naturally occurring melatonin-rich foods like cherries and sleep-inducing teas like valerian root or chamomile to ease you into sleep.

Except for the presleep cup of tea, eating and exercising should be completed by about 8 p.m. To avoid excess stimulation, eat a light meal two to three hours prior to sleep, exercise in the morning, and go for a light walk in the evening to allow time for the body to settle before bed.

“People underestimate the impact going for a run, a hike or a drive through nature can do not only for the body, but for sleep,” Macey said. “Finding these natural rhythms can provide a much deeper level of happiness and sleep promotion than the modest impact that six months of antidepressants and sleep aids prescribed to young students can.”

With changes like these in your daily behavior, incorporating a nightly, soothing routine becomes essential in cultivating healthier sleep. At night, lavender essential oil can work to calm nerves, muscles and slow the heart rate to reduce stress. By going to bed at around the same time each night and embracing practices like aromatherapy, meditation, journaling, or stretching, you allow yourself a quicker fall-asleep time and a deeper sleep, and at the same time, incorporate self-reflective techniques that boost your mood.

Macey said our bodies have a natural way of catching up and adapting to our sleep, but only when we let ourselves recover instead of continuing the cycle of poor sleep. So, allow your body a quick nap or early night in, instead of an all-nighter, to maximize your time for socializing, studying and bouncing back from prior sleepless nights.

“You have people pick what works for them,” Macey said. “Just being aware of your experiences and paying attention to what does and doesn’t work for your sleep is key to maintaining healthy sleep practices.”