Daily Bruin

If I’m not talking about UCLA UniCamp, then you’ll probably find me talking about Daily Bruin.

If you met me four years ago, I probably wasn’t talking at all. I was a painfully shy first-year, who wanted so badly to be comfortable in an environment where she enjoyed the presence of the people around her and the work she did. I worked hard to stay involved, taking on extra Design shifts at The Bruin, signing up for projects, attending every UniCamp meeting and eventually applying for leadership positions. I found myself in an editor and a leadership position, and soon enough, first-year me was hardly recognizable.

For the past four years, every ounce of my time and energy has been dedicated to these two organizations and spent trying to figure out how much sleep I can squeeze in between. If I wasn’t in the office, then I was probably off running meetings for camp or eating at Marugame Udon with my Design children, Callista Wu and Ed Qiao. Because I was always rushing from one place to another, I often times forget to pause and appreciate the people and environment around me.

It wasn’t until I started to clean and pack up my apartment that I began to realize how significant my time at The Bruin has been. I found a few forgotten items that reminded me of some of these special moments.

A watermelon slicer. I was gifted that by my team of assistant Design directors at the end of my third year. I made my first impression as a Design director with a watermelon. Right before that school year started, we had editor’s training and I housed a few editors at my apartment. Every day, I’d cut watermelons for them like how a mother cuts fruit for her kids. All I wanted was to create a warm and welcoming space, one similar made for me when I first joined Daily Bruin. I found that the way to many people’s hearts and friendships was food. From then on, I continued to create an inviting space for every designer who joined my section and built a family in the office through those efforts.

I applied to be the PRIME art director with two goals in mind – rebrand the magazine and redesign its logo. PRIME’s design hasn’t change much, with the logo remaining identical to the one used on its first issue back in November 2008. It took many revisions and doubts to make sure the redesign was what me and my co-editors wanted for our era of PRIME. The result was a bolder logo and a refreshing design, and I encouraged designers to not be afraid to do the same with their layouts. The release of the first issue with the new brand received many positive feedback from current staffers and alumni. Leading a redesign may have been the most daunting task I took on during my time at The Bruin, but the result was also the most rewarding I have experienced.

Four generations of navy-blue Daily Bruin T-shirts. With each shirt, I see many faces of Daily Bruin staffers who have walked in and out of the office. A few of those faces I still see today, and among those faces are people who made me feel at home and believed in me when I couldn’t see my own capabilities.

To Bilal Ismail, a former DB editor and still a beloved friend, thanks for the continuous support even when you’re miles and a timezone away at Rhode Island School of Design.

To my team of PRIME editors (preditors), Alex Del Rosario and Juliette Le Saint, thanks for making my last contribution to The Bruin a meaningful and enjoyable experience.

To my Design children, Callista, Ed, Angela (x2) – thanks for always loving and supporting me. I’m happy to be your Megmom.

And to Daily Bruin, thank you for many years of growth and friendship.

Le was a Design contributor 2015-2016, assistant Design director 2016-2017, Design director 2017-2018 and the PRIME art director 2018-2019.

This post was updated June 11 at 7:58 a.m.

I was not supposed to be here.

Or at least that was what it felt like all those years ago.

As distant of a memory he may be, high school senior Ryan was in the midst of accepting his fate at a different university before UCLA moved him off the waitlist. And he almost did not make the switch. For he had already learned every dining hall, every dormitory, every little factoid that he needed to convince himself that he belonged where the admission gods had deemed worthy for his labors. Accepting the alternate offer now would have been the admission that he was only good enough once others had said no. Accepting would have been the abandonment of all the promises that he made, with all the friends he had, who were all going to be miles away now. And by accepting, he would need to be all right with all the what-ifs that would pervade his thoughts for the rest of his life. Even after the first year, he was not sure if he made the right choice.

Freshman year, Hedrick 6N. To his left were amazing artists and Regent scholars with GPAs to kill for. To his right were national club presidents and valedictorians who had turned down much more prestigious institutions due to circumstantial obligations. And later that quarter, he was going to fail calculus. He was not supposed to be there.

He had intended to join the Daily Bruin around this time too. Impressed by the large summer issue given out at orientation, first-year Ryan wanted to be a part of something bigger than himself. But the questions were many and his qualifications were lacking. Unsure of his own worth, he closed his computer and hoped he would eventually grow into a person good enough for someone, and try again someday. There was always a next quarter, a next year, a next time for him to finally take hold of what he wanted in life.

There were still three more years to go, right?

It is now fall quarter of his third year. He had put off the last two years to figuratively find himself amid the lingering thought that he will never be able to. The quarters of procrastination and inactivity had created a sense of acceptance and compliance with the routine of college life. But he would eventually think back to his second-year roommate’s indomitable spirit and confidence that drove him to do more every day. For that, I would like to thank Mustafa Hafezzada for always pushing me to be better. It finally led me back to finishing that application, in which I found myself doing more than I had ever expected.

To my internal tools team – us remaining stragglers – thanks for trusting me with such an immense task. I will always be grateful for the opportunity. Thank you Dustin Newman for being the rock of the department, Neil Prajapati for stepping up to the mantle and Leo Siow for starting the whole mess that got me here today.

To my Graphics family – our small but hardy group of chart-drawing, hummus-consuming human beings that made the Daily Bruin hospitable among the towers of Panda Express boxes and perpetual ceiling leaks. Thank you Pauline Ordonez for being our group’s dad this year, Mavis Zeng for humoring me all this time and Bella Clark for starting me in the right direction. Bebas Neue, forever.

To all the friends and acquaintances that I’ve met on the way, know that my heart is full, and you have changed me for the better.

And to all graduating seniors, or anyone unsure of where they are going, always know that you are exactly where you need to be.

Kuang was a Graphics contributor 2017-2019 and Online contributor 2018-2019.

One thing a lot of people don’t know about journalism is that writers do not normally write the headlines of their stories. Or, well, at least I didn’t know that before I joined the Daily Bruin.

That’s the copy editor’s job. The copy editor writes the headline because the copy editor is supposed to be able to find what the angle of the story is, free from the influence of whatever the writer thinks is the main point. The copy editor is supposed to write a headline that is compelling, adequately describes what the story is about in 55 to 80 characters and will get people to read the article – even if that ends up annoying the writer or the people who the story is about.

With that in mind, it’s hard to write good headlines. I had to write hundreds of headlines to get to a point where I felt I wasn’t terrible at it. And sometimes, it’s hard to find a compelling headline when a story is muddled. Sometimes you feel like there’s a great pun or piece of wordplay out there and you strain way too hard to find it. Sometimes a story might have too much good stuff, and you just don’t want to exclude all of it from – let’s face it – what’s oftentimes the only part of an article readers will look at.

The metaphor I’m about to make is a bit obvious by now, but like with trying to diffuse the meaning of a story in 80 compelling characters, it’s hard for me to diffuse four years of life at the Daily Bruin into one column. There were so many moments and narratives that I thought could make an interesting one.

There was the fact that, when I initially applied for Copy, I had no idea what a copy editor did. My calling card when it came to my grammatical skills was that I once rewrote an essay seven times because I couldn’t properly use a comma. Yet, somehow, I was accepted, and four years later I was running the section that worked as the Daily Bruin’s grammar czars.

There was how Daily Bruin taught me all the hard work that goes into journalism. Whether there was an unexpected event like the 2016 shooting or the Skirball fire and people have to think quickly, or a massive special issue that had been planned for weeks, I came to appreciate the heavy amount of work and skill that it takes to put out the news.

There were the bad nights. The really bad nights. The nights when I’d be in Kerckhoff Hall 118 until 3 a.m., 4 a.m., wondering why I bothered to spend so much of my college career doing this while explaining to my non-DB friends how this was all good and purposeful. The nights when the printer wouldn’t pick up the phone and I would start to feel like I was the one who was going to be blamed for breaking a 100-year tradition of having a daily paper come out every day.

There were the good nights. The nights I’d come to the Copy desk, stressed out and panicked about the fact that life seemed like it was going nowhere, when I thought I was on the verge of failing a class or when I was feeling like a generally incompetent human being. But then I’d get into the zone editing and talk to all my friends about some random style rules, and my worries would go away. Everything felt like it would be fine.

Like I said, it’s hard to find one moment or one thing from my Daily Bruin experience that stands out to me because there are just so many. There were so many people who’ve mattered to me that I’d probably use up the word limit of this column to name them all. There were so many stories I edited that it’s hard to point out only one compelling one, hard to find one particular moment that stands out.

So, hopefully I haven’t screwed over the copy editor who’s going to have to write the headline for this story too much. But at the end of the day, who is really better to figure out what the point of all this is other than a copy editor?

Khatri was a Copy contributor, 2016, Copy staffer, 2016-2017, News contributor 2017-2019, slot editor 2017-2018 and Copy chief 2018-2019.

As someone who flew over 8,000 miles to come here for school, I’m no stranger to goodbyes. They’re often tear-filled hugs, drowned out by airline announcements and the sterile scent of disinfectants. But when I leave campus in a week, my goodbye with the Daily Bruin is going to be different.

I joined the Daily Bruin two quarters ago as a Video contributor because I was looking for an outlet that could give me a voice. I still remember meeting my beat editor, Kitty Hu, and internalizing my envy of her whole array of professional video gear. Little did I know, she would become one of my closest friends, who shared my passions for videography and race discourse. I found myself liking the whole team more and more as weeks went by – eventually, Kerckhoff Hall 118 was the place that I found myself naturally gravitating toward when I wasn’t in classes.

Two quarters and many layering opportunities later, I find myself at crossroads in my career. I’ve heard that The Bruin has a tendency of making someone realize their true passion, but I never really believed that I was going to be swayed by it. Yet I still find myself seeking out motion-graphics opportunities within The Bruin and in the workforce, despite an upcoming job in the corporate world.

As much as I love having a workplace that often times matched my pace of learning and producing, that pace can, and will, knock you off your feet. But for me, that’s what makes the job exhilarating – the race to deadline keeps me coming back, asking for more. Some might see this as me procrastinating on school work, others may think that it’s me avoiding coming to terms with graduation (hint: they’re both right). But Daily Bruin provided me with something more that just an outlet for my detrimental study habits; it gave me a newfound appreciation for my time and my work, showing gratitude for the process that creatives often do not receive – and for once, it didn’t feel lonely. There were times in winter quarter when I texted my Social Media director, Kristie-Valerie Hoang, every week to ask for animation projects that I could jump on, and quite frankly, I was the most excited I’ve ever been for my work during those times.

And I guess that’s what I’m trying to get at – being in the Daily Bruin is hard work, but it’s hard work that’s done with people who share the same respect for the work, and honor the same cause that drives it. Thank you, to all of you who have welcomed me and my subpar humor. Thank you for inspiring me and giving me a voice, and thank you for never failing to make my day better, despite the storm that has been – and continues to be – college.

My goodbye with the Daily Bruin is going to be different than that 8,000-mile trek four years ago. Unlike home, I don’t know if I’ll see it again. Unlike home, I don’t know if I’ll ever be with these people again, or if I’ll stay in touch with everyone who welcomed me with such warmth when I came here.

But I sleep a little better knowing that it’s in good hands – and will always remain that way – in the heart of Kerckhoff Hall.

Wong was a Video contributor 2018-2019.

When I joined the Daily Bruin during the winter quarter of my second year, I was simply an observant bystander.

I was always interested in journalism, but wasn’t confident in my abilities because I lacked experience. As a Radio intern, I would read the stories and visit the office regularly, but did not contribute anything to the paper for two quarters. I never thought much about my future at The Bruin and was happy just floating by. But I was pushed out of my comfort zone when Mackenzie Possee, the incoming editor-in-chief at that time, decided to let go of the Radio section.

Suddenly, my time at The Bruin was being cut short with Radio’s untimely end. I thought any prospect of pursuing a career in journalism was ending with it. But Mackenzie, along with then-digital managing editor Emily McCormick, met with the radio interns and encouraged us to cross-train with other sections of the paper.

What I thought was an abrupt end to a short-lived career suddenly became the beginning of the most meaningful years of my time at UCLA. On a whim, I decided to cross-train in news because I wanted to give old-fashioned journalism a shot. I told myself to give it my all and just quit if things didn’t work out.

My first story was assigned one day before my midterm – I had to cover an event held by a Cambodian American student group. As I walked to the event sleep-deprived and stressed, I was almost sure it was going to be my first and final story. But when I arrived at the event, the stories of Cambodian immigrants who fled their home country because of the Khmer Rouge moved me. I typed up my first draft once I got home.

Eventually, I repeated that process at least 10 times and ended up writing a lot more than I had originally anticipated. The thrill of stepping into a world that is different than your own and getting to tell the story is impossible to replicate.

In my final year at The Bruin, I decided on a different approach – I took up the challenge of writing stories for Daily Bruin’s long-term sections, PRIME and Enterprise. This time, I chose the topics. I wrote stories about international students’ difficulties and students who overcame academical dismissal – two issues that meant a lot to me, as they affected people I cared about.

For PRIME and Enterprise, there was a familiar sequence: interviewing, writing, cutting, reediting, reinterviewing, repeating. Working on these stories, I learned to develop most of the skills I initially lacked. Asking the right questions, writing a strong lede – these are skills I developed through that tedious sequence. I came to realize I had developed these skills when I had to rewrite transitions for my PRIME story – it came so naturally that I know first-year me would be proud. I am certain every individual is able to develop through practice and persistence.

All those times I held myself back for my first two years, it was because I thought I didn’t have what it took. But throughout my time at The Bruin, I realized it is possible to either learn or develop what you lack. You need to be eager – both to make mistakes and learn from them, and you need to be brave.

My friends outside the paper always ask me why I spend so much time in the office. There may be no quantifiable or immediately tangible return for the hours I have put in. Just like most staffers, I am unpaid and overworked.

But my time at the Daily Bruin is replete with lessons and memories I wouldn’t have been able to earn elsewhere. That, money can’t buy.

Harjanto was a Radio intern 2017, News contributor 2017-2018, News senior staff 2018-2019 and PRIME and The Stack contributor 2018-2019.

I wanted to be a copy editor for the Daily Bruin more than anything, long before I even knew how to write a line of code. I loved looking for the minute details, the things that didn’t always matter to most people. Given my clickbait-y headline suggestions for The Stack this year, I’m glad past Copy chiefs had the sense not to let that happen.

Instead, I had a world far away from Kerckhoff Hall 118 my first two years of college. I learned life skills like bargaining to run profitable samosa fundraisers, cutting out flyers at 3 a.m. and consuming six cups of coffee during finals week. I learned a little about school and a lot about myself, before finally declaring a statistics major on a whim. I liked numbers, words and art – I couldn’t pick, and all of them together, along with being in awe of The Stack, Daily Bruin’s data journalism and newsroom tech blog, made me apply to the newspaper organization once again.

Things changed by the time I applied my third year – my favorite universe shifted from the multiverses of “Doctor Who” to the tidyverse, and I bounced from wanting to become a health care economist to a confused soul to a data scientist. At some point, I veered away from worshiping Associated Press style and turned to The Stack, which allowed me to learn that my true love was data-driven narratives – or as we say it in code:

let love = data + narratives;

Yes, I just added both R and JavaScript to a -30- column. #digital-first, am I right?

To my first editors: Mike Zhang, Hongyi Zhang and Nathan Smith, thank you for taking a shot when you took me in. I reread my intern application while writing this column and am cringing once again – but I’m so happy to have been welcomed into this wonderful, messy world.

To Simran Vatsa, thank you for grounding me when I wanted to scream because of this organization and the college that surrounds it. This year wouldn’t have been possible without you.

To The Stack babies, it was terrifying working with people as kind and talented as you. You pushed me to be a better version of myself every day. For that, I am forever grateful. I hope to be half as cool as you someday.

To my fellow Online editors, I could not be prouder to be part of this team. We came together at the best and worst of times, and I found kinship in such a supportive and diverse group of people.

To Amy Baumgartner and Michael Zshornack, thank you for everything – you were voices of reason and sources of strength throughout all that happened this year. Upper management, I found friends in you during retreat, while gushing over shapefiles and cracking bad Dijkstra’s algorithm jokes.

This newsroom was and is a place of wonder. From finding my mom’s long-lost childhood friend through a fellow editor to having the best peers and alumni invested in my growth, I found myself happily confused every day by how lucky I was to be here.

To all my family and friends outside of The Bruin – I’ve returned to the outside world, perhaps a little paler and crankier from a yearlong adventure inside a decrepit, windowless newsroom. My two-year scarf phase crumbled. I started liking dogs too. The stories of Budget Bao and the War of the Worlds scene may die with me, but I leave this beloved newsroom with the love for small details – albeit now in comma-separated files instead of essays – and bad puns that I had as a first-year, as well as a voice that is a little louder and stronger than before.

Next up on my journey are uncharted waters far away from Kerckhoff 118 – but the collective strength and support of the Daily Bruin, my friends and my family has me optimistic for what’s to come.

Dialani was an Online contributor 2017-2018, and an Illustrations contributor and The Stack editor 2018-2019.