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― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

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Friendly reminder that you don’t have to wait until the weekends to live and enjoy your life. Go to your favorite coffee shop after school, call your friend, bake cookies on a Wednesday afternoon, dance around in your underwear. Your life is yours to live and you shouldn’t put it on hold because of work or school.

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Some affirmations as we enter secondary season 😌🫣

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June 8, 2022

Today the lab I spent much of my freshman and sophomore year working in (and that I probably wrote about a ton on this blog in 2019) had a celebration for all the graduating seniors. I remember working in this lab at the beginning of my UCLA career and being so anxious and afraid for the future, and now being in the lab as a senior and reflecting on how much I’ve grown since then was quite surreal. This end to my work in this lab culminated quite nicely with the publication of a paper that showcased the data from the project I helped work on, and my research mentors were gracious enough to list me as one of the authors (peep the screenshot above!!)

Highlights of the lab celebration include:

Gossiping and chatting about anything and everything in the lab break room just like the old days :’)

Watching one of my mentors use lab materials to make a makeshift graduation sash for one of the lab’s seniors (which, came out surprisingly good, and was a solid alternative to the $40 sash ucla scams us into buying)

Becoming an owner of the highly coveted Eppendorf pipet pen

Sharing plans for the future with my Day 1 lab partner

I’ve been thinking a lot about how my senior year has been a perfect storm—all of my hard work from the past 4 years has finally come to fruition. I’m probably the happiest I’ve been in a while, and I’m really hoping this feeling will stay somewhat after graduation. Here’s to the last 3 days of college ~

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MPLS Review (9/10)

I have nothing but good things to say about this city. This review is definitely biased considering that the the weather averaged in the low 80s during the time I was there, but my time in MPLS truly slapped 😌 The first thing that struck me when I arrived in downtown were how clean the city streets were. Coming from LA where the streets are littered with garbage, seeing the spotless streets and sidewalks was striking and a pleasant surprise. Another striking thing was the sheer amount of greenery—MPLS had so many beautiful parks, tree-lined streets, and trails. Everyone seemed to be out in these spaces enjoying the great weather and this escape from the long winter they endured. The air was teeming with excitement and energy; families were riding quadracycles (yes, this is a word), people were walking their pets (dogs AND cats), a local musician was serenading park goers with country tunes, people were sipping on cold drinks. Walking through these parks filled me with a giddy energy I only distinctly remember feeling during 4th of July celebrations in the local park as a kid, and there’s no words to truly encapsulate how immaculate the vibes were. Beyond that, every interaction with locals or even visitors was so incredibly pleasant and invigorating, and I was shocked by the warmth of the people we met. My friends and I had great conversations with our Uber drivers, hotel staff, people we met at local bars, waitors, and cashiers. Last thing worth noting was the Animal Farm themed brunch spot that we had drinks at, which included it’s own Ferris wheel, mini golf course, and ample photo spots. Midwestern charm is indeed a thing—LA brunch spots have nothing on this place. I could go on and on about this city, but I’ll leave it at that. Overall a great city with great people, and I’d love to visit again whenever I can and explore other cities in the Midwest (next up, Columbus, Ohio?)

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Scenes from Minneapolis (May 27, 2022-May 29, 2022)

Minneapolis highlights include:

No wife, no kids, no stuff

Three girls in a revolving door, ain’t never seen that before

Taking sash pictures all across the city, and running into a couple who met at UCLA a couple years ago and are now married with a kid :’)

Meeting a trio of midwestern besties who we proceeded to spill our life’s tea with

Infiltrating a bachelorette party at the Union rooftop and chatting up the mother of the bride

False alarm Common Loon sighting

Molluscum #iykyk

The fact that literally everybody was outdoors to enjoy the great weather after enduring one of their longest winters in a while

$13 Whole Foods BBQ pizza

Canoes in the rose garden

An absolutely beautiful city with beautiful people—I hope I get the opportunity to come back again soon.

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Barney’s WeHo

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✈️ PDX Review (4.25/10)

I think I’ll start making this a thing and posting reviews of every city I visit. No disrespect to any loyal Portlanders, but here are my honest thoughts:

If I had to describe this city using one word, it’d be “sus.” I really tried my hardest to like it, but found it really difficult. The city as a whole was pretty disappointing personally, but I can see how it’d be attractive to the qUirKy artsy types and those with niche interests (beer brewing, coffee, street art, etc). Besides the overt homelessness and drug use (felt worse than LA although the sheer # of homeless in LA is higher), the numerous people wandering the streets babbling nonsense or disturbing things, and the absolute ass weather (this is coming from someone who grew up in LA), the people I came across during my visit just screamed cold and distant :/

Bumped my rating up an extra star and a quarter because of the city’s few redeeming factors, including:

FOOD. Every meal I had was *mwah* (pictured above is a spicy chicken bao bun)

The airport: expansive food options; $6 mimosas and a cute theater; serenaded by local musicians while waiting for my flight

My Uber driver who said he used the excuse “My elephant back in Africa misses me, I need to go see him” in order to ditch his post-doc position at the University of Oklahoma

Powell’s City of Books—bigass bookstore that took up an entire city block. Didn’t end up buying anything because ~paradox of choice~, but I had a grand ol time getting lost in the endless aisles of books.

Overall, I found myself counting down the time until I left, which I think says a lot about my thoughts. Stay tuned for more brutally honest city reviews ✊😩

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April 29, 2022 - PDX Day 2

Highlights of PDX Day 2 included:

Breakfast scramble + photo worthy latte (I’m usually not one to take photos of my food but this latte was beautiful)

My first ever poster presentation! This was actually a lot more fun then I expected—I had a lot of great conversations with fellow students who were interested in the work I was doing or were doing similar research themselves. Seeing their eagerness to hear about my work and chat about the topics in general was really invigorating. I’m looking forward to UCLA poster day :D Unexpectedly, I also had a couple students come up to me to ask about general UCLA advice, and I’m glad I was able to impart some of the wisdom I’ve gathered over the last 4 years on them.

This cute robot that served us food at the Burmese lunch spot!!!

A couple of odd shops on Misssissppi avenue, including one that sold exclusively cat themed gifts, one specializing in lightbulbs, and a … disturbing taxidermy shop.

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April 28, 2022 - PDX Day 1

Flew into Portland to present at the Western Psychological Association research conference, my first ever conference :o

Day 1 began with beautiful views from the plane and from my hotel room (which was upgraded to a room on the top floor with a view of the river!). I had Thai food for dinner—which was surprisingly, very good (and very hot)—at the 3rd street food carts and spent the night wandering through Powell’s City of Books. The store took hp a whole city block and had every book you could ever dream of!! Apparently it’s the largest independent bookstore in the world, which in theory sounds great, but I ended up walking out with nothing because I was ~overwhelmed~ by all my options :’) I did end up ordering a hard copy of Empire of Pain on Amazon later that night though—spending time in Powell’s filled me with a sudden longing to read from physical book rather than the illegal epubs I’ve been using. We ended the night with donuts from Voodo Donuts, another one of Portland’s quirky~ ans iconic establishments.

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My best advice: write through the chapters of your life. Write down your hopes for the future, and when the future comes, keep on writing. Collect little business cards from your favourite cafes, take silly pictures of your sink, scribble love letters to your future self and keep all the little notes that people leave you. One day, all of this will be in your past, and you won’t remember any of it. But that same day, you might pick up the silly little business card or the silly little note, and you’ll be happy you kept it all. :)

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Scenes from the month of April

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April 22, 2022

Thankful for nights like these—dancing the night away with your best friends without a care in the world. I’ve been trying to spend nights out doing things that I’ll only get to do as a college student—spending time at the local college bars, going frat hopping, etc. Last night two of my roommates and I went to one of said college bars and had one of the best nights out in a while. These are the moments I’ll miss the most after graduation (6 weeks away)! I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on how much things have been changing and are going to change in the coming months. I’ve never been a big fan of change so I don’t know how it’s going to go, but I think I’m feeling excited and optimistic for the future :’)

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April 16, 2022

It’s certainly been a minute since I’ve posted on this blog. Now that I’ve graduated and begun working, I feel as if I’ve entered a new stage in my life. I want to work toward making small positive changes, one of those being taking the time to reflect on what I’m grateful for and what I’ve accomplished.

Today was UCLA Active Mind’s annual mental health conference and it was in-person for the first time in 2 years. Here are a few of my takeaways from the conference:

Healing is not linear; don’t ever let anyone judge or belittle your experiences

You can learn to foster a healthy relationship with social media. With all of its bads come a lot of goods, and you don’t want to lose out on those

At the same time, you need to take time to live life outside of social media. Time is best spent being present and building relationships in person

This new period of my life has been such a change of pace from everything that came before it, but I’m determined to use this extra time to learn more about myself and grow. Here’s to self growth, new adventures, and discovering more about myself.

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January 20, 2020

After having a rough first 2 weeks back at school, the past few days have given me hope and heightened my excitement for what’s to come. Earlier this week I had my second volunteer shift at the clinic, and it was a wholesome and insightful experience :’) During my shift we saw a child who was on the spectrum, and watching how the med student was able to connect with her and make her feel comfortable in what must’ve been a stressful situation for her was so heartwarming. After every interaction and encounter in the clinic I find myself growing as a communicator and advocate for the patients that I work with, and I’m just so grateful to be able to be a part of something that continuously reminds me of why I desire to pursue a career in medicine.

I also had a chance to meetup with my mentor, a second year med student (@medschooldillon on Instagram, give him a follow!) at the UCLA DGSOM.

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affirmations to repeat to yourself when you know you're spiraling

• One step at a time.

• Let's just get through today.

• The wins along the way make up for the losses.

• When I look back in five years, this won't seem as daunting.

• I've pulled myself out before, and I can do it again. I'm not afraid to do it again.