Rafayel Mgdesyanuclastud0020@aim.com
You wake up on one Spring morning and feel the hope that comes with the season, when Mother Nature is in full bloom and you cannot help but feel optimistic about that which lies ahead. Filled with nervous anxiety you walk outside toward your mailbox and check to see if you have received the one piece of document which, in essence, determines where you will be spending the next four (maybe five or six for some of us or about two if you’re a transfer—but who’s counting?) years of your life!
Just this thought alone is enough to make the most calm and collected among us sprint to their doctor for a full-on prescription of Paxil to rid themselves of the anxiety of the moment. So you finally muster up enough courage to open the mailbox and discover a letter from the office of admissions from your "dream school". Upon opening the letter you read the first sentence, "Congratulations! It is our great pleasure to offer you admission to UCLA for the Fall Quarter."
Your heart jumps to your throat and you scream at the top of your lungs in sheer excitement and jubilance. Then after you get a chance to calm down and you stop and think to yourself, "how the hell did I just get accepted to UCLA?"…hmmmm?
Your heart jumps to your throat and you scream at the top of your lungs in sheer excitement and jubilance. Then after you get a chance to calm down and you stop and think to yourself, "how the hell did I just get accepted to UCLA?"…hmmmm?
Before you know it your summer of endless partying, drinking, and smoking hookah is about to come to a screeching halt when you turn on your Blackberry, or iphone and realize it’s the last week of September and your about to start school. Ok, so you waltz your way onto campus and decide it would be a good idea to attend lecture at least the first day of your first year at UCLA, so that no one can say that your "never " went to class! Oh my, so interesting how bad habits are established from the very outset!
The fact that you decided to attend only one class out of pure laziness and nothing else is just the beginning of your problems! You have no idea which major you are interested in, haven’t even bothered to seriously think about it and have no plans whatsoever of doing so anytime soon.
So, the first day you decide that heck, the Armenian History class taught by this guy named Richard Hovannisian sounds really interesting and you decide to attend. While in class you can’t help, but check out all the Armenian girls in the room and mentally line up a few you might consider talking to, and so you end up eventually hitting on your "top candidate" after class. After hanging with this "top" candidate for about a week or so, you realize that she is just as clueless about her life and future plans as you are, and when she claims that she is at UCLA just to please her parents, while her real passions is to be a gourmet chef or something of the sort, you begin to ask yourself, "when did UCLA open a School of Culinary Arts?" This is when you realize there isn’t one! So eventually this fling doesn’t materialize into anything serious, for obvious reasons, and you move on with your life.
So, the first day you decide that heck, the Armenian History class taught by this guy named Richard Hovannisian sounds really interesting and you decide to attend. While in class you can’t help, but check out all the Armenian girls in the room and mentally line up a few you might consider talking to, and so you end up eventually hitting on your "top candidate" after class. After hanging with this "top" candidate for about a week or so, you realize that she is just as clueless about her life and future plans as you are, and when she claims that she is at UCLA just to please her parents, while her real passions is to be a gourmet chef or something of the sort, you begin to ask yourself, "when did UCLA open a School of Culinary Arts?" This is when you realize there isn’t one! So eventually this fling doesn’t materialize into anything serious, for obvious reasons, and you move on with your life.
There yet remains a problem here, you still don’t know what you want to do with your life and you decide to make the sacred pilgrimage to Kerckhoff. Upon arrival you introduce yourself to the largest contingent of Armenians on campus and start to mingle with different people. Eventually, you learn how to play belot and go through your unofficial initiation as a member of the "Kerckhoff Crowd". Now as a fully indoctrinated and permanent member of this "secret society," you spend 80% of your day there, 60% of which is spent mastering your newly acquired talent of playing belot. After spending consecutive all-nighters studying until your heart’s content, you still end up bombing every single one of your midterms worse than a U. S. fighter –jet hitting Al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan; with the exception of Hovannisian’s Armenian History 107A. Careful, don’t let your over-inflated ego take over because the one day that you actually attended class was the same day in which he lectured about Tigran the Great, which coincidentally, was the essay portion of your exam. You lucky bastard!
Today, UCLA has an estimated five-hundred plus Armenians enrolled as undergraduates. It is safe to say that most of us plan on entering into one of the following five professions: doctor, lawyer, accountant, engineer or entrepreneur. The thing about us Armenians at UCLA is that we know that we all want to be successful in whichever path in life we decide to embark on, however, the missing ingredient in reaching this end, is a mean. We are too often not sure of which means we plan on employing in order to reach our desired end.
We are all talented individuals in our own right and faculties, or else we would not be here at UCLA. However, in order to truly reach our full potential as a distinguishable group which soars above the rest, we need to demand more from ourselves and strive higher than ever before. Moreover, it is in our interest to figuring out our path to success. My suggestion to the Armenian community on this campus is that we put all the bullshit aside and unite as a single unitary group of students and display a solidarity with one another that goes beyond our Hayastanci, Beirutsi, or Parskahaye divide. I mean true unity! When we look at each other and not judge each other based on this artificial divide, but rather based on each others’ individual character and merit.
The potential byproduct of this massive unification would be limitless. The roots for strong networking among the Armenians on this campus could benefit each of us individually, as well as collectively. For individual purposes, we would have the opportunity to enhance our chances for success by having a system in place where incoming Armenian freshmen to UCLA are mentored by a senior who has learned the ropes and understands the dynamics of how to deal with the pressures and rigors of the university experience. This mentor-mentee relationship would be invaluable for the development of incoming freshmen in overcoming the intimidation factor of being part of a large campus-community. These freshmen will continue on in their successive years of college with more confidence, decisiveness, and a more concrete approach toward the realization of their future career goals.
The potential byproduct of this massive unification would be limitless. The roots for strong networking among the Armenians on this campus could benefit each of us individually, as well as collectively. For individual purposes, we would have the opportunity to enhance our chances for success by having a system in place where incoming Armenian freshmen to UCLA are mentored by a senior who has learned the ropes and understands the dynamics of how to deal with the pressures and rigors of the university experience. This mentor-mentee relationship would be invaluable for the development of incoming freshmen in overcoming the intimidation factor of being part of a large campus-community. These freshmen will continue on in their successive years of college with more confidence, decisiveness, and a more concrete approach toward the realization of their future career goals.
On the greater collective level, the Armenian community as a whole would benefit immensely as a result of the aforementioned. The relationships which would be established would not only create a tighter bond and sense of community, which would extend beyond Kerckhoff to every corner on this campus where one can find an Armenian, it would also allow for Armenians to have a profound impact on the political, social and cultural impact on this university through its representation in the Undergraduate Student Association Council (USAC). Our top elected Armenian Student Association (ASA) executives could strive to run for higher office, and leave a lasting Armenian imprint on university politics.
All of the benefits of my proposal have the potential to be realized if we just strive and demand more from ourselves. If we set the bar low we will limit our inherent potential for great achievements. In short, imagine a place where Armenians are more effective and accomplished students, positive role-models, dynamic leaders, supportive friends and most importantly, a vibrant community within one of the most prestigious universities in the world—now imagine UCLA.
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