UCLA orientation, day 3
This was the last day of orientation and man does it have stories to go along with it. First, we had to schedule classes at 9:00 sharp. The way we did it in our group, as I’m sure every other group is that we picked straws. On account of my tremendous fortune, I managed to draw the luckiest number of all, 1. I breathed a sigh of relief. As a result, I managed to get all the times I wanted for Chem 20A, Math 31B, and GE 60A. Now on Mondays I don’t have to go to school until 1:00PM. I think I can manage.
Chem 20A is a set up from high school chem, but I don’t think excessively difficult. The diagnostic test was a joke (sorry to those of you which didn’t pass it) but I thought it was hilarious when people started turning their tests sideways to get one of the questions on the test correct. Honestly, one question was about the positioning of letters in a compass rose and which combo would work correctly. Reminded me of preschool. However, some of the balancing equations stuff was a little hard but I still passed.
Math 31B is pretty much Calculus BC but on the college level. Thanks to my 4 on the AP test, I get to skip out of 31A. I’m looking forward to the class because I think eventually I will need Calculus in work applications.
The class I didn’t expect to be taking, GE 60A, is actually really cool. It’s a class devoted to a decade in American History over the course of an entire year. I believe the time period is 1963-1974. That should be a great class. I didn’t even know about it until my counselor encouraged me to take it.
After class scheduling, we were lucky enough to hear a lecture on Alcohol and Sexual Well-being at UCLA. Like I haven’t heard that stuff before. The videos were pretty funny, even though they were about date rape. I’m not trying to be insensitive but they were a bit hoaky. After that was discussed what we had seen in our group. Nobody had really anything deep to say. We were just passing time. No offense to my group members of course. I liked all of you guys.
I believe after the discussion we ate lunch at the Cafeteria, where I got a terrible mango smoothie. Jamba Juice puts that place to shame. Luckily I managed to down the smoothie by taking bites of a garlic pretzel…gives the mango smoothie some actual flavor.
After lunch we took the infamous UCLA Walking Tour. I had actually done the tour last spring I believe, but it was totally unlike this one. For one thing, our counselors made us play a game.
The game was called “Screw Your Neighbor.” The way it works is you write down on a piece of paper a punishment your “neighbor” has to do if he/she lags behind or does something stupid during the tour. Right after I turned my paper in, I realized the catch to the game. It came to me because our counselors gave a subtle hint. We encouraged them to make cards for each other, but Kathryn blurted out that it would be stupid to do such a thing. Right after handing my card in, I realized that it isn’t actually “Screw Your Neighbor” but “Screw Yourself“.
My punishment wasn’t too bad. I think on my card I had to hit on a girl of the group’s choice in Spanish.
I didn’t have to end up doing the punishment because we ran out of time. However, I did enjoy the lap dance one of the group members had to give Vahe. That was hilarious.
During the tour, our counselors informed us that they would tell us a number of stories about UCLA and one of them was false. Some of the stories were totally unbelievable, like Jim Morrison having a locker still on campus at UCLA. I thought initially that it was probably the fake story. However, I thought to myself that they wouldn’t be so gutsy as to tell a lie on the first story. Consequently, I bought it. Here’s a list of the stories I can remember:
- Jim Morrison has a locker at UCLA (with stickers all over it).
- One of the founders of UCLA is buried under the sixth step of one of the stairways on campus.
- The faculty of UCLA built a bomb shelter underneath the campus in the tunnel system that wasn’t large enough for the student body but large enough for themselves.
- There is a set of pillars near the Math/Science building that was statistically analyzed. Students would arrange themselves accordingly into grade categories based on how they entered the pillars. For example, “A” students would enter from the far left while “F” students would enter from the far right.
- Bunche Hall was lifted by cranes used by NASA to rotate the building 90 degrees. The school had to do this because the building was so shiny that it was causing accidents on the 405 freeway. Helicopters were used to stabilize the building during the move.
I know there are a couple more stories but I can’t think of them. If you went to orientation and can remember more, please e-mail them to me.
As it turns out, ALL of the stories are totally fake!!! I was such a sucker (silly freshman). Man oh man I thought only the pillar story was false. Boy am I a fool. Those damn counselors were pretty good at the storytelling.
After the campus tour, orientation was over. However, my adventures in LA were just beginning.
At the end of the day, my friend Courtney picked me up from UCLA out at the Sproul Hall parking lot. We went to eat dinner down in Westwood, which was pretty uneventful. I got to meet her friend Diana, who was really funny. After dinner we were supposed to go to a comedy club where Drew Carey was doing a stand-up act. However, he cancelled about a day in advance so we were supposed to see someone else. It didn’t matter though, because we never went to the show.
Why you ask? Because something else came up.
We were driving right outside of Beverely Hills when something totally unexpected happened. Courtney took her eyes off the wheel for just a second to look at the map. When she looked up, the car in front of her had totally stopped. She slammed on the brakes but it was useless. We plowed right into the back of a Mercedes SUV. For some odd reason, the tires didn’t screech and the airbags didn’t deploy. I think we probably hit the car at about 15MPH but it could have been about 10MPH. Nevertheless, her car was about two feet shorter after the wreck. The Mercedes had a scratched bumper.
Damn crumple zones.
I know that they place the impact on the car and not the driver, but the accident should not have done that much damage. The radiator was totally ruined, as it was oozing anti-freeze and gushing steam. The car wouldn’t even drive because two fans in the engine were stuck together. Consequently, we had to get all of the stuff out of the car after calling a tow truck and place it on the side of the road. The group in the Mercedes was so calm and collective about the accident that it surprised me. The man who was driving wasn’t even upset about the whole ordeal. He even helped move our car.
That was truly a blessing; you never know who’s going to step out of a Mercedes in Beverely Hills.
After we got all of our stuff on the curb in downtown LA, we had to wait about half an hour for one of Courtney’s friends to pick us up. Thankfully, he was taking a class about ten minutes away from the scene of the wreck. Otherwise we would have had to stayed out on the side of the road for a couple of hours.
So a car crash concluded my UCLA orientation. Frankly, it was both startling and funny. It didn’t really set in for me until Courtney had to call her parents. She was practically shaking. Luckily for her, her parents weren’t concerned about the car. They were just happy she wasn’t injured.