Post-graduation plans..!

It's true, I'm actually finishing up my 4th year at UCSD and trying to figure out what in the world I'm going to do with my life. But I must admit I'm not trying too hard.....

And that's because I've decided to take the advice of countless alumni who I've met with over the past 2 years (as part of my job interviewing alumni for the Alumni Discovery initiative). Each of these people said to me that of all the things they wished they had done post-graduation, no matter the cost/trouble/other opportunities, they WISH they had just taken time to live life without responsibilities and to travel.

So based on the wisdom of countless near-strangers, I've purchased a ticket to Europe where I'm going to spend 3 months of this summer simply traveling around (to wherever the cheapest ticket will take me) all over the continent to explore, enjoy the culture, meet new friends, find new adventures and just experience everything I possibly can.

Before I leave I'll be selling everything I own--literally everything-except for a few pieces of art and my bicycle (it's a really nice bike and the arts original and by my best friend).

From my time living in the international House on campus, I have a number of friends in different countries around Europe, many of whom have welcomed me to come and 'crash' at their place and give me tours of the towns when I manage to get there. Elsewise I plan to couch-serf or stay with any other random people that are nice....or stay at a hostel. Again no intense planning, just feeling it out.

For the first month I have a friend coming with me and she has certain places she'd like to see so we've got a decent route sort of planned out-ish (Ireland-England-France-Switzerland-Italy). From there I am literally going to be booking flights about 7 days ahead of when I'll take them in order to hop to wherever looks interesting that has a low cost.

No plan--no agenda--just exploring. I hope to hit every country in western europe and may explore to central/eastern. It really just depends.

I'm hoping to maybe catch a yoga retreat somewhere while I'm over there...I hear salsa in Paris is awesome...and I really want to experience some rural areas without all the tourist hub-ub.

And that's the plan-to not plan. Probably for one of the first times in my life.

As for my return, I'll be getting back to the states the end of September and have the idea that (for now) I'll come back to San Diego--that just seems to make the most sense. I've looked into a few jobs and opportunities and am putting out a few applications in random places. But honestly I'm not concerned about that, I'm just ready to explore then begin to think about the rest of my life.

Graduation is June 12th here at UC San Diego and I'll be flying out July 13th.

If you have thoughts/suggestions/advice, feel free to shoot me an email or reply on this post!

Top 10 recent adventures

1. Attended performance of La Boheme at the San Diego Opera House (for free!)

2. Camping in Anza Borrego desert

3. Acroyoga retreat at the La Jolla Yoga Studio--13 hours of yoga in just one day!

4. Went to the Adams Avenue street festival

5. Attended 30th on 30th. The 30th of every month restraunts on 30th street have awesome deals and lots of freebies!

6. Attended Ray Street at Night-a local art walk among galleries on Ray street

7. Hosted an event, Splash for Scholarship, where we dunked prominent individuals at UCSD to raise money for the Student Foundation and its scholarships

8. Broke my already broken tooth and had it fixed. Major fail while opening some cheese...

9. Attended the 20th Annual Kyoto Award Symposium honoring Drs. Peter and Rosemary Grant

10. Met the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke at the "North American Global Competitiveness Seminar on Green energy, clean technology and sustainability"

Walking San Diego

San Diego is known for being very unfriendly to the walker/biker due to its long distances between parts of town which means it's almost necessary to take the interstate to get anywhere. But you know what, you see the world a little different when you walk and my friend Kristin and I wanted to give it a go. We walked our way around San Diego for one day (6.5 hours!)

Starting in Hillcrest, we breakfasted at Bread and Cie bakery on University Avenue before following 1st avenue through Hillcrest and City Heights (2 SD neighborhoods). We found a Self Realization Temple, a 'famous' hotel because it looks like a barn, some very interesting scultpture gardens and much more as we passed through the residential portion.

First avenue brought us to a point where we wanted to cross over to Little Italy and once there we visited art galleries, cafes, and pubs galore! Especially interesting was the gallery of Mee Shim and the Pecoff Gallery. We actually met Grant, the local artist who met his wife and now travels the world as they combine his art and her poetry to inspire (www.pecoff.com).

Next we enjoyed an afternoon drink at the Princess Pub before we ran into the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art where it just so happens that admission for those under 25 is free! We got a tour by one of the gallery curators and then decided it was time to head down to the water. We strolled through the Seaport Village (which is ridiculously touristy, I didn't even realize San Diego had an area like that) before we walked along the embarcadero with its stunning view of Coronado Island and sailboats galore.

Cutting our way up to downtown, we actually went over the San Diego Convention Center (with the help of LOTS of stairs), catching some very unique and beautiful views of the Coronado Bridge and downtown San Diego before we descended into the Gaslamp district. We popped in and out of a few shops (who were all having ridiculous sales) before snacking and refreshing at the Toscana Cafe and Wine bar.

This was the last stop as it neared 5pm and we knew it was time to walk our way back up to Hillcrest. Taking 6th avenue, we found a beautiful path through a portion of Balboa Park that took us all the way back to University Avenue where we began. There Kristin went on to watch a movie with our mutual friend Katie, and I went home to nap before going to a local Art Walk on Ray Street (www.rayatnightartwalk.com) with my friend Lara.

Walking is something that we, especially locals, would never consider doing just for the sake of getting a different perspective. Things seem too far, there's not enough time, or we'd rather just go do something. But WOW the things you notice and learn about a place when you experience it on foot. We ran across so many beautiful buildings and views and shops and experiences that the drive would never allow us to realize! It reminded me of the way that I experienced London 2 summers ago...and the way that I'll be experiencing Europe here soon. (more to come on Europe).

So...if you ever have the chance. Go for a walk. Not to get anywhere, not for exercise, but just to go and see what you can find. I am so fortunate to have a great, wonderful, amazing friend who is just as willing to wander without cause as I am. Thanks for the beautiful time Kristin!!

More desert adventures

After some time living the city life in San Diego, I feel the need for an escape. This time a few girlfriends of mine were feeling the same way and so we went off to Anza Borrega Desert about 2 hours east of San Diego-for a weekend of camping.

The night before we left, Kristin and I visited a farmers market to pick up supplies including hummus, pita, apples, oranges, grapes, and some nuts. Then we realized we of course needed chocolate, marshmallows, hot dogs and wine! So we made a run to Trader Joe's where we picked up the supplies (except they don't sell marshmallows, weird right?). And get this, we got "tomato-basil Tofurkey dogs". They were Delicious!! It was definitely a fancy camping trip if you look at our food choices.

Otherwise we were rugged. Rather than paying for a campsite with running water or at least a port-o-potty, we trecked into some unknown territory (via the directions given to us by a guide at the visitors center) and found a remote spot off of a very unkempt dirt road far away from the lights of the city or any other people. There we set up camp! Such a beautiful sight it was!

We figured that we had time to do a hike that afternoon and then another one in the morning before heading back to San Diego. So we set off toward the distant desert hills with a few water bottles and snacks. Now, along the path as we made our way in I pointed out to the girls the various path-marking signs such as stacks of rocks or rows of rock across the pathways and explained to the that you should always stick to those trailmarkers for fear of getting lost.

About 2.5 hours into the hike, we decided to veer off the trail to "go hike that mountain". Offroading, we pushed our way through brush and up bouldered hillsides until we reached the summit. Once there, you definitely don't go back down the same way, so I ended up leading our trio down the other side and figured we would come across a trailmarker and the path that would take us back to our remote campsite.

We found a few of the markers, but they slowly stopped appearing and instead we had to follow some footprints. Well it turns out the footprints lead to some random person's house that we definitely could not see from our campsite. But, near the house I could see the statue that marked the road that we took to our site, so we made our way north and finally as the desert around us darkened we got back to the site and sat down to a lovely tofurkey dinner.

The hike the next day was also incredible, we made our way up to a beautiful desert oasis and natural palm tree grove. It was another beautiful hike and we got to see the last of the desert wildflowers in full bloom before we made our way back to San Diego (with a quick stop at Julian for their famous apple pie along the way)

Slab City

Have you ever seen the movie Into the Wild or read the book?

Well, in the story, the traveler camps out at a strange outlandish trailer park for a while in a place called Slab City. This 'town' is an area essentially declared 'no-man's land' where individuals who want to escape society can go and set up camp and just live as they wish. It's an interesting place to visit as they have a lot of cultural institutions started in this supposed escape from society. Those include various stages for musical performances, a public library, and any number of art exhibits (aka people draw/paint/build art wherever they feel like it).

A good friend of mine had done a photography project on the area and wanted to go out and do a final round of photographs. So along I tagged! Here are some pictures to show you what it was like.

My last round of classes in college!

Man that sounds final! But true it is. My life being defined by 3 academic quarters and a summer of fun is about to face a huge revolution and I don't know what that will look like yet. Until then though, let's talk about my awesome classes this quarter!

Probably the most strange schedule yet, I attend 2 classes M-W-F, 2 classes Tuesday (for now) and 1 class Thursdays. Tonight was the final class for my Tuesday evening class and so from now on I'm only taking 3 courses through the end of the year. What are they you may wonder?

Business Marketing Management: Taught by a fiery and sarcastic man of Indian heritage, this class is extremely project based as we study from case to case about how companies develop brand images and market it. We've done in depth studies of the Colgate Precision Toothbrush, Harley Davidson, Southwest Airlines and many more. We also get to do a gigantic group project where we analyze the market for an upcoming innovative technology at UCSD and suggest a marketing plan. It's a cool class (though lots of work for a class during my last quarter).

Integrating Sustainability into the Workplace: As the sole undergraduate in this class, I feel like I am way ahead of all the 'real people' (i.e. grown ups who have real-person/fulltime jobs) as 1. I go to incredibly innovative UCSD and 2. Sustainability is something I've been educated to think about since high school, most of the concepts aren't that new to me. It's a great experience though to be in a room full of people in positions where they really can implement more sustainable efforts in their workplace and see the difference. The profess wrote to me after the final class "It was a pleasure having you in the class! I appreciated your optimism and enthusiasm. Best of luck to you in driving change via sustainability." Great right! This is also the class that ended today (and that is the reason I have time to be writing this blog!)

Literature of Shakespeare: The Jacobian Period: I'm not a literature major, nor do I know what in the world the "Jacobian period" refers to, I felt that a Shakespeare class was a very good college course to take. The professor is hilarious and we are reading a huge number of Shakespeare's plays. (In the past 4 weeks we've read and written about Othello, Macbeth and King Lear and I have 5 more books sitting on my shelf to be read during our final 4 weeks).

Sociology of Knowledge: This is my ABSOLUTE favorite class. It's amazing. And the professor is one of those individuals who is so incredibly intelligent that sometimes amidst her lecture she gets a new idea and sweeps you away on her wild tangental analysis of the material at hand. She's pretty much become my hero of academia, seriously amazing. In the class we discussing the idea that knowledge is social. The knowledge you acquire and believe is such because you are a social being with many identities that interact in different and overlapping ways based on individual stimulus. It's truly a wonderful course that always has me thinking. Great final course at UCSD. (If you're interested in some of the readings I'd be happy to send them on to you!)

So as you can see, my courses are interesting and I very much am glad with my choices (though they require a bit more work than I would like to be exerting during my final 10 weeks of college). But then again, what is college for if not to learn (at least a little) in the classroom.