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.

Texas SkillsUSA-It's Big

Each morning started with a quiet walk along the Gulf as the sun rose over the water. Picturesque, calming, and a definite break from the busyness that the next 15 hours of a day at a Skills conference entails.

I got in to Corpus Christi on a Wednesday evening after flying with Southwest from San Diego through Houston. While I boarded for Corpus, I just so happened to run into another SkillsUSA past National Officer (who I helped in preparing a speech she gave last year at the national conference) and had a fun 45 minute flight catching up with her! Upon arrival in Corpus we were met by a whole troop of other past national officers and got to go out to a very intriguing dinner with talks of awkward moments and other public embarrassments.

Thursday was filled with preparations, checking people in, starting competitions, directing people where to go, and working with the State Officers on the opening ceremony and my speech!

When the lights started flashing and the arena was filled, the officers started the program and I felt the tingle of nerves as I did the final overview of my speech before I took the stage! We were in a big hockey arena (and the ice was covered with simple plywood so it was cooolllld!) with somewhere between 2 and 3 thousand attendees. I think at this point I actually am more nervous speaking to a group of 15 strangers than I get speaking in front of large audiences (you can't really see them and all) so nerves were not really an issue. I made sure to have my clicker in hand for the powerpoint and I gave myself a bulleted list of the points I wanted to make on each slide (I had graphics and pictures and such) just in case I got nervous and forgot what I was talking about.

On stage, you don't really notice the people in the crowd-it looks more like what you see on TV when watching a big concert--just a sea of some lights and faded figures-not any particular people that you can look at and see that they're falling asleep because you're boring. So it's really not bad at all!

I went on stage with a clicker for my presentation and a notes page, which I didn't end up using in the least! It makes it a little easier as I am talking about stories that have occurred in my life rather than random topics. What I did was speak on the Accessibility of Innovation. Basing this talk on a lot of my prior knowledge of innovative economies (wrote a nice big paper on it a few quarters ago) I spoke of the way that innovation is something that is built upon rather than invented out of nowhere. Some of the thing I referenced were Edison and his lightbulb (you do know he didn't actually invent it right, he innovated from what others had!), the Portland Cello Project (an awesome Cello group that takes the cello out of its context-look it up on you tube!).

The big kicker was my car wreck. Yup, I had my first big debut of a speech where I shared the experience outside of my close friends and took them through the details of the devastation, recovery, and yup, you guessed it, the innovations that were put into play to save my life. Doing the research on the medical and technical innovations that saved my life was very interesting, and also terrifying. The most shocking information I found was in regard to the subarachnoid hemorrhage (blood clot) that burst in my brain. According to The Brain Aneurysm Foundation, "50% of those people die within minutes of a massive hemorrhage. Of the 50% who survive, half will suffer delayed death. The remaining survivors, depending upon the level of hemorrhage, usually live with severe long-term deficits."

Now isn't that a quote that really puts my life into perspective. Oh my.

And the point of talking about my story was 1. Yes, to share the optimism and support networks that I experienced that kept me alive and 2. Discuss the importance of innovation and risk taking to a group of some of the most highly skilled students in the nation. It really truly is up to individuals like them to make the changes and find the new techniques that will keep people alive-be it the seatbelts, the car windows, the medical procedures, or the surgical skills--each of them are in a trade that, with innovation, could evolve to keep one more person like me alive.

*applaud, cheer!* :) And that's the basis of the speech.

It was an amazing, amazing experience to get up there and share my views and I am so incredibly honored that I was asked to speak at such a prestigious event. I hope that my story touched many of the students out there-and to those of you who were there through that difficult time, thank you for helping to have a story to tell!

The rest of the Texas conference was wonderful and I had lots of fun judging students in leadership competitions and hanging out with other SkillsUSA past national officers. Texas SkillsUSA really has their stuff together and I was honored to be a part of it.

And now we await the National Leadership and Skills Contest in June! (Yup, going back to volunteer for year #3)

Going to Texas!

In high school had the incredible opportunity to serve as the National High School President of SkillsUSA, a national career and technical organization that caters to students going into fields where you need a particular skill set to do (think anything from architecture to commercial baking). As a senior I got to travel across the country to talk with business and industry, government officials, and countless students about the value of technical education and my experience as a member of the organization.

Well SkillsUSA is again sending me across the country with an amazing opportunity. I was recently invited to be the keynote speaker at the Texas State SkillsUSA conference Opening Ceremony. This event is the beginning of 3 days of intense competition for students, but also a welcome to the event and a fun ceremony to motivate the students for the days ahead. So here I am, a senior in college, invited to give my first very large-scale (about 3,000 attendees) keynote address!

I am first of all incredibly, incredibly excited and honored. I love speaking and I think I have a pretty good story to share.

With the story of my car wreck, I am going to talk about innovation (my specialty as per the research I am currently doing at UCSD) and how it effects our daily lives with the intention of inspiring them to think innovatively. I’m going to bring up some of the fun inventions of my generation (internet, Facebook, coffee sleeves, the first down yellow line when you watch football) and then bring the speech around to medical innovations and the story of how my life was saved after my car wreck because of the incredible innovations in the field of medicne. I’ll then wrap it up with a talk encouraging students to be innovative-it doesn’t have to be some new groundbreaking idea to be innovative. Maybe it’s a cross of two separate fields (think bio-engineering, the first department of which was begun at UCSD) or a little thing that makes someone life easier.

And now for my request from you. What are some fun or effective innovations that have effected your life? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!!

I fly off at the end of March but will be preparing vigorously over the next few weeks (I really want to be great!) so please let me know your thoughts!

My car caught on fire and leadership!

This weekend I attended the National Collegiate Leadership Conference in Tucson Arizona. If you’re ever passing by Tucson, I’d suggest you stop to take a look at all the interesting 4^th avenue shops and restaurants. A great town to ‘buy local’ in, Tucson is mostly a place where I’ve gone for 2 years now to attend a conference.

The first year, my manager Sam at the Center for Student Involvement asked me and my coworkers if we were interested in attending. Turned out that due to financial matters I was the only one that could attend, so Sam and I took my newly acquired Chevy Lumina the 6.5 hour drive from San Diego into the Tucson sun. We had a great time at the conference and determined that we would have to bring a delegation back the next year.

The year quickly passed and in January I reserved 4 spots for the 2010 conference. It was a surprising struggle to get my peer Leadership Consultants at work to agree to disappear to Arizona in the midst of midterms and the business of life, but eventually 3 girls agreed to definitely attend.

Friday we piled into my car at 8am to make sure we got to the conference in time for the free meal and evening sessions. Now, my car is great but on the drive to Tucson last year it had a tough time on the large hills just east of San Diego. I was a little worried but was a responsible car owner and made sure my oil was changed, my coolant was clean and full and the tires had enough air. We hit the road with smiles and music (and one girl sleeping in the backseat after 5 minutes of driving with an urge to get to Tucson but have fun along the way.

Unplanned, the excitement came to us when driving up the big worrisome hill, my car lost power and started smoking. “Alright” I though, “this kinda happened before the last time I drove this hill”. We pulled over to the side of the road and decided to let the car have a rest (and hopefully) stop smoking. After a few minutes, the smoke wasn’t getting any less dense so I decided to go open the hood to let it air out.

And then the smoke made perfect sense as there was a small FIRE in the engine. I walked as calmly as I could back to the car to ask the girls for water and when they asked why I mentioned the fire situation. They didn’t stay quite as cool as me but we managed to find 1 full water bottle and I poured it on hoping that it wasn’t one of those fires you hear about where water actually makes it worse. Turns out it wasn’t and I masterfully extinguished the fire. Problem was tat my car had been on fire in the first place, so I of course called up Grandpa.

I explained what happened and where the fire was and asked meakly “So do you think I could maybe drive it up to the next exit and find a shop? ….Oh and what about driving it the rest of the way to Tucson?” Well those requests were immediately shut down and after hearing Gram’s diagnostic I begrudgingly called I tow truck. I just got new insurance so I don’t know towing is covered, but I knew I had to do it anyway.

With the tow truck on the way, the girls and I sat and enjoyed each others company and I am so glad that none of them freaked out or got angry at the situation. Well, five minutes later a tow truck showed up with our excited cheering. Except that it wasn’t the company I had called. I asked him how much he would charge ($250 is what he said) and then called the other company that said they were on their way. The guy on the phone flipped out when I told him another truck had pulled up to offer his help (I guess that’s illegal) and he said he’d charge me just $85 if I got diagnostics with him when we got the car to his shop. We took that option and sent Luco’s towing back on their way.

So to finish up the story, one of the girls’ boyfriend drove the hour to Alpine to pick us up and take us back to San Diego where we loaded into another (smaller) car and headed back on our way. By this point we had lost 5 hours of the day and didn’t arrive in Tucson until 10:30pm (1 hour time difference also made an impact). Well, we had planned to stay with some students who offered to host out-of-towners so the cost of the trip was less. 10:30 on a Friday night isn’t exactly the best time to catch a student at home so we arrived and the hosting coordinator didn’t have a place for us to stay and suggested we go have dinner while he tried to make arrangements.

Everything of course worked out fine and we’re now on the road back to San Diego. The conference was again spectacular, with a series of informative and thought-provoking workshops lead by professionals and students. I too presented to a very enthused audience and look forward to sending a list of people the presentation that I gave with some other notes and references for their further information.

I love going to conference like the NCLC for the opportunity to meet and talk with students from across the country and share ideas for each of our personal betterment. Also, the keynote speaker got me really excited for an upcoming opportunity I have in Texas to speak!

The drive home was uneventful but I am somewhat dreading hearing from the auto place tomorrow when they update me on the damage done to my poor car. That thing has given me loads of trouble already and is not something I want to be investing money into, especially as I plan to rid myself of it come graduation when I take off for Europe (another story I’ll have to tell). Cross your fingers for me that it’s not too bad/expensive!

Telluride Ski Weekend!

Over Presidents Day weekend I had an awesome opportunity to go to Telluride, CO for a ski weekend. Telluride, if you don’t know much about it, is a superb ski town in western Colorado. With no main roads or interstates going within 2 hours of the town and a limit to the amount of construction that cane be done due to the geography it is beautifully tucked away town with an epic ski resort. Going to the summit of many mountains the runs gave you a long trip down the mountain before you needed to go back up. At the top you were surrounded by peaks, some of which you could hike to and ski down in nearly untouched snow. Even though they only received maybe 2 inches while we were there, on many of the runs you could find areas of snow that had yet been untouched-something you NEVER see in California and would only see the day of the snow at the I-70 resorts.

Anyway, if you ever have the chance, Telluride CO is truly one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen-and this is largely in comparison to the other Amazing and beautiful sights throughout the rest of the Colorado ski areas. It was a beautiful weekend of skiing and yummy food AND we got to see Andy Bernard from the show The Office (whose name is actually Ed) do a stand-up show! I am a huge fan of The Office, so getting to see him live with his bluegrass band was a big treat!

Winter Classes and singing up for the last Quarter!

I have had priority registration since my freshman year because Campus Tourguides have a special privilege of getting to sign up for classes early to ensure our availability during tour times. The thing is, when I can take any possible class and none of them are full, I have a really hard time narrowing it down to what I want to take and end up always signing up for 1 or 2 classes that I don’t really need or want and then I have to scramble at the beginning of the new quarter to find replacements.

With winter quarter, I ended up disliking 2 of my classes. I was lucky in one point because I had planned to do independent research with a professor, so one of the classes would be covered by that once I got the appropriate approval. Attending a Literature class the first day, I realized there was no way I would want to take the course (it was a Monday/Wednesday/Friday class where all my others were Tuesday/Thursday-4 day weekends, it’s not really a question of what I should do).

So there I was with Politics of European Integration (professor is incredibly dry but the subject is interesting), Intro to Contemporary Dance, and independent research. Looking at Sociology courses of which I needed 2 more to complete my degree, I found a special topics seminar called Sociology of Conservative College Students. Now I am very liberal in my political views so I thought this would be a great opportunity to expand my knowledge and pull some of my beliefs into question and either re-affirm them or make me reconsider. Thus far I’ve done nothing but re-affirm my perspectives, but I do feel much more equipped to understand what viewpoints that some of my peers may have.

My dance class is great-I feel like an antelope many mornings as we leap across the room or roll around on the floor. It’s a lot of fun and while many ask how it is that this can be a college class, I think awareness of ones body and the way movements can and are interpreted are valuable life skills. My research is Incredible. Really absolutely great. I am doing studies of the social dynamics of two innovative industries in San Diego, stem cell research and algae for biofuels. I am doing all of my own research and my advisor believes this is the first study of its kind for each of the industries. My case studies will be added to a report that my advisor was commissioned to do by the American Research Institute in Sydney, Australia that looks at the larger San Diego innovative community to highlight the key factors (social ties, government support, proximity of research institutions) that make innovative companies want to establish themselves in San Diego. We’ve had some interesting findings and I am very honored by the amount of respect and faith my advisor has in me for my research. He looks at me like the specialist and often emails me with questions and information he finds to ask my perspective. It feels pretty great to be asked by my advisor for my opinion.

Next quarter looks like it too will be interesting though again I am not sure that I’ll stay in all the classes that I’m signed up for. Right now they are…

Literature of Chaucer-the English poet. I’m interested but don’t know how I feel about staying in it.

Product Marketing and Management-I’ve heard great referrals for this class and the professor so it should be great!

Urban Sociology, the description being “introduces students to the major approaches in the sociological study of cities and to what a sociological analysis can add to our understanding of urban processes.”

Sociology of Knowledge described as “a general introduction to the development of the sociology of knowledge, and will explore questions concerning social determination of consciousness as well as theoretical ways to articulate a critique of ideology.”

It was really tough to choose my classes this quarter as there were tons of really interesting ones-I definitely found myself looking at the professors to ensure I was choosing ones who have a big reputation to go with the interesting course so that I’ll be hearing from specialists in the field. We’ll see if that way of choosing helps!

Being Thankful!

Hi Everyone!

Every Winter begins with 1 very big day that encompasses 2 events. First its my birthday (this year my 22nd), and secondly my birthday is the day of my car wreck which now happened 3 years ago. That being the case it's a big time of reflection for me and thankfulness for my being here and in such a wonderful condition. When I was home this winter break and visiting with friends I got so many questions, often asked with concern, about how I am doing. I don't really think about it but many of you at home have only seen me sporadically since my car wreck and still worry about how I'm healing.

Well, to answer those concerns I'm doing incredibly. I have no physical problems other than sore muscles after I work out (which is often and with much rigor), I don't have any problem with cars or driving, I am just as active as I was before my wreck, and I am living a life that is even greater than that which I was living before.

I am so incredibly fortunate and thankful for where I am now and how well I'm doing. And to think that it was merely 2 years ago today we all barely knew if I was going to make it after they performed surgery on that silly ol' blood clot that had formed in my brain. Many thanks to those of you who were there and dealt with that icky situation and thank goodness for a number of doctors whose skill kept me alive and allowed me to continue to function today.

And as for that life I'm living, my final Winter Quarter at UCSD has now begun and I'm still not quite sure about what classes I really want to stick with.

So far I'm definitely taking Intro to Contemporary Dance, Politics of European Integration, and I'm doing independent research on the "social dynamics of innovative communities", specifically doing research to outline the economic, political, social, and research efforts in stem cell research and algae for biofuels. I might take a class on the Literature of Europe (talk about broad) but I'm thinking I may take it easy with 3 classes this quarter. Then again, I'm only in college a little while longer and I want to get the most out of it while I'm here!

I hope each of your time passing into 2010 was spent merrily and best of luck in fulfilling those new years resolutions as time wears on!

ThanksYoga

As I mentioned to many I decided to spend Thanksgiving in Joshua Tree National Park with complete strangers for a vegetarian Yoga and Rock Climbing retreat. I may just have to admit that that was the most wonderful way I could imagine to spend Thanksgiving (now if only my lovely family was there).

I arrived the eve of Thanksgiving after a pretty icky drive (I got within 50 miles of LA so of course that didn't help) but had time to pitch my tent before helping out in the makeshift kitchen with the vegetarian feast the kitchen team was set up to prepare. And you may not believe it but it was a huge feast even being vegetarian. We had soup and salad and beans and tofu and innumerable little sides that filled me up just as well as Thanksgiving without the icky food comma that is usually experienced. We went to bed that night underneath the stars and I reveled in the beauty of being able to sleep under the stars at the end of November.

The next day started with some fruit, snacks and hot tea to be enjoyed after retreating to the upper rocks of our campsite so that we could get into the warmth of the rising sun. Very soon though we headed to our morning yoga site where we practiced an hour and a half of yoga before spending 30 minutes learning yogic meditative breathing practices. Then it was on to a delightful breakfast of warm oatmeal, fruit, eggs and all sorts of veggies mixed into it all. Mmm.

After breakfast we hiked to a good rock range where the YogaSlacker team had set up some rock climbing courses. The rest of the day was spent belaying and rock climbing-gosh I loved it! Rock climbing is great because its such a test of both physical and mental problem solving and testing out different ways you can scale a sheer cliff. It was also fun to be part of because of the amazing trust that it requires you to quickly build with new people.

Then we'd finish up the time we had in the sun with some acro yoga, which I LOVE. As in love so much that I'm starting a student organization at UCSD next winter with the intentions of getting enough people together who are trained in it and passionate about it so that I have a good community of people to do it with. Acroyoga is a mixture of acrobatics and yoga that ends up being essentially team yoga-people working together to hold poses or lifting one another and then doing poses. Ha it's hard to explain so why don't you just go and check out http://acroyoga.org. The most important things is that I love it like you wouldn't believe-it's kind of like rockclimbing in that it is a nice mixture of physical and mental in its practice. (the greatest thing was the other night I talked my roommates into trying it out with me and we had a good hour session of trying different poses before going to Golden Spoon for some much needed frozen yogurt).

The nights ended around the campfire with another delicious vegetarian meal, music, and lots of campfire games and stories. Really just a beautiful way to end the day with great new friends and an exhausted body. There were a few people who really enjoyed the acro like I did so we'd ditch the fire for as long as we could stand the cold to do some more acro-yoga work each night. I definitely learned a few really cool poses!

Some cool things about the retreat included that I was the youngest person there by about 7 years (well if you don't count the elementary-school aged boys) and that I was pretty much the only non-certified yoga teacher. Hopefully that last thing is going to change though as I'm really finding yoga to be a passion that I have.

Anyway, the next two days proceeded the same way as the first and were equally as wonderful. A few of the people I was with on the retreat are planning to visit San Diego in the near future so I'm looking forward to hosting them and I have a trip for Tuscon (about 10 of the people at the retreat live there) planned for February, I have a few great places that I can stay!

Yoga is amazing, both physically and mentally and I'm so appreciative of the opportunity to have been able to delve further into it during this retreat!