First Year

My first year at Cal Poly Pomona is done. I finished ten courses, learned how to balance time, ate new foods, and met interesting people.

Three of the ten were English classes. Dr. Golden, my first English professor, did not teach grammar rules or writing methods. Instead, we read past students’ work and talked about language. He Nanny McPhee’d us, and it worked. I decided to minor in English.

Averaging fifteen hours of class time per week, I lived a set schedule to balance my time. Mornings were for cereal, homework, emails, web projects, and runs. Most of my classes met in the afternoons. Lunch and dinner split the morning from the afternoon and the afternoon from the night, respectively. Eating was downtime with no distractions. Eating is for friends.

Friends

Friends showed me new foods. Pho and ramen are delicious. Endless meat can be found in a Korean BBQ. Even tastier are falafel, hummus, and chicken shawarma. I cannot say the same about Nutella, but I tried it. Once.

Friendship at college has many levels. The best measurement is how we react while passing on the sidewalk. Strangers walk together as if they are alone, seeing through people. If you pretend I do not exist, we talked once but are both avoiding the awkward small talk where we relearn our names. Smiling and waving ranges between acquaintance and friend. Saying hello mixed with a “have a nice day” is for friends. Close friends stop and talk. Best friends can do any of the above to make you laugh. They do not need to be measured.

Work

Work, however, can be measured. I completed two web projects. The first is MerchantM, a social media company site. Built on HTML, SCSS, and JavaScript, it loads in under one second on most internet speeds.

Using the same ingredients but with added spice, I built PokerStaples. Jaime Staples plays and streams online poker as well as documents his journey in YouTube vlogs. To bring a dedicated vlog experience to the fans, I built a custom video page that uses the Google API. With the Twitch API, the menu’s “watch” link is also updated to notify visitors when he is streaming.

Balancing work and school is tricky, but the challenge excites me. I will not back down. I am grateful for everyone I met this year. Thank you.