Monday, June 15, 1998
Life at UCLA isn’t so bad
Every day, many of you walk past it. You look at it and wonder
what’s inside. For some it’s an obstacle between North and South
Campus. Once in a while, nicely dressed students walk into it. What
is it? It’s the Career Center! The place that is supposed to help
you get a job.
The advertising starts out with the campus tour that many of you
might have taken before deciding to go to UCLA. Then there is
orientation and soon those wonderful flyers come around saying that
the Career Center should be your friend for the next four
years.
Before you know it, it is your senior year. Guess what? You now
have to decide what to do with your life after three more sheltered
quarters at UCLA. You finally decide to enter the Career Center..
Everyone tells you that the job market is excellent and companies
don’t really care about majors. You quickly start to believe it
because every where you look, every graduate is getting a great
job. You think about how going to a prestigious university will
help you out there. The odds have to be in favor of you. Soon life
after UCLA starts to look great and not so scary.
It all starts out with the job finding process. After going
through hundreds of listings, you find at least one that fits you.
You apply to it and so does half of the senior class.
After submitting about two hundred resumes and going to many
interviews, so many that after a while you know exactly what they
ask, you realize that it is winter quarter and you have a few more
weeks before being released into the wild world.
The good jobs are not coming your way and now you start to
wonder about the economy. Is it really that good?
This is the time to think of a second plan. Graduate school?
Parents? Another quarter in the UCLA shelter? How about a double
major?
For all those who came in here thinking that four years was
enough, guess again. After your first year, you start counting the
number of quarters left. You make lists of classes that you need to
take just to graduate on time. During your third year, you start
thinking about life after UCLA. You admire those who are gradating
and start counting the days until you can get the fancy
announcements, the frame with your diploma in it and all the other
cool things that come with graduating.
Before you know it you are a senior.
You are the big person on campus. You start to hear horror
stories about those who left UCLA and quickly came back. Will your
major really help me out there? As all these weird thoughts go
through your head, you realize that your senior year is coming to
an end.
Soon you will be released. You will be expected to make it out
there without any help. Many will go on to graduate schools and
professional schools. The lucky ones. At least they have a few more
sheltered years.
For those of you who are entering the real world after this
week, I wish you good luck. For those of you who are going on to
higher education because they were scared like me, well we have to
get out there someday.
And for those who are planning to get out of UCLA ASAP, slow
down! It’s not as good as it sounds.
Everything becomes more complicated and you start to realize
that the opportunities pick you and that you can’t pick them.
So, I guess my words of wisdom are; enjoy your life as a Bruin
because you can only do it once in your life.
Aelia Khan