Category: Opinion
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Why You Should Get Involved in Research
WRITTEN BY VICKY CHEN ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLOTTE CHANG If you told the 18-year-old version of myself who was stepping into UC San Diego for the first time that I would be conducting research in a Ph.D. program four years later, I wouldn’t have believed it. As a first-generation college student, I arrived without a clear…
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Note to My Past Self: First-Gen Edition
WRITTEN BY EMILY VO ILLUSTRATED BY ANDREA ARMENDI The first moment that made me feel that I didn’t belong in college was when I was having dinner with my roommates. As we were getting to know each other, conversations about our families naturally came up. Everyone started talking about their parents’ alum schools and their…
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Tips 4 Tutoring!
WRITTEN BY KRISTINE YAMBAO ILLUSTRATED BY CASSANDRA CHANG & CHARLOTTE CHANG When I got hired as a tutor at OASIS, I never would have thought that I would be starting a session by playing a few rounds of Color Block on Roblox with a tutee. But here I am, still employed and now working as…
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Chemistry’s Importance as a Foundational Science
BY GRIFFIN HURST Allow me to set the scene. It’s your sophomore year of high school, and you’re about to walk into your chemistry class for the first time. Every single one of your upperclassmen friends have fed you horror stories about how ridiculously difficult this class is, and you’ve mentally prepared yourself to spend…
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Why CHEM 100A is Underappreciated
BY JULJA HOKANSON CHEM 100A is a class notorious amongst the chemistry student community to be very stressful, with a seemingly never-ending workload of lab reports, excel sheet calculations, as well as the insane time crunch of trying to finish the labs within the allotted time you have. I remember when I first had to…
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Why You, a Non-STEM Major, Should Still Take Ochem
BY YALE HUANG You’ve heard of it. Your friends have heard of it. Your therapist has certainly heard of it: organic chemistry, the study of carbon-based compounds, though a more apt name might be “destroyer of GPAs.” It’s a class that demands rigor, determination, and sheer grit, holding little sympathy for undergraduate sleeping schedules. So it might…
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How to Succeed in Lab
BY YALE HUANG The hardest change a chemistry student will ever navigate is the departure from the comfort zone of their textbooks as they crash land into their first lab class, where the danger of destroying thousands of dollars worth of equipment looms with every stray elbow. Diagrams, practice problems, and lab manuals are one…
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My Transfer Experience: Expectations versus Reality
BY JULJA HOKANSON When I was a freshman attending community college in Los Angeles, I would lie awake at night pondering what it would be like to attend my dream school, University of California, San Diego. Perhaps it would be a place to meet new people and find friends easily, but it could also be…
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Why Should You Get Involved on Campus?
BY BETHANY SAWYER As a first-year student, learning to navigate university can be an exciting, yet understandably stressful time. As an incoming second-year student, I found that one of the ways that my peers and I began to feel more at ease here at UC San Diego, was by developing a sense of community on campus.…
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So You’re a Transfer Student
BY PATIEMMA RUBIO Congratulations, Triton! You are a long way from your community college. All your hard work has paid off because you are now attending one of the finest institutions in America. You may be asking yourself, what comes next? I, a rising second year transfer, will be giving you a small introduction to…