The Writing Center’s Creative Writing group has been in the works for a couple of months. Dr. Scott Chiu, Cal Lu Writing Center Director, as well as my first semester ENGL-110 professor, first proposed the idea to me on what must’ve been some odd Tuesday in February. As someone whose life essentially revolves around writing, I was thrilled at the idea of being brought into the Writing Center to create something new.

The process of creating this group fell into place along the past semester. I’d gone through it along with fellow Writing Center consultants, Israel and Jesus. Israel, had his own plan of creating an TESOL group, and similarly, Jesus, another first-year, was establishing a group for Spanish Writing.

The three of us, with the help of supervisors Scott and Jess, went along creating goals and rubrics of how the meetings should play out. Straight away, we went into marketing it out to the rest of campus!

And so the day has finally come: we’d received an email from Andrea, a graduate Psychology student with an interest in creative writing. We’d set up a meeting and got started on our work.

We began our meetings with simple introductions, in which we learned more about each other. It was great getting to know Andrea and how she felt about writing. It turns out that along with her studies in psychology, she is highly interested in writing. With that, it was even more interesting learning that she wanted to apply her psychology studies into her story. 

This was understood once we spent some time working on plots and structures; all 3 of us were able to hear each other out on our individual stories. I felt like it was interesting hearing how both Scott and Andrea perceived the world, and why exactly they wanted to put those feelings through words on paper.

The meeting eventually ended, and Andrea left. But what I saw in this meeting almost goes as deep as the human experience as a whole. It was a telling scenario of the impact of writing. A bit stretched perhaps, but true nonetheless. Andrea’s story was rooted in a dream she’d had, which was further analyzed. She plans to tell this story through metaphors and ultimately use it as a means of creating a bigger picture. Scott’s carried the same sort of ethos; he wanted to write stories that he’d been compiling through his life in order to create this sort of memoir.

Writing can be seen as a way of collecting and recounting; whether it’s a dream, or life well-lived. Sometimes, these things can’t stay put in the mind; sometimes they’re unable to stand alone and be what they are. Sometimes these things are an art form: something to be expressed and put out into the world. I’d realized that this was the point of being a writer: to put life into colorful words; to put pains and perception into prose. To tell a story universally in a way thats best represented, whether metaphorically or explicitly. Writing is life, and just through this group meeting, I am glad to have realized it.

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17 January 2024

Anyone who has lived in California ten or fifteen years have their own earthquake stories.  Mine begins in Athens, Greece.  That’s not where it happened, but where my story starts.  I had seen my student group off the day before, and was savoring a cup of espresso and baklava in a plaza in front of the Acropolis on January 17, 1994.  It had been a good tour, in which we had visited Israel and Jordan, and then Greece.  I had been the lecturer as well as director in the latter country.  Ushering eighteen people through unfamiliar regions of the world was difficult in that some of the group had never been outside of Southern California—Tijuana and Las Vegas do not count.  It was a bit of a challenge, and I needed a while to “decompress.”  The day was clear and warm, with the sun playing hide and seek through the columns of the Parthenon high above me.  I had spent the morning at the National Archaeological Museum viewing exhibits that were too specialized for the students, and was packed and ready to return home.  After a leisurely walk back to the hotel for my luggage and a bus ride out to the airport, I checked through and settled down with a book in the waiting room.

My plane was called and I joined the line of people passing through the check stand.  Two women stood in front of me in the queue, and, being friendly, I asked them where they were going.  They said Boston and New York.  They asked to where I was flying and I responded Los Angeles.  Their faces immediately expressed shock and they said:  “You can’t go there!  Haven’t you heard?  They’ve had a terrible earthquake there!  The whole city is destroyed!  All of the freeways are down!  Cars are disappearing into cracks in the earth, and everything is on fire!”  I was stunned, and turned to the man behind me and asked what he had heard.  He said that he had heard the same thing on “CNN” on the television.

I didn’t know what to do but to board the plane and continue my journey.  Los Angeles is a large city.  Some streets, like Wilshire and Sunset Boulevards, alone, are ninety miles long.  The pass through dozens of communities joined by suburbs that have grown, seamlessly, together.  The region contains some ten million people in valleys that extend north and east.  Usually, the most severe damage in earthquakes is quite localized, and, while they shake up the area around them, it is the epicenter that gets the worst.  I decided that I could not worry until I got some specific information where it happened.  When we transferred planes in Paris, I asked some other passengers what they knew.  I suggested the usually active regions, such as Long Beach, Orange, San Bernardino, or the Owens Valley.  One woman said that she thought it was at “north-something.”  When I responded “Northridge,” she said, “Yes, that’s it.” Located in the north-central part of the San Fernando Valley, this town was not very far from my home at Thousand Oaks.  Now, I worried!

When we arrived in New York, I ran up to the desk to inquire about the next leg of the flight.  “Can I get to LAX (the Los Angeles Airport)?”  The clerk said, “Yes.  The airport was closed for several hours, but now it’s open.”  I boarded the plane and, again, decided not to worry until I arrived in Los Angeles.  When I arrived and walked out to get my luggage, a familiar couple was standing there.  I was stunned.  “What are you doing here?”  I asked.  They said, “But, you told us to pick you up!”  “How did you get here?” I asked.  “We drove,” they said with a puzzled voice.  “But I thought that all of the freeways were destroyed?”  “Yes, the Simi Valley Freeway on the north side of the valley, but the others are all right.”

As we drove up the pass on the San Diego Freeway and merged onto the Ventura Freeway, I could see that large portions on the north side of the valley were dark.  Obviously, the electricity was off, but the freeway was fine all the way to my house.  The couple had checked the rooms after the quake to see if there was any damage.  Besides some books off of a shelf and a lamp fallen over—one that tips if one merely looks at it—everything was all right.  Jet lag and exhaustion caught up with me, and I took a quick shower and collapsed into the bed.

I was not to sleep very long.  An hour or so later, the whole house began to rock back and forth, making a tremendous noise.  It continued ten seconds or so, and stopped as suddenly as it began.  Then, it did it again, and again, and again.  Tired as I was, there was little rest that night, and, as my internal clock was now ten hours off, I finally got up and turned on the television.  The newscasts were filled with horrible pictures of damaged buildings, of miraculous rescues from crushed apartments, and of predictions of further quakes.

The next morning I went into the office at the university where I teach.  While there was little visible damage at my home, my office was a shambles. A filing cabinet had fallen over.  Bookshelves had “pancaked” down, spilling several thousand volumes onto the floor and on my desk, smashing the lampshade, the computer, and my favorite coffee cup.

Most of the after-quakes were small, but occasionally, there were some that really shook up things a bit.  The inexplicable thing is that they began to become almost routine.  It would start to shake, and I would pause to see if it was going to intensify or not.  When it was over after five, ten or fifteen seconds, I would continue doing what I was doing before it started.  The frequency decreased over the next few days, and then they were too rare to notice.  Repairs to the bridge over Los Angeles Boulevard in Moorpark and the Simi Valley Freeway were made with surprising speed, and, over the course of the next months, the supports for other bridges were “retro-fitted” with metal straps.  Californians went back to their obsessions with weather, beaches and traffic, and the earthquake was forgotten.  Why worry until the next one?

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Ernst F. Tonsing, Ph.D.

3.14.2024

            This day, March 14, written as 3.14, has been designated as national “Pi Day” by the United States House of Representatives in 2009.  It is also Albert Einstein’s birthday.  It commemorates the mathematical formula of the constant ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, 3.14159. . . .  The Greek letter for “P” is π, “pi,” and refers to the perimeter of the circle.  The ancient Greek  mathematician, Archimedes (287-212 BC), who studied in his youth at the great center of learning, Alexandria, Egypt, but returned to his home in Syracuse in Sicily for the rest of his life, was the first to verify the ratio.

Archimedes has been one of my heroes.  Years ago, I went to a lecture at  the Huntington Library where the palimpsest with the tractate of Archimedes  was displayed.  The manuscript of Archimedes had been written on vellum (parchment) around 300 A.D.  Bound into a book around 1000 A.D., the pages were scraped off by a monk who inscribed the prayers in 1229, probably in Jerusalem.  It was stored in a library at Mar Saba Monastery in the desert south of Jerusalem until the German explorer and scholar Constantine Tischendorf discovered it in Constantinople in 1846.  There was an attempt to copy the mathematical text by the Danish scholar Johan Ludwig in 1906 using photography and a magnifying glass.  In the evacuation of Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1922, during the Greek genocide when the Greek population was being removed from Turkey, the manuscript disappeared.

The manuscript remained missing until 1998 when it appeared in a badly damaged condition at an auction in Paris.  Purchased by an anonymous American collector, it was donated to the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore in 1999.  The faint writing in the “Archimedes Codex” (codex=book), was revealed by using infrared, ultraviolet, and rakng lighting, as well as digital manipulation.  Alongside each vellum page in the exhibit was a photograph of the writing under the later text revealing Archimedes essay.  An unknown essay of 9,000 words, a commentary on “Aristotle’s Categories” by Archimedes was also discovered.  It was exciting to see these pages and to see tracings of the geometric diagrams in the text by the greatest mathematician of antiquity.

Archimedes also discovered the screw device for raising water, a pump still used for irrigation and to pump water out of ships, war engines to drop big rocks on ships, cranes to lift whole ships out of the water, and sets of mirrors to incinerate enemy ships.   He also proved to King Heiro that a gold crown intended to be donated to a temple was a forgery by noting the displacement of water by immersing a real gold piece with an imitation.  The crown could not be melted down into a cube to be measured, so Archimedes had to discover a way to determine its volume in another way.  Since the crown displaced more water, the denser gold in it had been mixed with silver or another lighter metal.  King Heiro had been cheated by the goldsmith.

Archimedes was taking a bath when he observed water spilling out over the sides of the tub.  He realized that this was the solution to his problem of determining whether the crown was pure gold.  He was so excited that he ran naked down the streets of Syracuse shouting “I have found it!  I have found it!”  By the way, the Greek word  he used to exclaim “I have found” (it) is not pronounced in Greek as “y-rika”  but “horeka.”  Those Californians up north have it all wrong!

I’m not sure how to celebrate “Pi Day.”  Perhaps we can hoist a glass of water (commemorating Archimedes’ famous bath), or if you don’t have water, use milk or whatever, and shout three loud and hearty “Horekas”!

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Well, I’m definitely not an expert. And it turns out that the Cal Lu writing community had just as much to offer to me as I thought I had to offer it! In my time at the Writing Center, I’ve done as much learning as I’ve done teaching. 

 I only wish I had discovered it sooner.

 I want to share my experiences with my own writing, the assumptions I had about the WC before I started working here, and how much I’ve learned after being here for over a year.

 For context, I’m an English major. As most people (correctly) assume, that means I like reading and writing. I’ve always considered myself a good writer, especially academically, and my grades in English classes have pretty much confirmed that throughout my life. The way I think of it, writing just happens to be something I was born to do. I’ve always had an inclination towards reading, and I think my exposure to so many books made writing come naturally to me. Grammar just clicks into place in my head in a way that other subjects, like math, never did.

 For a while, I wished I had more of a knack for the STEM fields. I even thought about majoring in Biology, but research never appealed to me as much as literature. It would have been super cool if I could have become a rich, award-winning doctor or scientist, but hey, at least I can write a good essay.

Anyways, my penchant for English is the reason I got to skip the Cal Lu requirement for English 110, the usual intro class for college level writing. I had taken some AP literature classes in high school, and I guess the university figured I was good to go. So I didn’t get introduced to any writing resources on campus, and I was never required to make an appointment at the Writing Center. I honestly didn’t even know the place existed until I applied for a job here; I went the first two years of my college life without ever being told about a major campus resource!

 Instead, as I started my college career, spurred by my history of being a good writer, I jumped confidently into honors level writing in my first semester and upper divisions soon after. I never even thought to ask for help. And, honestly, I did well!

 From my freshman year up until now, going into senior year, I have continued to do well on all of my essays. And, as a writing tutor, I have been able to help hundreds of my peers work on their own writing too. So, you might ask, if I’ve made it this far without it, why do I wish I had known about the Writing Center earlier in my academic career?

 The reason is simple–even though the products of my writing have consistently turned out fine, it doesn’t mean my process is very good. I have always been a huge procrastinator. And, as most people know, waiting until the last minute makes the writing process pretty stressful! 

For as long as I can remember, I have had a really bad habit of leaving my writing assignments until the day before the deadline, sometimes even hours before. If I have an essay due at midnight on a Friday, you’ll find me in my room hunched over my computer at 11:30pm, scrambling to tie up my conclusion paragraph, with just enough time left to copy some citations and upload my paper.

As you can imagine, this has not been a very pleasant way to spend several nights a month, for years of my life. Even if I do get away with it and make the grades I need, is it really worth those awful hours of crunching out word counts and frantically rewriting sentences?

They say stress is bad for your health, and if that’s the case, then my essay cramming days have not been doing me any favors.

This is where the Writing Center comes in. Before I started working here, I assumed that writing resources were only for people who have bad writing—for people who struggle with grammar or have trouble making sense in their essays. I thought that I was the last person who would need to reach out for help.

In essence, I thought I was a good writer, because I had good writing.

Now that I work here, I’ve learned how much more expansive the Writing Center is and how much more there is to writing than just the product. Many writing centers have a similar slogan; we want to help make better writers, not just better writing. So, for me, what does it mean to be a better writer?

In my case, to be a better writer would mean taking care of my future writing self. That means looking at prompts ahead of time, setting short goals and deadlines, and giving myself time to write at a comfortable pace. Essentially, less stress!

I wouldn’t have thought about these things if it weren’t for my clients. As a consultant, I see the effects that different writing habits have on students. I notice that the ones who come in weeks before the due date often leave our sessions feeling much more confident and productive than the ones who come in the day before to do a rushed, last minute check.

I realized that I want to be more like the first student. I want to have time to get solid feedback from people, whether it be friends, the WC, or even a professor. I want to feel confident and proud of my writing, not because I got a good grade, but because I know I’ve done my best.

If I had discovered the Writing Center earlier, either as a client or consultant, I think I would have thought about forming better habits sooner. If I had known how to work on my procrastination, it might have saved me countless stressful nights and rushed conclusions. I could have improved not only my writing process, but also my writing mindset. As an English major, I don’t want to be writing just to make grades and hit deadlines—I want to write because I like it and because this field is my passion.

I just hope it’s not too late for me to change my habits. At this point, I’ve learned a lot from my experiences at the Writing Center. If I can help other people navigate the writing process, why shouldn’t I be able to help myself too?

So, what about you? What part of writing do you struggle with the most? Either way, I’m sure we could all use a little help. I, for one, am glad I found the right place to get it!

The post Why I Never Used the WC appeared first on Cal Lu Writing Center Blog.

And I named my cowardly, anxious, skinny tabby cat after him.

Haku–the cat–was about seven months old when I adopted him in December 2021. I went to a cat adoption event by Save the Meow Meows, a non-profit rescue for cats and kittens in Los Angeles. The event was held in an art gallery, curiously, but it was very LA, I guess–quirky, unnecessarily unconventional. Because it was later in the day, only seven or eight cats were left in the kennels for adoption viewing.

I made my rounds, dodging a couple kids excited over these tiny kittens–very adorable–and a couple older cats who were sleeping or clearly over it. I couldn’t blame them; if I were them, in cages with fingers constantly poking in to touch me or hands reaching in to pick me up, I’d be over it too. I came to the cage at the end of the table, where a cat was curled up and underneath the cushion, looking like I felt on Sundays at Costco–overstimulated by all the people and wanting to be anywhere but there.

I asked one of the staff members what his name was and a little about him. They told me his name was Dom–which gave me the ick (no offense to the Doms of the world) because it’s not the vibe for a cat–and that he was very sweet and cuddly, smart, and he loved food.

I stared at… Dom… as the staff member talked, trying to connect what was being said with what I was seeing. Dom did everything he could but look at me, tucking his little face into himself. 

The kids and families weren’t too interested in Dom, as he wasn’t as fluffy as the kittens or as outgoing as some of the older cats. One lady thought he was beautiful, with his cinnamon swirl and striped coat, but she was still on the fence about him.

In my head, I was ready to pass on him. I’d never had a cat before, but I’d had a dog, which I raised from a puppy to adulthood. Puppies are cute, but puppies are also tough. They’re a lot of work, time, and energy. I went in knowing I wanted an older cat to avoid a repeat experience. At seven months, Dom was barely out of kittenhood. I also knew I wanted a cat that was confident, outgoing, and friendly. The dog I’d raised unfortunately grew up to be anxious, standoffish, and dependent, and I wanted the opposite of that. I wanted a low effort cat that got along well with everyone–people, other cats, and maybe other dogs, even.

Then the staff member handed me a Churu tube, a pureed meat tube in the chicken flavor (yum), and everything changed.

I opened the cage, and Dom came to my hand immediately. He started licking at the tube, and when it was finished, he purred, butting my hand with his head and letting me pet him. It was love at first Churu tube, I guess.

I took him home the same day.

That first day home was tough, as Haku’s anxiety and fear were still present. Haku’d gotten out of a longish car ride from the art gallery to the place I was staying at at the time, which I’m sure he wasn’t happy about. I got him up to my room, which he’d be limited to for the first week to prevent him from becoming overwhelmed, before introducing him to the rest of the house.

When I opened the carrier, he tried to make a break for the dark, underneath places to hide, like under my dresser and bed. I’d done my research, however, and had blocked those spaces with cardboard boxes, books, and other items to fill up the area. Haku resorted to slinking around, ducking his head at loud noises and retreating back into the carrier when he realized he had nowhere to hide. He avoided me, retreating from any attempts at pets or touch.

I was a little worried at this point, but all research told me that this was normal behavior as cats hate change, especially sudden ones. And a new owner and a new home would most likely be the biggest changes in his (fingers-crossed) long life.

Come lunchtime, once I brought out the canned cat food, however, Haku was all cuddles. The key to his heart is food, and honestly, same. He warmed up straightaway after that. It took a couple days for him to fully mellow out, to stop trying to hide at the sound of my roommates outside my bedroom door, but he got there. After the week was up, I let him explore parts of the house, section by section, and he got to meet his sister, my sister’s cat, Mimi.

Earlier this year, we moved from LA county to an apartment here in Ventura county. Haku did not enjoy this process, and it took two solid weeks for him to get used to all the new sounds in an apartment complex. He’d been spoiled because prior to this we’d lived in houses, where noise from neighbors was minimal. He had to get used to all the kids laughing and screaming as they splash around in the pool right outside, the party music that plays during the weekends, the smells and sounds that filter in if I open a particular window. When the doorbell rings, he makes a break for it and runs into the bedroom, which is hilarious, because if I weren’t a human adult who needed to be responsible and also a friendly neighbor, I’d do the same.

So Haku the cat, unlike his dragon namesake, isn’t exactly brave or strong.

But that’s okay–he has other strengths.

He’s really smart. And I’m not just saying that because I’m his mom. He has a puzzle toy that you hide treats in, and in order to get the treats, the cat has to move knobs and a wheel around. He figured that thing out in the first ten minutes of owning it. And the toy was labeled advanced difficulty! Either he’s a genius or the toy’s creators need to reevaluate their difficulty system.

I’ve also taught him three tricks so far: sit, spin, and shake. We’re going for down and roll over eventually.

Haku’s also super cuddly. The Save the Meow Meows staff member hadn’t been lying. Once he gets to know you, he loves you. It also may have to do with the fact that he’s a male cat, and the internet says that they’re more affectionate than female cats. Certainly, anecdotal evidence from experience with my sister and brother-in-law’s female cats point toward that being true. They will literally leave the room sometimes if you enter it and they’re not feeling you. And honestly, I can respect that. I also want to leave rooms when people I’m not vibing with enter them.

Meanwhile, I can’t get this dude to leave me alone. Haku follows me around like he’ll die if I’m not in his line of sight. He stretches out on my bed and watches me do my makeup in the mornings as I get ready for work. He naps next to me on the couch while I decompress from work by playing Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom or some cozy game like Bear & Breakfast on my Nintendo Switch. 

So even though I originally wanted a brave, independent cat and tried to manifest that by choosing the name Haku, I think the universe gave me the cat I needed rather than the one I envisioned for myself; I think a lot of life’s like that. You go in thinking you want one thing but life gives you something else, something that turns out to be better for you, in the end. 

Haku has been a boon for my mental health, especially coming out of the COVID lockdowns and pandemic struggles. His affectionate personality, seemingly endless energy, and cute face are lovely things to come home to at the end of a long work day. I’m grateful that he’s mine and I’m his.

Do you have a pet of your own to come home to after a long day? What’s their name? Are they everything you wanted or envisioned having, or are they something completely different?

The post The Dragon (Cat) Boy appeared first on Cal Lu Writing Center Blog.

[Originally posted on April 28, 2021]

This COVID pandemic has decisively made everything unprecedentedly challenging and bad for us to keep up with our work virtually, not to mention how we have tried to get through every day with social distancing. It has been an uninspiring year if not just demoralizing and downright miserable to most everyone of us at Cal Lu. But, what would it be like to even start your new position at Cal Lu during the pandemic when the entire campus and the community was on lockdown? 

How would you even start your first day online? Was that in your own living room or at your dinner table? Did you dress up for your first day? Were you welcomed by your colleagues in your department on Zoom? Did you even get a virtual tour around campus? 

To get a glimpse of what it might look like, I asked Edward Kang, who started his position as a Financial Aid Counselor in April 2020 during campus lockdown, if he would kindly share his experience with us. (OK. I knew he would probably not be able to say NO to my invite, knowing that he had only met a handful of colleagues over a year, not even in person.) 

I asked Edward what his friends would want to know about his experience at Cal Lu this past year in hopes of getting some honest, unedited responses.

Edward: My first year at Cal Lu would best be defined as “leaning into discomfort”. Without a feel for the campus community, I was thrust into the deep end of a highly technical and complex field that was on shifting sands, as COVID-19 forced the financial aid world to adapt to new realities as it did for all of us. What I learned today could be outdated the very next day, and what I believed to be improbable could happen with little to no warning. Early on, I was starved for human connection, so training sessions became opportunities to get to know people, and I had to actively take the time to ask someone to check-in or to get to know someone from a different unit. Relationship-building would not happen spontaneously, but that just meant I had to be intentional and present in all of the moments I did get to spend with people. No checking my phone or answering emails, or else I would miss something important. All in all, it was humbling, challenging, and unpredictable, but I am glad that I found people that have my back and genuinely care about me. I never expected that to happen, but I am so grateful for the compassion and empathy of the CLU family.

Let me try and be a bit more specific. 

The moment I knew I was supported came at a completely random time, at the end of a busy workday in the middle of an inundated work week. When things get overwhelming, I fall into a bad habit of pushing myself to try to meet the next deadline, get the next email written, and process the next document. It’s all-consuming, and the work never stops. I was sitting in my living room, juggling phone calls and spreadsheets for what felt like an eternity, and unknowingly suffocating under the endless barrage of tasks and projects. Gradually, I could feel my vision narrowing and my mind going blank as I felt anxiety and desperation bubbling up as the clock inched closer to 5 PM. As the least experienced person in my office, I felt slow, useless, and inefficient-feelings that irritate me more than anything.

I wanted to come in, learn quickly, and rock this new job. This is where I was always supposed to be. This is my passion and everything I worked towards. So, why do I suck? Why was I getting rocked by these emails I couldn’t answer and these projects I couldn’t finish? In moments of self-doubt, I tend to look inward to what I could have done better, but the reality is that sometimes there’s just too much on a single person’s plate. I didn’t want to practice self-compassion, because I didn’t want to fail or seem weak, but at the same time, I was questioning whether or not I was cut out for this field at all.

With thoughts swirling and the pit in my stomach sinking deeper and deeper, that’s when I got an unexpected call from my colleague and Assistant Director, Amy. She wasn’t my direct supervisor, so she absolutely did not have to check in with me, but she took the time to call anyways. And at that moment, she affirmed me and told me that I was doing a good job and that she and others could tell that I was giving this my all, even if I was too self-deprecating to see it. Beyond her praise, she also shared a cautionary tale about selectively saying yes and being comfortable with giving pushback to things that could overwhelm me. And one thing that sticks with me is that she ended by saying, ‘I am telling you this because I don’t want to see you burnout and quit. It’s happened to others before, but I don’t want that to be your experience.’

It was a short call on an ordinary afternoon, but that moment started to give me the confidence to go beyond just asking questions as “the new guy”. It affirmed that I was doing a good job and that I could give feedback if things were overwhelming. It allowed me to take ownership over my work-life balance, my time, and my well-being. And it all stems from that moment.

“This is my passion and everything I worked towards.” Man, I was impressed and almost moved by this young man. What a hard worker and dedicated, aspiring professional! He really reminded me of my younger self…  I went on to ask many more questions about his career path: Was this his first job in this field (higher ed)? What was his previous job experience like? Why did he come here? What was he even thinking?! I meant… what was his motivation for this job and what his career goal was?  What made you interested in applying to this job at Cal Lu? How did he envision his work life with this position? 

Edward: This current job is my second job in higher education. Previously, I worked as an Assistant Resident Director at UCLA, which was a natural next step from my time as a Resident Assistant while I was an undergraduate. However, my motivation and passion for this field (financial aid) started before that. As an out-of-state student, I was completely alone in navigating higher education. When I showed up to UCLA, I had no direction.. All of the clubs rejected my application, except for a volunteer organization called MoneyThink. MoneyThink is an organization that works to promote and teach financial literacy to underprivileged high school students. As I grew more dedicated to the club, I worked in recruitment, curriculum development, and eventually was co-president. In my time there, I learned that financial literacy can truly change a student’s trajectory in life and affects their choice to pursue higher education. We tried to dispel the “transfer stigma” that students have around attending community or junior colleges. Our most important lesson saw us break down the cost of a transfer unit in comparison to a traditional four-year institution’s cost. After that specific lesson, a student had reached out to one of our transfer student mentors and asked how they attended community college and then transferred to UCLA. That’s when I realized that our work was positively impacting our students.

Paired with that experience, I also worked as a Student Programming Peer at UCLA’s Financial Wellness Program in designing presentations and counseling students on topics like budgeting or student loans. I learned from Moneythink that financial literacy can change trajectories, but I learned from the Financial Wellness Program that financial literacy can help keep students in school once they get there. I also learned that there is no such thing as “common knowledge”; everyone is at a different place and it’s foolish and insensitive to assume a student ought to know something. Higher education tends to punish students for not knowing things they never had a chance to learn with their parents or siblings.

Reflecting on those experiences, I realized that financial aid is a field where I can counsel, advise, and educate the students I work with. I wanted to serve students in an impactful way, and bring personability, kindness, and empathy to a field that can be perceived as bureaucratic and heartless from the outside. That’s what motivated me to apply and work in this position. I view my work as a financial aid counselor as a means for affecting positive change in higher education, even if I have to start at the bottom rung of the ladder. I knew that the counselor position had to be my first step to enter the field, and over the past 4 years, I did everything to learn about the field and try to break into it, even when other financial aid professionals said that it’d be difficult or impossible to come in with zero financial aid experience. Yet, here I am. It’s unfortunate that my hiring took place at the start of the pandemic, but I was not going to let it discourage me from learning. I had worked too hard to let something like remote work hold me back.

As for how I balance work and life, it really comes down to how well I can divide my time. As a remote employee for the better half of last year, I made it my mission to be here promptly at 8 AM and to leave promptly at 5 PM. When your office is your home, that can be very mentally draining without boundaries. With work that is ever-changing and ever-present, there’s no use to me working myself into the ground and answering emails at 7 PM or 5 AM. I value efficiency, consistency, and correctness over speed, exhaustion, and overloading myself. I always hold myself accountable to this, even if overtime is on the table. Each extra hour I work has diminishing returns, so I am locked in while I am working in order to be guilt-free when I am not. It’s worked so far, but we’ll see what happens later.

This dude was totally on fire when it comes to his passion and commitment! (We will definitely check back with him on this a year later   )

Seriously, though, there were so many amazing ideas that I would love to hear more about as a faculty member, but now being his IPA buddy, I asked what he would really like us to know about him as a person and a colleague. As a proud API (Asian and Pacific Islander) Employee Affinity Group member on campus, Edward is a first-generation Chinese-American, born to immigrant parents who grew up overseas. Growing up, he spent time in both the American South and the Midwest, where he developed a passion for watching American television and reading books.

Edward: I’m pretty sure this is what helped me learn more about the world as well as the English language. In high school, I developed a desire to “see the rest of the world”, and I thought I’d start with the coasts of our country first. That’s how I ended up at UCLA and where I studied Economics & International Development Studies. There, I also became passionate about working in higher education through my work in student affairs and my involvement with financial literacy organizations.

As a Chinese-American, his connection to his heritage culture comes directly from my family, and he obtained cultural values through the stories his parents shared and their own lived experiences.

Edward: My parents came from very different socioeconomic backgrounds, with my father being the son of farmers in the rural Shandong Province and my mother being the daughter of professors from Shaanxi Province. They are both heroes to me, but my dad is the person that inspires me the most. He grew up with illiterate parents and worked on a farm for most of his childhood, but through his relentless effort and dedication to learning, he was able to eventually complete his Doctorate of Mechanical Engineering in America. My dad loved reading Chinese texts such as “The Water Margin” and “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” to me as a kid, and from there he taught life lessons rooted in the cultural context of my people. To me, being Chinese-American means being a well-rounded person, or “Wen Wu” (文武). In antiquity, this refers to “Civil” and “Military/Martial”. However, in the modern context, I internalize this as trying to live as a complete individual, someone who can balance qualities such as intelligence and humility or resilience and empathy, to name a few examples. I strongly believe that living a good life requires balance, and I am both grateful and proud that I can connect to my heritage through the Chinese language, history, and philosophy.

I finally asked how he would want us to talk about him. (We know how small CLU is ) I asked it this way– if I am leaving CLU tomorrow, how should I remember him as a CLU colleague who I once enjoyed working with, who has certainly made my work life at CLU much enjoyable?

Edward: “As a person, I would say that two mantras are core to who I am and what I want to be remembered for. The first one comes from Dale Carnegie; he believed that everyone has an innate desire to feel important, but there are few people that look to make others feel important. However, from his perspective, the people that value and treat others with respect are the most influential. So, to this first point, I want to be remembered first as someone who valued his colleagues and tried to celebrate the individuality of others in a way that respects their individual narrative. Secondly, I grew up in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and Fred Rogers always challenged his audience members to “make goodness attractive”; he proposes that we can do this by bringing courage into the lives of those close to us. On this note, I want to be known and remembered as someone that genuinely tried to be authentic, empathetic, and without a hidden agenda. In short, I want to be remembered as someone with a big heart but a good head on his shoulders.”

This is so uncanny. That’s exactly how I want to be remembered by my colleagues as well…  In all seriousness, my impressions of Edward have been a warm, fun-loving, caring, and genuine person with a great sense of humor that would not even be contained on a small screen on Zoom during our monthly IPA meetings. We are so lucky to have him at CLU. I hope he has settled in nicely here and will stay on at his job. At least he deserves an extended honeymoon period with this new place and new colleagues… I know for sure he is a guy that y’all would love to hang out or have lunch with in person. I hope he will feel more loved when the campus reopens. You can find his contact… by searching for “your counselor” at Financial Aid.

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