Meeting People

I've been trying to meet more people now that I'm at USC, but I'm not doing too well on my own. Luckily I have an amazing suitemate who is very outgoing and social. His personality makes people more drawn to him and he also goes out of his way, a little bit, to try and meet people. In fact, thanks to him, I have now met almost every single person in my hallway and some in the others as well. I have met about 5 or 6 Koreans, one of whom is my suitemate. I'm glad that I have met such a great guy who has allowed me to meet so many people.

Not only that, but I've met a couple of other amazing people as well. The outgoing guy's roommate is a Korean who enjoys playing LoL a great deal, and I have no doubt that he has some sort of high rank, but I think I've met people on campus who are actually better than him. That's not the point, though. His contacts have allowed me to meet people who are in the honor's housing, which I guess I just didn't apply for or something, not that I would want it because I feel like A/C is kinda necessary... ish when you're living here. Anyway, I've been able to find people who are incredibly intelligent here as well through having the Korean guy as a friend.

My roommate is kind of a ladies man, I won't lie. Every time he's been out of the dorm, recently, it's been because he's been with one of the two girl dorms on our side of the hall. He's cool, though. He's hispanic and he seems pretty fluent in Spanish, which is really cool to me because I suck at Korean. He's also an Electrical Engineering major for now... but honestly, I know that he's really smart, but I think he's too chill to be in EE. I'm slowly starting to understand that this is actually a challenging major. I hope he chooses an awesome different major if he decides that EE isn't for him. Anyway, through this guy, I've been meeting more girls as a result of following him around.

From orientation, I met a group of guys who knew each other from middle school, but changed high schools. These three are each interested in different things. One enjoys LoL and is amazing at the game, another plays Heroes of Newerth and is also amazing at that game, and the last one... I'm not really sure what he does, but I know he can solve Rubik's cubes faster than I can... or maybe as fast. I'm not sure. Anyway, I've been following these guys around as well and I've met a great deal of different people. From people they know through older siblings or just people who play the same games, I've been able to meet a great deal of people because of them.

I'm still trying to make more friends so I can have more contacts as I grow up and leave this place. I know that graduating from USC apparently has its perks, as does graduating from any other school, but I don't want to risk having missed a chance to know an important person. I now need to sleep because I have classes again tomorrow.

-Sam Rho

USC Day 3

I've been on campus for just 3 days now and I've been in California for about 5 days, but I'm still rather tired in the evenings. The combination of walking everywhere and the time zone change is really causing me to have trouble staying up late and hanging with friends. Today, I decided not to go to a spirit rally because I would be extremely tired after something like that and instead, I followed around a suitemate and his friend. They're both into LoL (League of Legends) so I figured it would be interesting to see how they behaved and it turned out to be rather enjoyable. They joked around with each other a lot and it seemed that their enjoyment in the game allowed them to quickly become connected with many others who were interested in that sort of thing. As a result, I now know almost an entire suite that is full of LoL players. By the way, I'm currently living in one of the more expensive dorms on the campus. I had no idea because I didn't really research enough, but apparently this costs a great deal more than other housing. I guess the combination of being right next to the museum, park, cafeteria, and having air conditioned room make it rather attractive to students, so the higher demand leads to higher prices.

On an off note, I got my AP scores a while ago and I never really got to tell anyone about them. That being said, they didn't really matter much, but I'm going to write a bit about them here. I actually did rather poorly this year on my AP tests. The only 5 I received was in AP Environmental Science, and that was simple! I managed to get 4's in Chem, Micro, and Stats, which was exciting. I was not expecting to get that good of a score in Chemistry, especially since I had not properly looked over the actual format of the Free Response portion of the test. I had no idea that I would have to figure out what would specifically happen if two elements combined! I, of course, only got a 3 in English Lit, but I'm basically never going to do well in English, so I'm over it. The last test I took was Macroeconomics and I had my doubts about that class. I wasn't sure if I was even going to get an A in the actual online class because of the Macroeconomics section at the beginning. Anyway, I never got to properly learn macro, so I only got a 1 on it. It's depressing, but, with luck, I'll never have to deal with the economics of a nation or of a large company, so I'm over it.

Back to USC. I really enjoy it here. The weather is pretty nice all the time and the lack of humidity makes even the heat bearable. I have spent many hours in the sun these past few days trying to get to know people through the programs that USC has set up, but because some of them are so late, I have trouble staying up for things like the highlighter dance party that was last night and the movie that is tonight. Rather than attempt to go to those things, I have decided to write this post. I still feel like the time should be 1:21am instead of 10:21pm. Hopefully this time delay thing for evenings will start to wear off on Monday because classes start. I still need to try and keep the early morning waking up thing going, but also increase the amount of time I can stay awake. I have yet to properly time my route for the next week of classes, but the only real trouble I think I'll have is on Wednesday, where I have like three classes back-to-back-to-back. And I don't even think those classes are that far away from each other, so I should be fine.

I would write more, but I'm a bit too tired now. Perhaps tomorrow will be a free day for me to write. It's Saturday, so brunch at the cafeteria opens at 10... I have to wait until 10 to eat... Whatever.

-Sam Rho

In an effort to remember

In order to give myself a little push to write often, I've decided to write today

Today will be my first full day in L.A. perhaps I'll just write again today with some pictures to document the experience. So far, I've had to go from LAX straight to the hair salon where my mom got a haircut. My mom actually then forced me to get a haircut there... that led to some interesting results.

After that we went to eat at a nice Korean restaurant where the food was overpriced, but at least we got to cook it on the grill ourselves. It's more excited to eat after that. My mom woke up this morning and said there must have been some weird stuff in the food because her fingers were bloated and my aunt agreed.

After that, we went to my cousin's house. Her husband was busy on a trip, so it was just my aunt, my mom, myself, my cousin, and her 2 kids. I have to say, small children have a bunch of energy! I was up until like 9 or 10 PST, which is past midnight in my usual time zone. Although it doesn't seem that late, I had been on a plane ride and I was rather tired.

Today we're off to buy supplies for my dorm. Lots of things like containers for clothes and a desk lamp as well as other normal school supplies.

I'm sure this will be exciting!

-Sam Rho

Funchester

As I write this post I am listening to country radio in my sister's friend's car. Something about "Jolene..." I feel like I've heard this before.probably at Governor's School...

It's just 2 days before I'm gone until winter break. My lifestyle is, hopefully, going to change as I reach California. Not only am I going to have to change what I do everyday, I'm also going to have to change how I interact with people. In order to succeed in the future, making, and maintaining, connections with people is supposed to be very important. Logically, I've determined that I should try and make as many friends as possible, especially with older students and professors. In fact, I'm going to challenge myself, once again, to write here every day. As long add I'm making changes, this might as well be one of them.

Day 1 will be the 26th, when classes begin. I hope all 5 of you who read this will make sure I keep this promise to myself...

It's been nice, Funchester, but I'm going to the desert-y, ghetto-ish, extremely-safe-but-not-really city of LA.