Hi Bruins!  

Congratulations and welcome to the class of 2028! I am so excited for you to experience four years of profound joy, growth, and adventure at UCLA. My name is Michelle, and I am a third year Cognitive Science major with a Specialization in Computing, and a minor in Digital Humanities. My hometown is Center Valley, Pennsylvania, so it was a huge leap of faith to come all the way to UCLA for college! But, as I enter my last quarter of my third year and senior year is just around the corner, I can say with full confidence that coming to UCLA is the best decision I’ve ever made. The opportunities I have found here, as well as the connections I’ve made with individuals from diverse backgrounds, are aspects of my college experience that I am forever grateful for. However, coming in as a first year student from the other side of the country, I was petrified! I felt like a small speck in a gigantic galaxy of talented, hard-working peers, and I wasn’t sure where to even begin regarding joining clubs, handling extracurriculars with my classes, and making friends.  

I started with going to the Enormous Activities Fair, which really lives up to its name. Spanning across all of Royce Quad and Wilson Plaza, hundreds of UCLA clubs station for hours in the heat trying to recruit new members! As a wide-eyed freshman, I was overwhelmed by all the information I was getting– I was pre-health at the time, so I found myself in a crowd of pre-health organizations, and then I also wanted to join a cultural organization, and then I also wanted to join a club for fun- how was I supposed to choose! 

My number one advice for new Bruins is to go into the first weeks with a general idea of what you’d like to be involved with. This will help make the entire Enormous Activities Fair experience much less overwhelming. But at the same time, it’s also important to be open-minded and willing to explore new interests that you may not have had in high school! My biggest regret from high school is that I mainly did activities for the sole purpose of putting them on my college application. This meant that when it actually came time to write about these activities in my Personal Insight Questions, I found that I had little to say about the actual meaningful experiences I had within them. Once I came to UCLA, I decided to branch out and explore things that I was truly passionate and interested in. Now, I am a part of the Bruin Ambassador Program, Bruin Club Tennis, UCLA Cub Tours, and Bruins Sports Analytics’ Tennis Consulting division. A bunch of these activities are completely unrelated to my involvements in high school, and I am so grateful for the opportunity UCLA granted me to discover new interests.  

Handling all these activities on top of schoolwork can be difficult at times, but the main thing that is the biggest difference between my burnout in high school and my lack of burnout now is that these are activities that I genuinely enjoy doing. Therefore, it never feels like a burden or “chore” to go to meetings, practices, etc. Rather, these are activities that truly bring me so much joy and I look forward to being a part of. Therefore, my number one piece of advice for balancing academics/activities at UCLA is to participate in what you want to do rather than what you feel like you need to do. There are over 1,300 clubs here at UCLA, and there are bound to be many that suit your unique interests! College is the main time in your life where you get to fully apply yourself to your passions and unite with an unconditionally loving and supportive community of peers in these organizations. 

As for finding jobs on campus, there are many resources that make this process much easier. There are many jobs offered within the ASUCLA (Associated Students of UCLA), and I think it’s really important to seek out job opportunities as a college student because not only do they prepare you for real world experience and are obviously financially beneficial, but they are also integral for understanding how to manage your time and priorities better. UCLA’s Career Center is also a valuable resource for searching for internship opportunities inside and outside of campus, through resume/cover letter editing and interview preparation.  

All in all, these are the main takeaways that I have had through my 3 years here at UCLA. I am so thankful for all the support I’ve had through the clubs I’ve been a part of from my first year until now. I also want to stress that there are several clubs I was a part of in previous years that I am no longer a part of, and that is totally okay! You don’t have to bind yourself to a club once you join; rather, joining clubs at UCLA is more of a go-with-the-flow process. It’s just important to do what you love! I hope this blog post was helpful, and once again, I am so excited to welcome you new Bruins to UCLA! These are going to be a life-changing couple of years, and I am so proud of you.  

Go Bruins!  

All my best,  

Michelle