Hello everyone 🙂 My name is Namuun, and I am a first-year transfer student majoring in Geography/ Environmental Studies and minoring in Geospatial Information Systems and Technologies (GIS&T) here at UCLA! I am the Vice Chair of the Transfer Leadership Coalition and a Project Management Intern for Residential Life’s Academics & First Year Experience Team.  

I got accepted into UCLA during an ordinary, and up until then, an uneventful Thursday afternoon, when I was home cleaning my room and mopping the floor. During the wiping and scrubbing, I received a text from Nikoloz, a dear friend from my community college, asking me if I had checked the admissions portal. I had not. In fact, I did not want to. It was scary. 

I had harbored a silent longing to go to a big school from an early age–one which only deepened after financial realities kept me from taking the traditional high school to university path after senior year in Mongolia. UCLA was a looming echo in almost every conversation I had with prospective transfer students in my now beloved alma mater, Santa Monica College. I reserved my aspirations to be accepted and attend UCLA for myself, fearing disappointment and embarrassment in a potential rejection or inopportunity to enroll. Having ambitions of attending a prestigious university also felt like I was overstepping on grounds that I was not supposed to as a first-generation student.  

I was elated for about twenty seconds as the virtual confetti fell before concerns about what would happen next washed over me like a calm but powerful wave. How was my family going to pay for it? Can we pay for it? Should we? Can I make it “worth it”? Do I want that pressure? Was I even deserving of the opportunity? These questions (and more) lingered for the following week until I submitted my SIR. Looking back now, the biggest source of my anxiety was my own mind because two days in, my wonderful, ever-loving parents had agreed to make it work and support my education as they’ve always had. The remaining time was, truly, me coming to terms with accepting that profound blessing and chance for such a great endeavor and challenge that was completing my undergraduate degree in a school like UCLA. Countless talks with family and friends yielded an obvious answer for them of where I was going to university, but only tears and supposed indecision for me. What if I fail?  

Ultimately, I got over myself and my ever-wandering mind. An impulsive visit to the campus and Bunche Hall, the home of my major department, Geography, led to a spontaneous but pivotal conversation with my now professor. Upon hearing my story and concerns about finance, pressure, the commute to school, and all other would be obstacles I shared, she discerned the crux of my indecision to be my own willingness to embrace the opportunities I had in front of me. She asked me to ask myself if I could recognize this moment. Talking to her was a conversation, a realization… an embrace. It reminded me that by applying to UCLA, aching for days to write my personal insight questions, I had welcomed the possibility of rejection. Regardless of the possibility of heartbreak, I opened the admissions portal and, now I was so preoccupied with it happening I barely entertained what it would be like to make the choice to accept the joy.  

As the sun set on the walk down Westwood to my bus home, I called my parents. I heartily told them I decided to commit to UCLA and that I welcomed the challenges it came with, wholly humbled by their trust and love. 

This is all to say, in sharing my decision journey, I hope you reading are proud of the steps you have taken and will continue to take, for I vehemently believe the pursuit of an education is one of the noblest of efforts an individual can embark upon. I extend my heart to you people and experiences that nourish your deepest curiosities, interests, and passions. Be it UCLA or anywhere else, go search for the uncomfortable, embarrassing, and scary. Open the portal.