High School Reunion

Two nights ago, I met up with some of my old high school classmates and we caught up after almost 4 years of being apart! We reunited our old lunch group and it was a lot of fun catching up and finding out where everyone was with their lives. It really reminded me of how big my school is because I even went to Cal with a few of them but other than catching a few glimpses of them on campus, we all went our separate ways with our separate studies.

It was comforting knowing that despite not getting together and gabbing every day for almost four years, we fell back into a comfortable rhythm and had easy laughs about everything and everyone. We gossiped about old classmates and talked about what we’ve been up and where we’re going. It was just such a happy place to be and two hours passed so quickly. We promised each other that we would do a better job of keeping in touch but they’re just a group of friends that I know I’ll always have around despite whether we keep in touch every day or just catch up once in a while.

Silly me, we should have taken a picture.

Blog Post #50 and my first month away from school!

It’s hard to believe that just a month ago, I was walking at my general commencement, crossing the stage and shaking the hand of the chancellor. In the month that I’ve been away from school, it’s strange not planning ahead for classes or working at an internship. Instead, I’ve been taking a lot of “me time” and relaxing tons. I’ve realized that my weight has been dropping since I have the time to exercise and watch what I eat.

I won’t lie, sometimes I get a little bored sitting around at home since my mom is often busy with her organization and my brother still in school and my sister already back at school but mostly I just preoccupy my time rewatching FRIENDS and blogging and trying (only somewhat futilely) to motivate myself to run. Mostly, I’m anticipating my big move down to LA and trying to minimize the stuff I need to bring down there. Living in an apartment for the last two years has really turned me into somewhat of a hoarder. I accumulated a lot of stuff and plenty of books. I should probably list some of those on Amazon.

One month gone already! This post graduation thing is going fast!

Apartment Hunting

The countdown is beginning! My move to SoCal is getting more and more real and getting closer and closer. It’s terrifyingly exciting! Unfortunately, one of the hardest things about moving, other than packing of things into a million boxes, is finding a place to live. I don’t have any family in SoCal so I was at a bit of a loss as to where to start looking. Luckily, I have enough friends from the area and they were able to turn me onto some great resources.

There are a few differences between looking for an apartment while in college and looking for one after graduation. While in college, I realized that the earlier you can nail down an apartment, the better. This is because most of the apartments around a college town have a set lease date. By this, I mean they all have similar move in dates that correlate with the school semesters. So usually there’s a June 1st move-in/move-out date because that works with all students. So because that’s already set in stone, most landlords can put their apartments up for rent as early as February or March! Therefore, it’s best to get an early head start when looking for college apartments.

When looking for an apartment after graduation, however, I wouldn’t look further than a month in advance, the reason being that most apartments, while looking for one-year lease tenants, usually will get snatched up pretty quickly. The thing I’ve realized about non-college town apartments is that the turnover rate is pretty quick, especially in hot areas like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City etc. Therefore, this is one time where procrastination will work in your favor. Yesterday, I tried to start making appointments to see apartments on this coming Saturday and most of the places I reached out to were surprised I was calling so early! Some even suggested I call back on Friday.

I can’t wait to be down in the LA area this weekend! I’ve scouted out some pretty cool places that I would love to live in. I’ll give you all an update as soon as I get back!

A little Game of Thrones meme for y'all!

This is NOT Me.

So I received another email today reminding me to buy my graduation pictures and they were the photos from my general commencement. I had already decided to buy my Political Science Commencement ones so I was just going to delete the email but I decided to take a look at the images anyway. This is what I found:

The top half of the photo has no pictures of me. They must've gotten off count because both of my friends walked right before me so someone must've been missing a picture. But the funny thing is, the count is off between the photographers. The middle pictures are both not the people in the headshot.

The second half of the photo is what happened when I clicked on the "Is this not you?" button. They got my handshake photo right, but the two portraits are still my roommate.

I'm not even mad about it. It's just so funny to me! Ever have any funny photo flubs happen to you?

Grad Photos!

So after much hemming and hawing and really not wanting to spend an exorbitant amount of money on graduation photos, my parents and I caved and decided to splurge a little bit and buy my professional photos from graduation. How many times does a girl graduate from undergrad after all? We decided on getting the downloadable e-copies that you can save to your computer and then print and use however you want and even that was a whopping $80. Geez, these people really know how to grab your money. So here they are, the graduated me!

This is actually my Political Science Commencement and not the general one. I think these pictures turned out better because we weren't baking in the sun for 4 hours. 

That lei was lovingly made by my mom. I have no idea how she takes a picture of something and makes it into a reality. Those leis were the hit of the ceremony. Also that is a fake diploma. They don't send the real ones till months later.

Look at the tassel swing! Really caught in the moment there.

This has been an extremely narcissistic post. I apologize for that. We will be back to our regular broadcast shortly.

Spotify's Thoughts on the Class of 2013

I’m a recent convert to Spotify and I’ve recently given in and starting paying the ~$10 a month to get unlimited streaming everywhere and anywhere. I love building and following my friends’ playlists and it really cuts down on my need to download music all the time. (You can follow me here!)

In lieu of graduations happening everywhere, Spotify has created a playlist called “You Made It – Class of 2013” in honor of graduates of the class of 2013. From reading the title, you’d expect a musical mix of inspirational songs like Vitamin C’s “Graduation” and R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly.” Instead, you get a strange mix of songs including but not limited to: “Good Riddance,” “Closing Time,” “Gold Digger,” and “Boyfriend.” (I just looked again and it also has the Glee version of Santa Baby. I mean, what is going on? What are the criteria for making this list?) It’s certainly an eclectic mix of present and past Top 40 songs but I’m not sure it embodies the spirit of graduation and a future of possibility. I mean, what exactly am I supposed to take away from the song “Gold Digger” in light of my recent graduation? It doesn’t send the most encouraging message…

To remedy this problem, I think I’m going to make a new grad playlist of my own. You can follow it here and I’ll take suggestions, but the requirement to make this playlist is that the title or content of the song must be relatable to graduation in a non-metaphorical, obvious sort of way. Examples: Vitamin C’s “Graduation,” pretty much any song from High School Musical (but I promise to limit these), Destiny’s Child’s 90’s hit “Bills, Bills, Bills” (I think this is very applicable to our life after graduation) [also, that was a lot of apostrophes to describe possession]. Feel free to leave me suggestions here or on the Tumblr version of this site: afterthediploma.tumblr.com!

Not the most original image but it'll do.

After the Diploma.

So call me impulsive but I went ahead and did it: I bought a domain name and I’m committing myself to a full year (at least) of every day (ok let’s be real, almost every day) blogging.

What about, you ask?

Well, I’m taking a giant step in my life. With graduation just barely behind me, I’m out of my comfort zone. 16 years (17 including kindergarten and why not tack on 2 more years of preschool) of education later, I’m not a student anymore. No longer will be I being attending class and studying for midterms and finals. No longer will I be making those colorful study guides that I obsessed over and cramming buckets of information into my head only to be forgotten right after a test was taken. No longer will I walk on the UC Berkeley campus as an undergrad. I’m now an alumna!

So I’ll leave you with this question since I don’t want my blog post to get too long: What’s your favorite college memory? Doesn’t matter if you’re still in college or just want to reminisce, like me. Mine is performing halftimes in front of tens of thousands of students with my best friend standing right next to me! More on that later. Thanks for reading!

My sister and me at commencement. Hint: I'm the one in the grad cap.