7 Months Later
Dear UCLA,
It's been exactly seven months since I moved my tassel from right to left, lost in a sea of joyous cheers and sighs of relief inside a packed Pauley Pavilion; seven months since I touched that sacred Inverted Fountain water marking the finality of my undergraduate career. It has been seven months since the day a part of my identity shifted from student to alumna, and I have to be honest with you, I have spent so much of these past seven months feeling so frustrated with you, exhausted and sad, but mostly overwhelmingly confused about why, when I thought about you these past months, all I wanted to do is curl up under the softest blanket and just block out the world. It felt like everyone around me was so reverent of you, missing you so deeply, and yet I couldn't seem to produce any kind of emotional response. It took so many months of reflecting, of searching deep in my soul, letting go of my preconceptions of you and analyzing you purely on my time spent walking your halls, and finally I have realized this:
My time on your campus broke my spirit.
For as long as I can remember, I have loved you. I have fond memories of a childhood spent clashing with my parents during the annual UCLA vs. USC football game, choosing to follow my brother and his steadfast support of blue and gold while my parents recount how that mediocre university across town was the only one that would let them check out dental instruments and use their library to study for their board exams when they first immigrated to America. And while I never went to one of your football games until I stepped foot on your campus, some of my most cherished memories have taken place under the glowing lights of the Rose Bowl; soaked from head to toe from the pouring rain, 5 rows up from the field watching my idol, Mia Hamm, chip in that golden goal in the finals of the 2002 Gold Cup, walking onto that pitch holding Cobi Jones' hand with my AYSO tournament team, or the years of Fourth of July's spent under its breathtaking fireworks show. Just a mere 7.3 miles away from my home, your home field, and by association you as an institution, housed my biggest dreams.
You didn't come easy. I remember the crushing disappointment of your rejection in high school, and the dejection of attending a different UC school after I realized that going out of state wasn't an option for me. The majority of the two years I spent in Riverside were so isolating, I poured my efforts into getting the grades, I wanted to prove to myself that I was worthy of the best public institution in this country (Berkeley, you are irrelevant to me, sorry not sorry). Just when I had finally found my little family on that campus and was tentatively content with where I was, there you were in the form of a brightly colored email welcoming me with open arms into your family. The place that held my dreams was ready for me to come and achieve them, and I could not have been more elated.
I thought you were the perfect school. I mean, when you boast the most number of applications to join your incoming class ever, your campus tour raves about the beauty of the campus and "playing Harvard more times than Harvard", having "over 1000 organizations" ("like the short and flip flops club, whose members, even in the rain only wear shorts and flip flops" -- I wish I was joking but I've lost count of the amount of times I have heard this line while navigating around a campus tour group), the most NCAA championships than any other school in the country, and paints a picture of college much like that touted in popular culture. Even in my naivety, I feel like I had a good reason to see you as nothing short of perfect; that my college experience on your campus would be filled with lifelong friends, memories of epic tailgates and buzzer beaters, late-nights of mozzarella sticks and study-induced delirium, and when it was all over, I would look back on my college years as the best time of my life, wishing to go back. How was I to know that from the first moment I stepped onto your campus, and every day after that, I would continually be asked upon to face my greatest fear? That the same place that had long housed my dreams, also sheltered my deepest pain, that even from that first day back in September of 2013, I would probably never wish to relive you. UCLA, this was not your fault. You didn't know this when I came to you. We all step onto your campus with a past, and what some of us often find is an environment that sometimes harms more than heals, that fails its students more than it supports them. When out of the 5 classes I was taking my final quarter at UCLA, only one professor, even in the chaos of week 10, chose to provide their students with a forum to discuss their feelings of trauma after what was thought to be a open shooter on campus, instead of cram in additional material before final exams, perpetuating the belief that one last lecture is more important than your student's well-being, you failed your students as an institution. When your previous Title IX officer tells a student to "strap on [their] bootstraps, and if it happens again while [they are] actually a student here, then come back to her", you failed your students as an institution. When your career center tells a student outright that they will never achieve their dream career, you failed your students as an institution.
Look, I am so thankful that you failed, because you taught me how overrated perfection really is. It is out of your own imperfection that the UCLA Clothesline Project was born back in 1996, and fast forward to 2014, in a shady corner of Dickson Court South among a sea of decorated shirts, this imperfect girl found her long stifled inner voice and for that I will always be indebted to you. This voice helped me dedicate my time and efforts to gender-based violence work, off-campus at Peace Over Violence and on-campus, first as a member of 7000 in Solidarity: A Campaign Against Sexual Assault and eventually as Co-Director of that same organization rebranded to Bruin Consent Coalition (BCC). I threw myself deep into trauma-heavy work; long days packed with meetings with administrators between classes and conference calls with outside organizations, late nights planning and holding programs, giving trainings and presentations, reviewing policy, attending and speaking at summits and conferences, and so much more. I am humbled to have been able to lead the organization that hosted the beautiful space in which I found my voice. Around the same time I became Co-Director of BCC, the universe saw me joining Unicamp on a whim. UCLA, it is as a camp counselor as a part of your official student charity that I reconnected with this planet in a way that I hadn't realized I lost, in a way that has brought me back to a part of my identity I gave up long before I walked your grounds. It is out of your imperfection that I gained all of this. Your imperfection resulted in my learning more about what drives me deep in my soul in that last year and a half on your campus than I had in my past three and a half years of college.
Even when I was still a student I was thankful for your shortcomings, acutely aware of how much your faults had allowed me to grow, so why has it been so hard for me look back on my time with you since I graduated without feelings of frustration and emptiness? I owe you an apology UCLA, it's me not you. I'm not breaking up with you I promise, I just realized how much time I spent these past months looking at things in extremes, and that is where I was unfair to you. I blamed my broken spirit completely on you and that was misguided. In my post-graduation exhaustion, I only saw your part in the 3 AM mental breakdowns and the frustrating credit-thirsty activists, the crushing weight of so much trauma intake, and the grueling 7 AM to 10 PM days on campus only to return home to a mountain of actual school work. It took me a while to see that my time on your college campus, while filled with all those struggles, was also filled with all the things I had hoped it would be; the lifelong friends in people like Chrissy and Kayla, Mansi and Bria, Christine, Seema, and Marvin (#skrrt), the epic tailgates of mimosas and breakfast burritos, and rolling 25 deep, drunk and obnoxious at USC. The buzzer beaters were mostly lacking, but that epic win over Kentucky in Pauley last year more than made up for it, and I had plenty of late nights, some with mozzarella sticks, but usually with Lamonica's $9 after 9 shared with friends and plenty of late-night delirium to go around. Beyond that, you gave me the 20th anniversary of Clothesline, life-long mentors in people like Zabie, Dr. C, and Rena, bathtubs filled with 30 racks, epic road trips, innumerable mornings spent chasing the sunrise and so much more.
With all the struggle also came so much joy UCLA, and maybe your greatest lesson for me yet; I can hold my burnout and broken spirit in one hand and my joyful memories in the other and that does not take away from either of these truths. I have come to realize that it was not fully on you to safeguard my spirit, but also on myself, and in that aspect, you were not the only one that failed me, but I also failed myself. I allowed myself to be run ragged, to be pulled in all directions and give every fiber of my being without holding some back for myself.
UCLA, my time on your campus may have broken my spirit, but it because I survived your storm that I know I am strong enough to put these broken parts of me back together again, strong enough to face any challenge that will ever come my way. I will spend the rest of my life reminding myself that one can not pour from an empty cup. You taught me that and I know that it will serve me well for the rest of my life.
With Love and Gratitude,
Ishani
