Dimension of Thought
The Story of Me and UCLA
Part I
Tripping off the edge and hanging off the cliff—that’s where I was with the university that I believed was meant for me. Two months after I applied to college, UCLA asked me for more information about myself.
It turned out that UCLA could not decide whether to admit me. I was almost about to be admitted into UCLA. Almost.
Until that point, I had been approaching college with a minimalist, loser mentality. At the time, I felt that I was mostly seen in terms of what I lacked rather than who I really was. My high school life was fraught with trials and turmoil. As a result, I didn’t have an ideal GPA, and certainly lacked the extracurriculars expected of a CS major like me. I was so small as a person, and yet, somehow I was crazy enough to have huge dreams and visions. In fact, I’d been dreaming and envisioning all alone, and yet, those very dreams were about people. They were about building bridges between people, uniting people, and each and every person within the people. But back then, I felt that I couldn’t reach those people. So, I felt like a lone wolf howling. And schools like UCLA felt as distant from me as the moon I was howling at.
But that all changed when that very moon, looked down from the vast starry sky upon me, a small person in the vast Earth, and offered me a chance to be considered twice for admission. Seeing a top, top university like them consider me so seriously gave me hope in college—that it was not merely a place to survive, but to thrive and to overflow in my thriving. At UCLA, I felt I would finally have a place to realize my dreams and visions, and a community close enough with me to genuinely realize them together with.
As a novelist—a story writer—I’d been writing stories that embodied everything that I hoped for and envisioned in the story of my own life and in the lives of those around me, but had not been fulfilled yet. My writings on my personal insight questions were where I had reflected on the story of my life until this point. I shared my own life story there. Those must have been what made the admissions committee ambivalent about me, instead of outright dismissing me from my lack of traditional impressive academic standing.
Indeed, my story was marked with persistent high hopes, and a series of those hopes going frustrated and unfulfilled. After I committed my life to Christ, I deeply longed to be close with other Christians. I wasn’t raised according to the Christian life, and therefore wasn’t deeply integrated in any Christian community. The private Christian school I went to prioritizes those relationships and is a vibrant Christian community. When I was in my sophomore year in a public high school, where I was socially struggling, I heard about that private Christian high school. So, I transferred, with high hopes for a new chapter in my relational life. Yet, even though the people there were amazing and must have been willing to connect with me, somehow, those relationships did not happen. My school’s literary magazine, which I thought would bring me the integration I needed, utterly failed and was a husk of what it should have been. Even the year after that, although I refused to give up and even worked hard to revitalize it, it failed again, and did not flourish and transform as it ought to have. Despite all my efforts, I still lacked the close relationships with other Christians that I needed.
But what if upon reading my story, UCLA recognized my trials, and felt my very own struggle and disappointment with me? If they felt the heat of the desert I was in and the mirages I saw. I mean, I put my heart out when I wrote those stories. Perhaps they saw something in me they thought was special. If they knew about that long journey, and acknowledged who I had become and what I had to offer. So, what if they offer me a chance at resolution to that journey—open the gates to the great city after a long voyage in the desert?
I had a vision that I had and a mission to accomplish. And UCLA? What an incredible sight. As a Christian novelist, I saw UCLA as the perfect place to expand the amount of good I do to a global level. As one who conceptualizes societal models, UCLA’s connection to LA made it the perfect palace to nurture that. As one who believes in and envisions a truly holistic life, UCLA’s diversity and holistically multifaceted excellence deeply resonated with me. UCLA, I believed, was perfectly compatible for my needs and calling for life. I thought my visions, dreams, and needs would be fulfilled someday, but this was far better and exceeded everything I had previously imagined would happen in my life. It was as though everything—all those trials, every one of those experiences, everything I was working on, everything that I was and everything I became had prepared me for this very point. I thought that it could finally be the resolution to my narrative. That it could finally be God’s promised land for me…