Digital Press Intern Project Winter ‘26
Dear Reader,
In this narrative-style article, we wrote an endearing letter and tribute to our freshman year. Inspired by UCLA’s freshmen orientation, we connected places on campus and their legends with songs that summarize our first-year experiences. Told from current first-years to a graduating senior, here’s our love letter to our past selves–the good, the bad, and the ugly.
– Digital Press Interns W26
Woobin Wang: Bruintized at the Inverted Fountain
Song: The World Above – Alice Phoebe Lou
Leaving my two-hour physics lecture in Kinsey Pavilion at 6 P.M., I get a good view of the inverted fountain to my left, a golden hue of the sun beaming down the main road of South Campus. I’m reminded of the hot, summer day in July when I awkwardly balanced myself to dip my fingers into the water to get “Bruintized” as a part of the True Bruin orientation that every incoming freshman experiences. Most days, I turn to my right and start my walk back home, eager to get back on the Hill and try to flush my brain of the twenty new variables introduced by Corbin. Some days, though we are said to be cursed if we dare touch that water again before graduating, I want to dive into that fountain and never return.
Freshman year so far has truly felt like being “underneath the water” while seeing “the world above” me, as Alice Phoebe Lou puts it. I’ve never felt so lost yet curious and brave in my entire life. From struggling to find friends I can connect with to having the best nights of my life dancing amongst strangers I’ll never see again, every experience I am going through in college has slowly helped me find who I am and want to become.
In her song, “The World Above,” Lou writes about emerging from underwater, following the calling from “above” to finding a brighter and unique version of herself. Standing next to the fountain, I feel sucked into the downward rush of the water, though I resist. Lou’s song gives me hope that even on the darkest days, there’s always adventure and opportunities awaiting me. Her song is a little promise to myself that when I do finally touch that water again, I’ll feel content, fulfilled, and excited, for all of the experiences I’ve had during my time at UCLA and saw “The World Above”.
Talia Slavin: Radioactive Potato Trees
Song: La Loose – Waxahatchee
One of UCLA’s most easily defeated myths is that a potato tree has been growing in front of Moore Hall. This was supposedly the result of performing radioactive experiments on potatoes during the Cold War. No amount of radioactivity will make potatoes grow on trees, but that didn’t stop our campus potato smallholding from becoming urban legend. The first question I asked when I learned the truth (shamefully, months after I’d been duped into believing its radioactive tuber status) was, why mythologize something when its reality is so much cooler? The kigelia pinnata, or “sausage tree,” is native to tropical sub-saharan Africa and its poisonous sausage-shaped fruit is famed for medicinal uses. Sausages, anyone might agree, are a far more unbelievable campus crop, especially so far from its home.
Willful ignorance has been the theme of my freshman year. When stepping outside in LA during one of its relentlessly clear and sunny days feels like being held down while serotonin is injected intravenously, it can be easy to ignore the more challenging emotions. I listened to Waxahatchee’s La Loose during “fall” and “winter” (slightly-windy summer and kind-of-rainy summer) quarter of my freshman year with the same superficial delight of leaving my dorm on one of these sun-baked days, or of walking past a tree laden with what are obviously not potatoes. I ignored the tragically self-aware and heartbreaking lyrics and chose to let its deceitfully upbeat melody become the soundtrack of my days.
Recently, I decided to really listen to the lyrics. I know that I feel more than you do / I selfishly want you here to stick to. Waxahatchee’s words of hysteric unrequited love wonderfully describe my relationship with my hometown: I miss Oakland so much it hurts. I desperately miss foggy mornings and the smell of eucalyptus. Oakland does not miss me.
But my sorrowful longing soon dissipated when I decided to confront its reality, because Oakland had a message back for me: And you can lean on me for now / I am frozen in time.
Autumn Zhou: Bunche Hall Getting Rotated
Song: Unexpectedly – Megumi Acorda
As a freshman at orientation, your biggest concern should probably be catching your tour guide’s every word. But as I trudged through campus with my 20-pound bookbag in the oppressive summer heat, I was doing anything but. Instead, I was preoccupied with locating the most picturesque spots on campus: spots I could study and hang around to really get the full UCLA experience everyone preaches.
As we made our way up to North Campus, I was immediately charmed by Bunche Hall, the YRL, and the Sculpture Garden. The shade from the nearby brutalist-style building, paired with the numerous Jacaranda trees, the green hills, and the late afternoon sun, was a freshman me’s dream. (I never saw this area again because I am a STEM major and pay rent to live in Young Hall.)
When the tour guide began his spiel by trying to convince us that Bunche — that giant, looming brick of a building — had been rotated 90 degrees because the sun reflecting off the windows was blinding drivers on the 405, I was immensely skeptical, but in a good enough mood to humour it. Now, I’m fairly certain that no architect would draft “blind commuters on the 405” into Bunche’s blueprints, so this myth becomes oddly allegorical: Sometimes, the most thorough, meticulous blueprints of life will undergo changes you’d never anticipate.
Just like choosing a major, making friends, forming opinions- the things that seem to be for forever might encounter a slight rotation once the future becomes the present. Unexpectedly by Megumi Acorda brings that sense of facing unforeseen developments. “But unexpectedly, you mean so much to me,” is a lyric I can now say I relate to my relationship with this university, and all the little things I was picky about initially that I now consider a fundamental aspect of my experience at UCLA: the dingy lounges where I’ve spent so much time laughing, the long food truck lines that grant me time to catch up with old friends, the liminal hallways of Boelter where I attend my favorite class. This dreamy song, laced with reverb and plenty of nostalgia, is one I imagine would fulfill me if listened to on a mild spring day in the Sculpture Garden, next to my old companion, Bunche Hall.
Levi French: 52 Imperfections for 52 Sundays on Royce Hall
Song: Leaving – Andy Stott
After almost four years at UCLA, it was only just this week that I got to see the view from Royce Hall’s front balcony. I’m not even sure if that’s an interesting or rare accomplishment; it hadn’t even occurred to me that this was something I could do, and it was by total coincidence that I happened upon it. Staring up at frescos of Einstein, Plutarch, and possibly the Virgin Mary herself, I was reminded of my freshman orientation tour, where they had us try to guess which tower was shorter. It was one of fifty-two imperfections aligned with the fifty-two Sundays of the year, made in respect to God Almighty, which gave the whole thing a sense of piety that felt a little out of place compared with all the academic-focused traditions that preceded it. Yet it stuck with me, and to this day, I try to find some new little “flaw” that I may have missed before, and I recite the same little spiel to any friends or family who join me on campus.
In my freshman year, I felt a little like Royce Hall myself: structurally imperfect and scrutinized for flaws. Music was my way of eluding that scrutiny. I’d dive under my covers and sink into the plastic dorm mattress, and simply let myself feel as homesick, as myself, as I needed to be. Leaving by Andy Stott found its way to me via Discover Weekly in September 2022, the very week I was leaving Orlando for LA, and its melancholic electronica sound defined that fall quarter for me. As I listened, I would imagine that I was a sad millennial in 2012, because it was comforting to act within not my present feelings but those of the past. Listening back on it now triggers an anguishing nostalgia for my first year, a tumultuous time that I can’t help but claim as one of the most beautiful and life-expanding periods of my life.
Nathan Rifkin: Narnia
Song: Telescope – Cage the Elephant
Past the dorms rising from The Hill, behind Hitch Suites, there is a bench surrounded by trees and shrubs, a dirt path winding its way up to greet it. Here lies Narnia, the famous UCLA smoke spot. Cozied away, it provides the perfect level of anonymity required for a late-night sesh while immersing you in nature, stealing you away from the hustle of college life. Of course, it is a bit too far out of the way at times and tends to be patrolled quite frequently, but when push comes to shove, it is still one of the top spots on The Hill. Mind you, I’ve only been there twice, and the first time was during a shoot for a short film through the Film and Photography Society here at UCLA. In the daylight, it does lose some of its mystery, as the rustling leaves aren’t hidden by darkness and enhanced by your imagination. But regardless, it is a beautiful place if you ever need a break from school.
Around the time I discovered Narnia, Cage the Elephant’s Telescope entered my listening rotation. I was in a car during a club waterski tournament with my teammates and two people from another school. The synth coming from the speakers entranced me, and I was hooked. Cage’s slightly tinny voice singing “Time is like a leaf in the wind” took me away, and I immediately felt lost and at home at the same time. Now whenever I listen to Telescope, I am transported back to that first time in the car and subsequent times at Narnia, experiencing its joy once more.
Justin Zhang: Hedrick Hall “Fire Alarm Villa”
Song: 路灯(Street Lights) – JelloRio李佳隆
I’m no stranger to the fire alarm at Hedrick Hall. By my count, I’ve heard it six times. Most residents would say four, but I arrived early for orientation and lived through two extra evacuation drills before the quarter even began. That should have made me indifferent to the alarm. Somehow, it didn’t. I still reacted with the same irritation every time: shoes, phone, backpack with all my proof of identity.
Standing outside in the cold, it occurred to us that none of the alarms we obeyed had anything to do with fire. Two were drills. The third was stranger: someone had thrown a whiteboard into the fire sprinkler pipe directly above our room. Four rooms ahead of us filled like small accidental aquariums before the water stopped. We were spared mostly by coincidence, which is how most dorm disasters seem to work. A building built to fear fire had proven water to be the bigger threat.
I searched: Has Hedrick Hall ever had a fire? Instead, I found a Daily Bruin article calling it “Fire Alarm Villa.”
The alarms kept pushing us outside at night, under the same streetlights that made the campus feel strangely festive. There is a line from the song “Street Lights” that keeps returning to me: It’s soon to be new year, and I see those street lights becoming fireworks. My first year in Hedrick Hall is also my first year away from home, and my first time celebrating—really, sleeping through—Chinese New Year without my family.
The last alarm rang five days after New Year’s Eve. Walking away from the building that night, I noticed the streetlights scattered across campus and the moon shining brighter than usual. The song was written by the Chinese rapper JelloRio, who performed at Royce Hall during a Chinese Students Association Spring Festival Gala a few days before New Year’s Eve. Though he didn’t perform this song, as I walked back to Hedrick from the show, I kept thinking about its imagery of fireworks turning night into day, the faint smell of powder dissolving in the air.
After the alarm woke me, I walked down the hill toward campus for some air. Listening to the song, I found myself thinking: maybe I’m the streetlight. In my headphones, the sampled fireworks rushed upward, and I paused for a moment.
Just as the lights stayed lit, back in my hometown Beijing, the fireworks were probably still burning. So I thought to myself: Here’s to a happy Chinese New Year.
