California Dreaming

Hope everyone has had a good week. I'm struggling with reading Machiavelli for my Political Philosophy class at the moment, so this is a welcome break. These philosophers are so interesting..but it is one thing to read them but you must think whilst you read them. What do they really mean? This is the challenging part. For me, it is like pieces of a puzzle and you have to wire the arguments together..really quite time consuming! It's interesting because it's something i've never done before, new skill really, and you can see where a lot of political thought now, comes from. These philosophers are dark though, they tend to have a really pessimistic view of human nature, which I try not to have!

Another thing, it is actually so funny in class every semester whenever there is a mention of Britain. People always look round to see my reaction, especially if the Professor is not particularly complimentary of Britain...some Professor's will say 'no no Helena not you, but England is (queue negative comments)' and everyone is looking at me for a reaction. I do tend to play it up a bit, because I truly do not mind what they say. So for instance, I will say 'WHAT!!!' just to see how the Professor will react. Or if the Professor talks so lovingly about the British Royal family it is so amusing, so many Americans absolutely adore them.

This week I went to a luncheon for the Foundation of SBCC. This year I was lucky enough to be awarded a merit-based scholarship. This has been really quite helpful for tuition costs. SBCC is extremely reasonable for what it offers, but any money saved now can go towards the UC which is a lot more expensive! My donor actually wasn't at the luncheon but it was a good opportunity to meet and thank the donors.

I am trying to keep my energy levels high, I think it gets to the end of the semester and you do feel a bit tired. My mum keeps encouraging me to take vitamins and she is probably right. Thanksgiving will be a welcome short break, a couple of my housemates are staying here so we will spend the Thursday at home. Yes, we will be cooking, updates will be posted..we shall see how it goes! Then on the Friday we are going down to LA and spending Friday there, then on Saturday going to the USC vs UCLA Football game. We went to one last year, which was one of the highlights from the year. Never seen anything like it, there were over 70,000 college students in the stadium, really really good fun. Last year, we were caught in a huge downpour, so uncharacteristic for California, hoping this doesn't occur again.
Video of brilliant 16 year old Lorde, below on the right! Grammy should be hers!

One comment/question people always make to me is, why are you here? Or 'you're so brave!' I was writing my personal statement and I had to answer this question. I guess for me, California has always been the dream but my ambition was also fueled by a few emotional home events. It was a really distressing few years and this in a way was my escape. But I wanted to go to a UC since I was 13, my mum went to Berkeley and the opportunities that come with going to a school like that, cannot be compared to anything else. I didn't think it was particularly brave, I just thought it was what the right thing for me to do. I guess I didn't really think enough about what could go wrong here, because if I had done, I probably would never have gone! When I speak to my friends at home at University, their experiences are totally different. I feel like the experience i'm having will be like nothing else I ever do again. So it is extremely important I did it at age 18 to ensure I could start opening doors. Human Rights is a really competitive area and I need anything that will set me apart really!

Flashback from travelling with a close British friend