PRIME Fall Issue 2018

from the daily bruin FALL 2018

FACING TOMORROW FROM THE ROAD TO ROYCE

ˆ´ SÓT/ SONG SURVIVAL

FROM HERE ON OUT

A former rock band manager finds his place at UCLA

How survival bridges generations of Vietnamese-Americans

A graphic novel on moving past doubts about the future

PG 8

PG 13

PG 40

Juliette Le Saint [ PRIME director ] Alexandra Del Rosario [ PRIME content editor ] Megan Le [ PRIME art director ] [ writers ] Susana Alcantar, Polina Cherezova, Alexandra Del Rosario, Kristie-Valerie Hoang, Hanna Rashidi, Teddy Rosenbluth, Claire Sun, John Tudhope [ photographers ] Amy Dixon, Kristie-Valerie Hoang, Liz Ketcham, Axel Lopez, Jenna Nicole Smith, Niveda Tennety [ illustrators & graphic designers ] Nicole Anisgard Parra, Juliette Le Saint, Angela Song, Claire Sun, Hanna Rashidi, Mavis Zeng [ designers ] Bilal Ismail Ahmed, Megan Le, Juliette Le Saint, Edward Qiao, Angela Song, Callista Wu Anush Khatri [ copy chief ] Rachel Wong [ assistant copy chief ] Olivia Fitzmorris, Elton Ho, Phillip Krings, Saskia Lane, Maris Tasaka, Nidhi Upadhyay, Grace Ye [ slot editors ] Nathan Smith [ online editor ] Henna Dialani, Dustin Newman, Richard Yang, Grace Yu, Mike Zhang [ assistant online editors ] Kevin Qian [ prime website project manager ] Mindi Cao, Karl Huang, Max Wu [ prime website developers ] [ daily bruin ] Jacob Preal [ editor in chief ] Amy Baumgartner [ managing editor ] Michael Zshornack [ digital managing editor ]

LETTER FROM THE

EDITORS Dear reader,

Thank you for picking up the first prime issue of the year! Within the pages of this magazine, you’ll find stories exhibiting the importance of change and initiative through multiple faces of the UCLA community.

Jeremy Wildman [ business manager ] Abigail Goldman [ editorial adviser ]

The Daily Bruin (ISSN 1080-5060) is published and copyrighted by the ASUCLA Communications Board.

All rights are reserved. Reprinting of any material in this publication without the written permission of the Communications Board is strictly prohibited. The ASUCLA Communications Board fully supports the University of California’s policy on non-discrimination.

The student media reserve the right to reject or modify advertising whose content discriminates on the basis of ancestry, color, national origin, race, religion, disability, age, sex or sexual orientation. The ASUCLA Communications Board has a media grievance procedure for resolving complaints against any of its publications. For a copy of the complete procedure, contact the publications office at 118 Kerckhoff Hall. All inserts that are printed in the Daily Bruin are independently paid publications and do not reflect the views of the Editorial Board or the staff.

To request a reprint of any photo appearing in the Daily Bruin, contact the photo desk at 310-825-2828 or email photo@dailybruin.com.

This issue features intrepid individuals whose decisions led them to the steps of Royce Hall as well as communities pushed to action by their desire to survive while securing a voice in local and national institutions. Writers also explore how the ethics of choice challenge the assertion of basic human rights, and how the evolving nature of media allows UCLA students to expand their own social circles.

Every day we make choices that affect how we move forward in the world – whether we notice it or not. Contributors recount how choosing to maneuver beyond doubts and mental inhibitions allows them to live unapologetically and in the right key. Even after our short years on this campus come to an end, we will choose what we want to remember, from the stories we share to our most precious moments and experiences.

We wish you all the best!

Warmest Regards,

Juliette Le Saint

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prime.dailybruin.com

Alexandra Del Rosario

Megan Le

cover photo by LIZ KETCHAM

in t

Declined Health, Declining Help

For Westwood’s homeless community, medical help is readily available – it’s just a matter of accepting it.

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From the Road to Royce

A former Red Hot Chili Peppers road manager reflects on his shift from life on tour to life as a student.

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Sống Sót / SURVIVAL

Recounting the stories of survival that bridge together first- and second- generation Vietnamese-Americans.

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Tuning the Mind

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Fighting for Home

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Slowing the Storm

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A pianist’s mission to move past her overthinking tendencies and connect with music at its heart.

How members of the UCLA community continue to advocate for the rights of undocumented students.

An illustrative ode to little moments overshadowed by loud landmarks of memory.

On Demand On Campus

A snapshot of UCLA’s video streaming culture and what it means for the future.

From Here On Out

One student’s journey in overcoming internal and external doubts to live on her own terms.

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DECLINED DECLINING HEALTH HELP written by TEDDY ROSENBLUTH

photos by AMY DIXON

designed by MEGAN LE Donovan Wilkes was eating lunch in his office when two of his colleagues told him Miss Mary, an older homeless woman he had been checking on, wasn’t responsive.

It was 11 a.m., two hours after Miss Mary usually woke up, packed her belongings and walked to Peet’s Coffee for her first cup of coffee of the day.

“My heart dropped,” Wilkes said. “The only thing I was thinking was, ‘Go to her.’”

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ilkes, an outreach specialist for homeless people in Westwood, is tasked with an impossible job: provide care to those who refuse it. Every day, he asks his regulars with serious health concerns if they are ready to accept resources, such as housing or medical treatment. Every day, they reject his offers of help.

Often, the people he meets with are cognizant enough to refuse services, but their mental illnesses can deter them from seeking treatment, even if their health has deteriorated into severe, and sometimes life-threatening, conditions.

The death rate among homeless people in Los Angeles has increased nearly 81 percent in the last four years. A 2018 report from the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health suggested a significant number of these deaths were caused by treatable diseases such as pneumonia and bacterial infection, often in individuals with mental illness.

Desperate to keep his clients alive, Wilkes has started considering the idea of involuntary commitment, a thought that makes him deeply uncomfortable. To him, involuntary

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commitment pits two fundamental ideas against one another: the belief in individual choice and the moral duty to help those who are unable to help themselves.

In the last year, some Los Angeles politicians have proposed legislation that would make it easier to involuntarily treat people living with mental illness. But doctors, politicians and Los Angeles residents disagree about the morality, and sometimes practicality, of increased institutionalization.

Wilkes sprinted down Westwood Boulevard to Yogurtland, where Miss Mary slept every night. A Yogurtland employee was in front of the store, already setting up chairs and tables for the day. Miss Mary was slumped facedown over the brick stoop in front of the store.

Wilkes called her name. No response. He gently shook her. She jolted awake and grimaced at him.

Miss Mary’s health had been declining for a couple of months, but now Wilkes said it was worse.

Her legs were badly swollen and she couldn’t stand up on her own. Seven minutes later, paramedics arrived.

They asked her if she wanted to be taken to the hospital.

Miss Mary politely declined.

They asked how she was going to

walk.

“I’m fine,” she said.

Under the current law, as long as Miss Mary denies services, Wilkes can’t do anything to help her.

“Her whole arm could be missing and as long as she says, ‘I’m OK,’ that’s it,” he said.

Mark Morocco, an emergency

DONOVAN WILKES

medicine doctor at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, said some mental illnesses manifest themselves in the exact kind of behavior that makes it difficult for individuals to receive medical care.

“If you’re paranoid about your medications and you think they’re poison, because of the nature of your psychiatric disease, it’s pretty likely you’ll stop taking your medications,” Morocco said.

On his daily 6:30 a.m. walk through Westwood, Wilkes can describe each homeless person’s health conditions.

Julie, who sleeps in front of Stan’s Corner Doughnut Shop, has a tumor on the back of her head. Mike, who sleeps in front of Target, can’t go to the bathroom without stabilizing himself with a shopping cart.

Wilkes worries about Miss Mary the most, though. She’s the oldest. He said he thinks she is at the highest risk of dying on the street. Still, he struggles to get her to accept even trivial resources, like a toothbrush.

Melissa Montes, a city employee who has been checking on Miss Mary for the past five years, said Miss Mary used to wake up, take the bus down to Santa Monica to shower and eat, panhandle in front of CVS and then return to Yogurtland around midnight.

Now, it takes her two or three hours just to leave the stoop in front of Yogurtland.

“I always tell (Wilkes) I’m scared there’s one day where she’s not going to move and we’re not going to know what to do,” Montes said.

Others on the street have started worrying about Miss Mary’s health as well. Many give her old blankets and pillows, which she always declines.

Debbie, a homeless person who has known Miss Mary for four years, checks on her every day when she gets off of the bus.

“I say, ‘You need to get to the doctor – you could die,’” Debbie said. “She says, ‘No, I’m OK.’ She’s a good lady, she doesn’t bother anybody. But she needs to get off them legs.”

In a thick, green binder, Wilkes keeps meticulous documentation of all of his clients’ progress in getting resources. “Declined services” is scribbled next to each entry on Miss Mary’s record sheet. Wilkes submitted these records to the Department of Mental Health – to see if she would qualify for involuntary commitment – a couple of weeks after he called the ambulance for her.

Under the Lanterman-PetrisShort Act, state officials can detain someone if they determine they are

gravely disabled – defined as unable to provide food, water or shelter for themselves due to mental illness.

People labeled as gravely disabled can be detained for 72 hours, at which point the court can order a 14-day hold for more intensive treatment or appoint a conservator, who takes control over their medical decisions.

The LPS Act, signed by thenGovernor Ronald Reagan in 1967, attempted to end “inappropriate, indefinite, and involuntary commitment of persons with mental health disorders” by placing regulations on the way state officials institutionalize people.

It was the first law in the United States to aggressively attempt to deinstitutionalize patients with mental illness and did so with remarkable success, emptying 95 percent of the state’s mental health institutions.

But some politicians think California laws have swung too far to one extreme, celebrating independent choice while allowing patients with mental illness to die on the streets from preventable diseases.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a motion in January that asked California legislators to expand the definition of “gravely disabled” in the LPS Act

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MISS MARY

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to include those who cannot seek medical care for themselves.

For some, the motion was a blatant and unsettling infringement on freedom of choice. Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, the board’s lone dissenter on the motion, said medical institutions in California have historically stripped patients with mental illness of their right to make decisions for themselves.

“I worry about these decisions and what’s going to happen to people when you say, ‘You’re not taking care of yourself, I’m going to take care of you,’” she said during the meeting.

Others, like Susan Partovi, a family medicine doctor at UCLA, said they don’t think the bill is a violation of independent choice because they think without mental illness, many people would choose treatment for themselves.

Partovi has treated homeless people with mental illness for more than 15 years. Early in her career, her mentor told her about a homeless woman living on the streets of Los Angeles with paranoid schizophrenia. It took outreach specialists years to convince her to just accept a sandwich.

Eventually, as her mental illness progressed, she was involuntarily hospitalized and treated. Years later, the woman ran into the outreachers and she was furious they didn’t institutionalize her earlier.

“She was basically like, ‘Fuck you for leaving me on the streets like that.

How dare you not help me in my time of need,’” Partovi said.

After getting to know a homeless person, Partovi said she can often predict when they’re going to die from

DEBBIE a preventable illness – whether it be in a couple days, weeks or months – but can do little to stop it from happening.

“You know that they’re going to die so you’re trying everything,” she said.

“You’re like, ‘How about if I buy you a hamburger’ or ‘How about if I buy you some cigarettes?’ You’re following that whatever-it-takes philosophy to get them treatment.”

However, she said when these tactics inevitably fail, she thinks it is up to doctors and officials to make the final life-or-death decision.

“A child can kick and scream and say, ‘No, I don’t want chemotherapy,’ but if you’re a parent, you’re going to go ahead with the treatment anyway,” she said.

Partovi said passing a law that would provide care for medically and mentally ill people on the streets is the least California can do to handle the rising death rate of homeless people.

Sarah Dusseault, the former chief of staff for city Councilmember David Ryu, doesn’t think expanding the definition of “gravely disabled” is the difficult ethical problem that many politicians claim it to be.

“People are having these discussions without actually having the real life experience,” she said.

Dusseault said, for the last 20 years, she has taken care of her brother John Dusseault, who has come close to dying multiple times. She said many of the politicians arguing over the expansion of the definition of “gravely disabled” haven’t experienced the emotionally and financially exhausting process of helping a

mentally ill family member get treatment.

John Dusseault was 20 years old and studying at Oklahoma State University when he first started showing symptoms of schizophrenia. His sister said he was charming, a talented pianist and looked remarkably like Bradley Cooper in “A Star is Born.”

As his mental illness became more severe, John Dusseault stopped going to class and spent most of his time in his dorm. A couple of months later, he dropped out of college. He cycled on and off of his medication and was on and off of the streets for the next 20 years. Sarah Dusseault would sometimes go months without knowing where he was.

When her brother was missing, Sarah Dusseault went through her usual routine: She sent pictures of him to local outreach agencies, regularly checked the California inmate tracker and filed missing persons reports to the police. She estimated she and her siblings filed at least 10 of these reports.

“The first thing they do is check the morgue for you,” she said. “My brother is in the range of people that are so severely ill that it is a likely outcome that he will die on the streets.”

Sarah Dusseault said she and her siblings have paid for their brother’s visits to the doctor, rent, furniture and clothing, among other things. The family has spent tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees alone, she said.

“They’re exhausted,” she said.

“Everybody has jobs and families. It’s really hard to balance when you get a call out of the blue and you’re headed to a parent-teacher conference, and

MELISSA MONTES he’s only going to be on that street corner for 30 minutes.”

Aside from ethical concerns from family members and politicians, there are also practical concerns that might make this bill an imperfect solution. Many doctors are concerned about how an already strained mental health system would handle an influx of patients, committed under a new definition of “gravely disabled.”

Ariel Seroussi, an inpatient psychiatrist at the Stewart and Linda Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA, said California already has a shortage of beds in psychiatric facilities. He worries expanding the definition of “gravely disabled” could exhaust the amount of space and staff available at psychiatric hospitals.

When beds are limited, patients are placed in a temporary-care facility while they wait for a spot to open in a psychiatric hospital. One of these places is the emergency room, which, according to Morocco, is just about the worst place to treat someone living with mental illness.

Morocco described the emergency room as a “public, blunt instrument” that can do little to shield patients from seeing gruesome injuries and crying family members. To anyone, this environment would be stressful.

To patients with mental illness, it

“

can be traumatic. “(The emergency room) is never going to be the warmest and most human place for treatment,” he said.

“This would be a terrible place to do any kind of basic communicationbased treatment for people having behavioral health issues.”

Seroussi said he understands the rationale behind the bill and thinks it’s important to eventually expand the definition of “gravely disabled” if the state allocated more resources to mental health facilities. However, without additional staff, space and funding, he isn’t sure the mental health care system can currently keep up.

The California State Assembly passed the bill to expand the definition of “gravely disabled” in May, with little opposition. Then, a couple of months later in the state Senate, a familiar conflict arose: One set of legislators argued it is inhumane to involuntarily treat people, and the other argued it is inhumane not to.

State Sen. Holly Mitchell, who worked on the original LPS Act, compared California’s policy on institutionalization to a pendulum, oscillating between laws that place more value on the right to choose and the right to live.

“I don’t want the pendulum to swing in the other direction and start

You’re following

that WHATEVERIT-TAKES

philosophy to get them treatment.

MARK MOROCCO to peel back independent rights,” she said.

Amid practical concerns about funding and implementation, Miguel Santiago, the assembly member for District 53 and author of the bill, withdrew it before the Senate could vote.

The first time I met Miss Mary, she was folding newspapers and blankets into her black shopping cart in front of Yogurtland. She wore black track pants with white and blue stripes down the side, a black, cotton sweatshirt and a gray raincoat with the hood up.

She asked if I could walk to Starbucks and buy her her usual: a small, dark coffee with half-and-half, one pack of Sweet’N Low and whipped cream on the bottom. She couldn’t walk to get it on her own.

“Are your legs doing okay?” I asked.

She looked down and shook her head, “No.” Wilkes said he doesn’t think Miss Mary wants to die on the street. He said she has moments of clarity in which she talks about how much she loves cooking. She closes her eyes and sways her head from side to side as she hums Frank Sinatra’s “Luck be a Lady.” Sometimes, she talks about going home to be with her children.

“If she wanted to die, she could have died by now,” Wilkes said. “She still eats, she still panhandles. If it was just that she slept there all day – that’s one thing, but she makes me think she’s still trying to survive.”

“I just don’t think she’s capable of knowing what’s best for her at this point.”

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From

To written by JOHN TUDHOPE

photos by LIZ KETCHAM

hen Louis Mathieu and I went on a class field trip to the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens, I took the school bus and he took his motorcycle.

When I found out that this 50-year-old, rough-talking, tanned and tattooed classmate of mine had been the road manager for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, it didn’t shock me whatsoever. As I’ve gotten to know him over the last year, I’ve learned that his winding career path has taught him it’s never too late to change how you feel, what you believe or where you would like to be in life.

The first time I had a class with him, we were studying American literature in one of Royce Hall’s historic first-floor classrooms. Louis forgoes the all-too-common laptop for a crossword puzzle and sits in the front row every class, ready to engage in every discussion.

Louis isn’t a huge guy; he stands about 5 feet, 7 inches tall. I’ve never

seen him in anything but a mesh trucker hat, motorcycle boots and a tattered tour shirt. Colorful tattoos cover most of his visible skin, and he has the word “OZZY” inscribed in black ink across his knuckles, something he did as a bet.

This ex-roadie knows that his life has been uniquely shaped by his experiences working alongside some of rock music’s most legendary acts.

As he sits in college classrooms, his focus is on understanding other students’ experiences and gaining new perspective by discussing and engaging in classrooms.

“I suppose that I’ve seen a few things, and I’ve been to a few places, and I have lived a really big life. I’ve lived an experience that not many people have lived,” he said. “Now I’m getting to experience all of these other realities.”

In 1989, when he was my age – 21 years old – he was deep in the Los Angeles music scene and was a decade away from managing the Red Chili

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designed by EDWARD QIAO

I suppose that I’ve seen a few things, and I’ve been to a few places, and I have lived a really big life. I’ve lived an experience that not many people have lived.

Peppers. Thirty years, two kids and scores of gigs later, Louis is on his way to receiving a degree in American literature and culture.

But, while Louis is only in his second year on campus, this is hardly the first time he has been here.

Louis grew up in the neighborhoods between Hollywood and Beverly Hills.

The first time Louis came to UCLA was in 1979 when he was 11 years old and was visiting his sister attending school here. His sister, whom he described as a child prodigy, had come

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to study psychology when she was 15 years old.

When Louis was 15 years old, he had been struggling in school for years and became habitually truant. That year, in 1983, he came back to UCLA to take the California High School Proficiency Examination, which proves that a student has learned the basic high school curriculum. The proficiency exam, which he passed, enabled him to drop out of Beverly Hills High School.

“It was enough to just get out of high school and keep the truancy officers and the police officers off my back,” he said. “Because that’s where I was going next: juvenile hall.”

By the mid-1980s, Louis became interested in the punk scene blossoming around Los Angeles and would arrive at shows early to carry gear for the bands so he could get in for free. This soon got him a job working as a roadie with bands such as Bad Religion, The Weirdos, Thelonious Monster and the Circle Jerks.

“There was this network of bands at that time. I would just hop from band to band depending on who, when and where,” he said.

He recalls working a show in 1986 when the Red Hot Chili Peppers played with Guns N’ Roses in Ackerman Union at UCLA. The same year, when he was just 18 years old, Louis began working as a drum technician with the Red Hot Chili

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Peppers.

“We toured together. We did this ‘Best of The West Tour.’ It was Thelonious Monster, Fishbone and the Chili Peppers, and the crew really liked me and I could hang,” he said.

“If I could put up with Thelonious Monster, I could put up with anything because those guys were notoriously difficult.”

Louis said that at the time he recognized he was experiencing something special – being involved with the Red Hot Chili Peppers at such a young age – but that it takes hindsight to realize how truly exceptional this historic moment was.

He said he thinks his perspective is unique because he has lived within an iconic musical era.

“While you’re doing it, you don’t have that sense of history so much because you’re just kind of busy being in your moment,” he said. “It gives me some perspective and some understanding of the passage of time.

You’re in an era, you move through eras.”

He came back to UCLA in 1992 for the MTV Video Music Awards, which were hosted in Pauley Pavilion. The Red Hot Chili Peppers played a set on the same bill as Eric Clapton, Nirvana and Pearl Jam, and took home three awards.

His own rise within the Red Hot Chili Peppers hierarchy paralleled the band’s meteoric rise to fame.

Louis said he was conscious of this

experience and appreciative of the opportunities it was affording him.

He fondly recalls being able to travel the world and earn a wage that would have been unimaginable for most high school dropouts.

“It’s hard to not sort of feel a sense of ownership or pride. We were doing it together, it was happening to my friends, and was also happening to me. We were going from being in a van to a U-Haul to a tour bus,” he said.

“You are aware of this rise. You just feel incredibly fortunate and lucky.

You just pinch yourself all the time.”

After a decade on the road with the Chili Peppers, Louis had been working his way up within the organization, and in 1998 was promoted to road manager. Louis said he was a fit for the position because he had known the band members personally for such a long time, and was given the position because they wanted to assist his family.

“I just had a kid and those guys wanted to support me and my new family, so they gave me a shot at the brass ring,” he said. “They were like, ‘All right kid, we know you have never done this before but get in there and see if you can do it.’”

A year later, in 1999, the group released “Californication,” which went on be its most commercially successful album, selling 16 million copies worldwide and peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard 200. During this time,

Louis said he spent every day with the group and at certain times, was living with the band members.

His tenure at the helm, however, would not last. He said family problems and an impending divorce began to affect his ability to manage the group, as his personal and professional lives had become completely enmeshed. He was fired as the Chili Peppers’ tour manager in 2004.

“My personal life was starting to crumble and leak into my professional life,” he said. “I have a 7-year-old and a 4-year-old and I’m on tour all the time and I’m stressed out and I’ve been doing this every day, I’ve never had a day off. There were no days off when you worked with the Red Hot Chili Peppers.”

Louis said the lack of communication between him and the band compounded with his stagnant income. Resentment began to fester.

“When you’re that close to people, a lot of resentment can build up. I didn’t have a raise for a few years. I’m watching these guys make millions of dollars a week,” he said. “Granted, I was making more money than any kid who didn’t finish high school should hope to make, but there just seemed to be this sort of inequity.”

Louis said the experience of being fired from his job while going through a divorce blindsided him, and that the lifestyle change threw him into a year of depression. He was able to overcome this low point by building an authentic relationship with his children, which he said was impossible while he was managing the Chili Peppers. Louis said he has come to realize how important fatherhood has been for his personal growth, as he had no relationship with his own father.

“At the time, of course, it was crushing and I couldn’t quite understand it, but it all became really clear as I developed a relationship with my kids – as I would be coaching my son’s Little League team,” he said. “I didn’t have a father. Had I continued doing what I was doing, I would have missed being a parent.”

He went back to the music industry in the late 2000s, managing tours for artists such as Courtney Love and Gnarls Barkley. He said that at the time he returned to this line of work because he needed to make money and already had a reputation in the music industry that could get him jobs.

“You become known as a guy who

My personal life was starting to crumble and leak into my professional life. can deal with difficult people. That’s your game. Then you start to realize your heart really isn’t in it,” he said.

“You’re just sort of a mercenary at this point. You have no personal relationship with these people.”

Louis’ second stint in the music industry ended abruptly in 2012 when he was hit by a car while riding his motorcycle, and soon after the accident, his division at Capitol Records was closed. This accident put him on disability benefits for a year and to pay for medical expenses he sold his rock memorabilia, such as a Kurt Cobain guitar neck and gold records. He said selling these items was cleansing and helped him to move on from his past in the music industry.

“It felt really nice to let all that stuff go,” he said.

The trauma from the accident led to another period of depression, and once his injuries healed, he was not

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interested in returning to work for bands. His love of motorcycles remained strong despite this low point, and he got a job working as a mechanic in a friend’s motorcycle shop.

During this time, Louis was convinced by a woman he was dating to go back to school. He said receiving her help with financial aid and registration was invaluable and was what enabled him to enter academia for the first time in 35 years. Louis enrolled in Glendale Community College in 2015.

“She had faith in me. She’s like, ‘You’re smart and I think you’d be good at this and you’re burnt out. What have you got to lose?’” he said. “I showed up and I did the work, I got the results and I got good grades. People helped me.”

Louis took a history of rock music class his first semester at GCC, and soon had the professor and other students asking him questions about the topics they were learning. He said he offered an insight into life on the road, the recording studio process and other dayto-day aspects of a successful touring rock group.

“I got an A, predictably,” he said. “If I didn’t, there would have been something very wrong.”

Louis said his return to school began slowly. He started in remedial general education courses before progressing further to studying English. He said he had to relearn things – like algebra and sentence structure – that he hadn’t studied in more than three decades, and said he owes an enormous debt of gratitude to the professors who helped him.

Louis earned a 3.7 GPA at community college and got into UCLA and UC Berkeley. He said he remained dedicated to transferring and continues to be dedicated to completing his bachelor’s degree as an example for his children.

“I want to show them that when you start something, you finish something, and you try your hardest even when you don’t necessarily have a plan,” he said. “You just do it because you said you were going to.”

Sitting in classrooms for the first time in 35 years, Louis’ biggest challenge is remaining open-minded.

He said he thinks older people are often unable to engage with younger people, and that being in college classrooms helps him understand the perspective of people who are his children’s ages.

“I’ve been older than a lot of my professors, so it’s about being teachable,” he said. “It’s about not being so world-weary or cynical, but being open to another perspective.”

Louis stressed that what has enabled him to find happiness throughout his life is an ability to be flexible, pivot and rededicate his life to something new.

“The ability to pivot is about allowing yourself to be open to other experiences and not be so married to one thing,” he said. “Sometimes it’s just about taking the journey and believing. Martin Luther King (Jr.) used to say, ‘Faith is like taking the first step when you can’t even see the top of the staircase.’ It’s that same concept. I’ll just try something different to see where it leads me.”

sống sót

survival

written by KRISTIE-VALERIE HOANG photos by AXEL LOPEZ

& KRISTIE-VALERIE HOANG designed by ANGELA SONG

December 1978.

Q

uyen Di Chuc Bui spent three nights in a Santa Ana parking lot when he first moved to California.

During his arrival to the Golden State, the winter nightfall and its 50-degree breath contrasted the sweet, tropical air that he knew from Vietnam.

The UCLA lecturer of Vietnamese language had no family in Orange County, nor did he speak English.

But he slept soundly in his Cadillac, bought for just $175 on the side of a street, next to his very pregnant wife with the couple’s old blanket wrapped around her body. She was one week away from giving birth to their eldest daughter.

Chuc Bui wasn’t afraid. He had nothing to lose.

“Even though sleeping outside was dangerous, I didn’t have anything for anyone to steal from me. I only had one blanket,” Chuc Bui said.

The couple did not bathe and

used the restroom in various McDonald’s restaurants throughout Orange County. Having lost their first place of residence in California, Chuc Bui and his wife drove in search of a new one. After circling through the streets of Santa Ana and Westminster, Chuc Bui and his wife finally found a one-bedroom apartment in Tustin.

Making it through another cold night in Orange County meant surviving another day in a country initially unknown to Chuc Bui and the thousands of refugees like him – Chuc Bui had fled a communist regime. At 28, he was a teacher in a Catholic school in Vietnam. The young academic was constantly under watch from the Vietnamese Communist Party, which thought he was a rebel agent, he said. He was unwelcome in his home country; the ecclesiastic scholar was an enemy of the state.

Most Vietnamese nationalists were wary of Catholics, as the church was a symbol of French colonialism

in Vietnam. The government kept close watch on educators, who in their teachings could “indoctrinate” children with capitalist propaganda.

Most of all, a communist takeover collectivized Vietnam’s unstable and weak economy, thrusting the country further into poverty. Under the fall of Saigon, Chuc Bui knew he had to leave.

Survival, by any means necessary, defines the first generation of refugees fleeing the Vietnam War. It was an instinctive drive to not only physically live, but to also adapt to a society they did not know.

“Một cuộc sống tốt hơn, một cuộc sống tốt hơn với tự do.” A better life, a better life with freedom – these whispers traveled from ear to ear.

The possibility of the American Dream and escape from political and social oppression attracted Vietnamese refugees one by one to secretly escape by boat at twilight.

“There was a river that led to the ocean. I used to sit there with my students and dream of a boat that

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Gia đình chúng tôi không nói tiếng việt.

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would take us away together,” Chuc Bui said.

There was no guarantee they would ever see their families again. Many left with just a fragile strand of trust threaded around acquaintances, friends or strangers who navigated the refugee boats toward freedom.

“There were a lot of people skirting the law to take care of themselves and their family. And that survival mentality is an outcome of being a refugee and living in war,” said Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Sympathizer.”

Like many other VietnameseAmerican families looking to make a living in the U.S., Nguyen’s mother and father opened a grocery store.

They called it Saigon Moi, and it was the second Vietnamese grocery store to open in San Jose, California. His parents worked 12 to 14 hour days while he manned the cash register after school.

“When I was growing up in this environment, I was very conscious of the difficulties that my parents were undergoing and what was happening in Vietnam, so I associate that grocery store with a lot of trial and suffering for my parents,” Nguyen said.

Saigon Moi opened early and closed late. Nguyen’s parents processed the checks, the cash and the food stamps. They took inventory and cleaned shop. Running a grocery store was not easy, and Nguyen’s parents not only took care of their own children, but also sent money to support their relatives throughout the rationing economy of Vietnam.

“How did they endure? I don’t know. They never took a vacation for the dozen years of really intensive work,” Nguyen said.

Endless hours of manual labor were necessary to secure living basics as simple as a roof over one’s head. UCLA Asian American studies associate professor Thuhuong Nguyen-vo’s family pooled together refugee resettlement funds to rent a one-bedroom apartment in California. This apartment became Nguyen-vo’s first home in America following bleak nights in a refugee

camp in Camp Pendleton. Although barrier to their survival in a new the new apartment marked an end nation. to uncomfortable nights packed in “When we first came here, we cramped tents, Nguyen-vo said she were so scared we wouldn’t survive. and her family were afraid.

It was totally different from “(We had) the sense of (Vietnamese) society, culture and displacement and alienation, and most importantly, language,” Chuc not to mention fear and hunger Bui said. and sadness in terms of feeling like Nguyen-vo talked to herself you’ve lost the only world you knew,” while she spent her days at home Nguyen-vo said. “The first few days alone, but it wasn’t to remedy in America, we were excited that we the loneliness that came with had a place to live but also really her parents working in a factory. scared that the money would run Building an armor against racism out.” was Nguyen-vo’s first motivation for Struggle loomed like an incessant, learning English. shapeshifting beast spewing financial “I was so vexed by the way in which burdens and I was treated culture shock. as this racial You’re sitting in a “My parents ‘other.’ It was so would have class and you don’t traumatizing that to find a job I was rehearsing know what’s going and get wages in English all the before the different ways on and they’re money (from in which I could government defend myself,” she teaching American aid) ran out said. history and I and that was They were really, really different. They didn’t understand pressing and spoke a different scary. I would language, ate anything. have to start different foods and school and that looked a different was terrifying because I didn’t speak way. They were Vietnamese, but English,” Nguyen-vo said. “You’re they were not living in Vietnam. The sitting in a class and you don’t mountain of cultural differences know what’s going on and they’re did not stop the refugees, however. teaching American history and I They toiled on, beating against the didn’t understand anything – and treacherous waves. After all, they not even the way in which history had families to look after – and for was taught.” many, that was most important.

Refugee assistance and assimilation Family stands at the helm of programs aided Vietnamese traditional Vietnamese culture. immigrants in the U.S. But physical Vietnamese households follow an survival was not the only struggle extended, multigenerational pattern. burdening the refugees. There was The elders are positioned at the head also becoming American. of the household, followed by the “Gia đình chúng tôi không nói tiếng eldest child, the eldest child’s spouse, việt.” Our family does not speak the second-eldest and so forth.

Vietnamese.

Families lived closely – maintaining According to Chuc Bui, families and emphasizing frequent contact used to display banners bearing to highlight the importance of the those words across their living household. Obligation to this unit is rooms. It was in attempt to not only important, but expected. encourage their children to learn “My generation only thought a lot English. Apart from physical about family. (They did) whatever characteristics separating they could to ensure their family was Vietnamese refugees from American going to have enough to eat and that society, language presented another their kids received enough schooling.

“

Our family does not speak

And they were satisfied,” Chuc Bui said.

But it’s been 43 years since Operation Frequent Wind flew the last American helicopter out of Vietnam as Saigon fell to communist forces. Still, the stories of survival manifests across nearly 2.2 million Vietnamese individuals living in the U.S. The world is clearly much different in 2018 than it was in 1975. Little Saigon, the largest Vietnamese enclave in the U.S., spans nearly three different cities in Orange County and 4,000 Vietnameseowned businesses. Pho has entered mainstream American cuisine, and the Vietnamese language is taught at high schools throughout Southern California.

More than 40 years later, a similar narrative of survival lends itself to the second generation of Vietnamese-Americans who grew up in a more culturally diverse American society. But despite their different values and priorities, survival bridges the two groups together.

These four decades established a new identity: Vietnamese-American.

This group was born into a society in which institutions, dialogues and people exist to incarnate a fluid ethnicity. Asian-American studies exist as a discipline across college campuses. Asian-American representatives and candidates have entered the political realm. And of course, a blockbuster romantic comedy, “Crazy Rich Asians,” starred an Asian-American lead and an all-Asian cast. No longer were Vietnamese-Americans considered a racial “other,” falling into a larger group of people who looked and lived like them.

There are four student organizations related to Vietnamese culture and languages at UCLA, as well as an Asian American studies major and minor with classes specifically focusing on the nation’s history and culture. Vietnamese Culture Night at UCLA is known as one of the largest in the country.

Still, despite what institutions may exist, some Vietnamese-American

Vietnamese.

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students faced a culture shock of their own when they arrived at UCLA. Third-year business economics student Steven Duong felt detached from his Vietnamese-American identity when he first came to UCLA. He said it wasn’t until after he joined the Southeast Asian Campus Learning Education And Retention project at UCLA that Duong was able to acknowledge his VietnameseAmerican identity.

“Before SEA Admit (Weekend) and SEA CLEAR, I didn’t really know what it meant to be Southeast Asian.

That’s not a thing popular society really talks about because they don’t talk about those experiences if they’re not from that background,” Duong said.

Duong said that he learned Vietnamese history through an impersonal narration of the wars from textbooks and teachers.

However, he never felt connected to his parents’ experiences even after learning about the Vietnamese refugee story in school.

“For a lot of parents, it’s difficult for them to speak to their children about (their refugee experience).

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And even if they do, they wait until their children are older when they think they can understand. There’s not enough dialogue between generations because of the trauma,” Duong said.

Second-year political science student Amy Ngoc Ho moved from Orange County to UCLA in pursuit of higher education and independence.

Her mother did not take this well.

“My mom was like, ‘Oh, you want to leave me,’” Ho said. “But me moving away to college doesn’t mean I don’t love you, it just means I need to find myself.”

Ho, like Duong, felt removed from her roots.

“I feel like every VietnameseAmerican can relate a little bit to the fact that sometimes they feel a little bit lost as to who they are, or maybe they’ve had experiences where they don’t want to acknowledge their Vietnamese identity,” Ho said.

When Ho first moved to the U.S., her first name was “My,” which means “American” in Vietnamese.

However, she added an “A” to her name after being bullied with mispronunciations of her

Vietnamese name. For this new generation, survival may come at the cost of freedom to express traditional culture.

Their ancestors rode boats into the night, blindly searching for rescue. Now, this new generation of Vietnamese-Americans, too, are looking for survival in their night.

Being anything-American is difficult.

Different cultures bring different values, different histories, different ways of living.

“We have a second generation that is not as deeply influenced by anticommunist feeling, not as attached to the homeland and sees themselves as Americans and this is transforming the political landscape,” Nguyen said. “They don’t share the same kinds of values and perspectives as the refugee generation.”

For example, second-generation Vietnamese-Americans tend to hold more liberal values than those of the first generation. A Pew Research study demonstrates a smaller proportion, 12 percent, of Asian-Americans identify with the Republican Party in 2018 than in 1998, when 25 percent did.

“Up through the ’80s and ’90s, the Republican Party’s stress on family values, on anticommunism, on capitalism, on small businesses, ... these values struck a chord with Asian-American communities, which were coming from histories of struggles against communism, for example, and came here to pursue the American Dream,” Nguyen said.

Thus, many young VietnameseAmericans find themselves at odds with their parents due to tightly held political and social beliefs.

“For my parents, it’s hard for them to look beyond themselves in terms of political values,” Duong said. “They feel like with politics they should only be concerned with what affects them and not the rest of society.”

For example, Ho supports the LGBTQ community, while her mother remains conservative on issues of sexuality and gender identity.

Growing up in American society meant that many secondgeneration Vietnamese-Americans learned English as their first language, vanishing the language barrier previously separating firstgeneration Vietnamese refugees with American society. If they were lucky, their parents taught them Vietnamese.

These differences come in culmination largely because the first and second generations grew up in different worlds. One world was destroyed by war, embedded with anticommunist sentiment and marred by homeland loss. The other is culturally fluid, raised in a nation that champions freedom. “(The second-generation) identity is very much American and it’s injected with this Asian-ness, which they share not just with Vietnamese people, but with Americans of other backgrounds.

That issue of being born here and raised here makes a huge difference,” Nguyen said.

It’s difficult to unite two worlds,

and Nguyen said he doesn’t think that it’s possible. The forming of a rift between the two generations presents a new struggle for survival: one for the preservation of the Vietnamese identity.

“Yes, we can try to reach across the boundaries and establish channels of communication, but that’s not always successful,” Nguyen said. “I think there’s a certain point where the second generation says, ‘We pay our respects to the older generation, ... but we seek change in our own contemporary moment.’”

On the other hand, Chuc Bui believes that building a bridge of language can mend this generational gap – a walkway that ties these groups to each other.

“Keep the voices of the Vietnamese people. We’ve left the home country, but we’ve still kept our language here,” Chuc Bui said.

“This language helps young people remember their root culture.”

Ho is constantly working to reintegrate Vietnamese language back into her main cognitive practice. She said her Vietnamese fluency has decreased since moving to Los Angeles.

“It’s really easy to keep your American identity alive because you live in America. But it’s really hard to keep that part of being Vietnamese alive,” Ho said. “Maybe I should take Vietnamese here at UCLA.” After joining SEA CLEAR and learning about his Vietnamese community, Duong said he felt empowered to speak with his parents about their refugee experience.

“

“They accepted that I was mature enough to understand the context of where they came from. And I never really felt Vietnamese before then,” Duong said.

Nearly four decades separate Vietnamese refugees and the current, 21st-century VietnameseAmerican. Although these two groups are very different, perhaps both generations should care less about what keeps them apart.

Rather, they should find common ground in the struggles they can both understand – the struggle to survive.

Dialogue fosters discussion.

Vietnamese refugees endured days without knowing where their next meal would come from. They grappled with the English language’s complexities, attempting to fit into American society. And although many Vietnamese-Americans are fortunate enough to live without poverty, their feeling of survival is spurred by a sense of being lost.

Despite being born in different countries and eras, both generations engaged and continue to engage in survival. Survival is the state or fact of continuing to live or exist despite difficult circumstances. The first generation continued to live despite the battles they had faced financially and socially. The second generation continues to redefine their identity, keeping their Vietnamese roots alive. This common drive to carry on unites both generations.

“Cái khó ló cái khôn.” Adversity is the mother of wisdom. In this case, survival enlightens the two eras.

It is this wisdom that bridges the divide.

This language helps young people remember their root culture.

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Tuning the

Mind written by POLINA CHEREZOVA

photos by JENNA NICOLE SMITH designed by MEGAN LE

I used to think whoever advised to “stop and smell the roses” had nothing better to do than advocate wasting precious time.

A

s a pianist, time was not something I wanted to waste on sniffing flowers, but rather on practicing my craft.

Playing the piano started out as a fun hobby, but the further I delved into it, the more my ears strived to produce the professional quality I heard in the recordings of famous pianists such as Sviatoslav Richter and Vladimir Horowitz. Notorious for overthinking nearly everything, I was convinced that in order to become a musician, I had to practice all the time and if I wasn’t physically practicing, then at least I’d have to be thinking about practicing. But striving to

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perform without restraints has proven to be much more fulfilling.

One of the first times I remember truly freeing my mind was during the summer of 2016 at Music Fest Perugia in Italy. At the time, I didn’t quite know what the feeling was or why I had stumbled upon it. Something in my head clicked, disrupting my usual tendency to overthink.

The festival offers a unique opportunity for participating pianists to perform a concerto movement as a soloist with an orchestra, with most students spending at least a year perfecting their chosen piece. Having decided

to attend the festival last minute, I was not planning on performing with the orchestra. But a month before the festival, I ambitiously decided to learn the first movement of Frédéric Chopin’s “Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor,” an emotionally passionate and intimate work that would be difficult to prepare in time to perform. The piece, with lots of delicate-yet-rapid, note-filled passages, requires time to master the technical aspects in order to feel fully comfortable with freely expressing Chopin’s musical intentions.

Being the stubborn person I am, though, I wanted to prove to myself I could do it anyway.

Soon it came time to fly to Italy, and I was anxiously score-studying on the plane, trying to get in as much extra time with the piece as I could, thinking about how I could work out technical issues and musical phrasings. I was not ready, and mentally, I was a wreck. My overthinking was rearing its ugly head once again. The closer the performance, the more worried I became.

My mind led me to imagine every possible worstcase scenario: What if I blank out? What if I forget the entire piece? What would the audience think?

I decided to attend the morning rehearsal for the experience, but drop out of the gala performance that night. My overthinking got the best of me, so I raised the white flag.

The following morning, I arrived at my rehearsal with very low expectations. Sitting down at the piano, the black and white keys suddenly looked so foreign to me. I couldn’t do this. I wanted to run offstage, hide and never touch the piano again. Why was I even trying? I felt suffocated by my doubts, unable to breathe. My fears were multiplying one by one, to the tempo of my unsettling heartbeat.

Suddenly, my thoughts were interrupted as I heard the orchestra begin to play the beautiful, familiar theme. I sensed my muscles relax as my mind shifted from worry to reassurance – this was music I knew and loved, I listened to it so many times before that it had become a part of me. All I could do was accept my level of preparation and trust that my hands and ears knew what they were doing. I placed my fingers on the keys, closed my eyes and played.

To my surprise, I found myself so present, so immersed in the music and in the colossal sound of the orchestra, that there was no room in my mind to even think about what could go wrong. I felt so caught up in my emotional connection to the music, nothing else in the world seemed to matter at that very moment. I decided right then and there that I would perform that night, accepting the fact that my piece was, technically speaking, drastically underprepared and barely memorized. I walked out onstage with the same mindset I had in rehearsal – the same liberation from judgmental and self-critical thoughts

– and ended up genuinely enjoying my experience on the grand Sala dei Notari stage that night.

However, enjoyable performances and a carefree mindset were still far from the norm.

Music had always been a way for me to cope with my emotions growing up. Chopin and Franz Schubert taught me to notice and understand delicate feelings like sincerity and vulnerability, while Johannes Brahms helped me come to grips with nostalgia and regret. My tendency to overthink, however, caused the once-helpful thoughts of selfimprovement swimming through my head to drown out my ability to perform and play music onstage.

My musical overthinking manifested in obsessing over technical details and engaging in mundanely repetitive exercises for hours. But I was wasting time reinforcing the same problem through repetition instead of coming up with new, creative ways to solve it. Criticizing myself for something like my inability to play a passage perfectly could easily be mistaken as constructive analysis

g n i k

“Mygoot vtehrthisnt of me ” e be

.

flag e t so I raised the whi

in helping me become a better musician. Instead, my distracting thoughts would eventually develop into full-blown performance anxiety years later.

The first time I realized that my tendency to overthink was becoming a problem was at the onset of my self-conscious teenage years. By then, I had already blanked out, frozen up and forgotten the next note onstage plenty of times. But because I was a child then and didn’t overthink much, it never affected my self-worth.

Once I became a teenager, my overthinking turned into a harmful mental habit of producing and internalizing my own self-critical and judgmental thoughts, which led me to think I was never good enough. I spent hours on end obsessively practicing pieces from Franz Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2” to the first movement of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto, criticizing myself for every wrong note and then resuming to forcefully strike each key with unnecessary tension because I thought doing so would turn me into a better musician. Turns out, mindlessly reproducing the notes written on the score to secure my technique and memory ended up clouding my ability to hear and appreciate the sound of music.

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“

The ore m t e h u more I c red abo t , l a d with e t a el r st w g n i e perform ecom

fru

my in a b

The harder I I realized how powerful tried to deal with my the mind is in determining b d l u o overthinking tendencies by how humans perceive reality, and I w forcefully inhibiting the thought the more convinced I became that I could processes, the worse they got. The more I cared restructure my own thoughts. about performing well, the more I would become One of the first resources I found was frustrated with my inability to silence the noisy Bulletproof Musician, an online blog led by critic living inside my head. This villainous critic Juilliard-trained violinist and performance fed off my failures to the point that I could not psychologist Noa Kageyama. Through working even play a single note without buzzing negative with other musicians and students who struggle thoughts interrupting my ability to enjoy the with performing, Kageyama said many of the music. mental obstacles musicians face appear to be But after reflecting on the past as well as associated with nerves. meeting with self-help specialists and other That is, some worry more about others’ musicians who have found ways to cope with opinions of their playing, while others experience their own mental struggles in performing, distracting thoughts during a performance I’ve found ways to declutter my mind so I can such as those about a difficult upcoming perform to the best of my ability. passage or their quality of playing, causing Even in my fourth year of pursuing piano them to be nervous. My particular struggle performance at UCLA, I still feel nervous each with overthinking feeds into my performance time I go up onstage. But I’ve come to learn the anxiety and disrupts my ability to freely express difficult reality that a successful performance the music. Kageyama said he strives to help requires more than hours of practice on my musicians embrace the jitters by feeling more instrument, but also requires me to free my comfortable with being uncomfortable. mind. I strive for my mind to give way to allow “I work with people who feel like they’re not the music to overflow my senses, spilling out into inclined to performing or are not having a an emotional and passionate experience of pure good experience onstage,” Kageyama said. “Even bliss. (if) you’re going to continue to feel a little bit At this point, I’m left with no choice but to face of butterflies, it can be something that ... you this internal battle, to defeat this constant push embrace.” and pull of recurring self-sabotaging thoughts, Kageyama said he first experienced nerves at a in order to satisfy my immense desire to share young age, after seeing another musician struggle music with other people. Being able to share with memory slips during one performance, music with an audience enables me to connect causing him to realize that things don’t always with them on a deeper emotional level than go well onstage. an everyday conversation is able to. Although It wasn’t until Kageyama took a class by the fears that I developed over the past 10 years performance psychologist Don Greene during his made my experience of performing miserable, second year at Juilliard that he learned about I was so moved by my love for music that I the importance of developing strong mental desperately needed to seek a change of mindset. skills such as analyzing internalized pressures So, I embarked on my journey to recovery. from childhood and evaluating oneself more Even after my first orchestral debut in Italy, I positively. Kageyama put these skills to the test still couldn’t quite figure out how to get myself during an international competition and, despite in that carefree mindset every time I performed. a low level of physical preparation, his mental But the point wasn’t to figure it out, it was to preparation enabled him to focus more and play let things be, and I was hitting a wall trying too better than he thought he could have. hard to solve my problem. Over the next several “Mental skills are an integral part of bringing years, I buried myself in countless self-help blogs up onstage what you did in the practice room,” and books, watching one TED Talk after another Kageyama said. “It was hugely empowering to in seek of inspiration for becoming a stronger find out that there was something I could do and musician and individual.

I could get better, have a different experience The more I explored these resources, the more onstage.”

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ence the nois i l i t y t o si l y c ritic

.” living inside my head Although every performer faces mental obstacles to some degree, there are certainly

some who struggle with them more than others, he said. Kageyama said it’s useful to go back to someone’s very first performance and analyze the pressures that could’ve been internalized then, such as pressure to perform well coming from a teacher or parent.

For me, however, the pressures were likely more intrinsic, as I was constantly striving to prove my self-worth. Differences in the extent of personal fears of negative evaluation seem to play a large role in amplifying performance anxiety, Kageyama said. Fearing negative evaluation from the people whose opinions we care about heightens pressure-filled situations, making someone less optimistic about how things are going to go.

Many musicians who seek guidance from Kageyama also think there’s something wrong with them because they get nervous – that it’s ingrained in their genetics and character, he said. I can remember experiencing times when I felt like quitting music altogether because I didn’t think I would ever be able to combat my performance anxiety. Something that helped me get over my fear was accepting that the nerves may always be there. The best thing I can do is gear my mindset toward viewing the nerves as a positive and exhilarating rather than negative experience.

But being nervous is very typical, Kageyama said, and it seems to be that actually focusing too much on nerves doesn’t get rid of them.

“Physiologically, there’s not much of a difference between being nervous and being excited, and so if we can kind of rephrase our physiological reaction under pressure as excitement, as opposed to nerves, it can actually have a surprisingly positive effect on how effectively we can perform,” Kageyama said.

Performance psychology makes it clear that all musicians struggle with mental obstacles affecting their performance, and training the mind can help with overcoming them. But what exactly does training the mind entail?

As I explored ways to deal with my own selfcritical tendencies, I spoke with another UCLA music student in order to gain insight in mental preparation methods that work for her.

Studying classical music performance at a music school comes with its own challenges,

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“

leaving music students to figure out how to deal with training their minds by themselves.

Graduate piano performance student Mindy Cheng said some of the main obstacles she faces as a performer are feeling high pressure to meet the audience’s expectations and produce what she knows she is fully capable of. Through years of performance experience, Cheng said she has found how important mental training is to performing at the best of her ability.

“I feel like it’s part of the craft. You can’t just be a musician and only focus on practicing in the practice room,” Cheng said. “I believe that part of our art is training our mind. … They’re not separate things, they’re very much one.”

After reading “The Inner Game of Tennis,” a self-help book by Timothy Gallwey, Cheng said she realized that our minds often judge certain experiences as being “good” or “bad.” Now, she strives to let experiences be as they are, which often means getting up onstage and fearlessly not second-guessing herself by going for it before her mind even has time to think. Cheng said her goal is to teach her body and mind to coexist through presence.

Cheng also said she started to focus on training her mind during her sophomore year of high school. That year, she was working on Chopin’s “Scherzo No. 2, Op. 31,” but was feeling discouraged because she was having difficulty

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fully understanding the breadth of the piece – it was the largest Chopin work she had studied at that point.

The first time she played the piece at a competition, she was so affected by her cluttered mind that she struggled getting through memory slips, let alone being able to play expressively, Cheng said. But instead of coming home and practicing for eight hours as she usually would have, she worked on mentally preparing herself for the next competition.

Cheng trained her mind to be present in the moment so that, no matter how much or how little she practiced, she would perform to the best of her ability without the extraneous pressure of needing to win the competition.

Only two weeks later, she performed at the next competition with a relaxed and present mindset, and it turned out to be the best she’d ever played the piece.

“When our mind is so cluttered and not still, that really stops us from being clear about what’s actually happening. My goal, when I’m onstage, is to just be in the moment and let things happen as naturally as possible,” Cheng said. “’I’m just out here to present something that I love and if I can show that, then I have accomplished my goal.”

Although a clutter-free mind is a worthy pursuit, musicians have to spend most of their lives attempting to reach it. The ongoing

“Mu

struggles of professional musicians like David Kaplan, a professional pianist and UCLA piano performance lecturer, remind me that it’s okay to not have everything fully figured out. Accepting my current state is already a step toward becoming fully present.

sic has the power to silen e my thou c ghts.

lack of adrenaline during his performance caused him to feel like he was just practicing, cognitively anticipating memory weak spots and focusing on playing through cleanly without any emotional memory.

Kaplan began to miss the adrenaline rush that comes with being nervous, he said. The adrenaline performers feel onstage is needed in order to connect the body to a different part of the brain that functions on instinct and emotions, he said.

This enables a performance to transform into a special experience not possible in the practice room.

“Adrenaline feeds your ability to toggle between different memories that you have, and that’s why you can play more beautifully onstage than anywhere else,” Kaplan said. “(With adrenaline) you have access to your heart in a totally different way, you have access to your emotional memory.”

Having spoken with performance specialists and musicians about their strategies for combating mental obstacles, I revisit my own struggles with overthinking as a musician.

My performance anxiety no longer contradicts my desire to share music with other people, as today, I’ve learned to accept the adrenaline as a normal and even quite necessary process for delivering a moving performance. After years of discouraging performances, the meaning of “stop and smell the roses” changed drastically in my head as I now strive to silence my cluttered mind and stop and hear the music.

Overthinking will most likely be something I struggle with for the rest of my life, but I have grown to view the moment onstage as a place of sacred presence – where music has the power to silence my thoughts.

”

Kaplan said he will never forget his first memory slip experiences because of how shattering it was for him to realize that the mind and body are unreliable onstage. He describes having felt complete discomfort, as if he was being hanged psychologically, with no contact to the ground. Practicing the positive, reinforcing thought processes he wishes to have when onstage now helps him control his nerves, he said.

“One can’t expect that after being our normal neurotic selves, that all of a sudden when we get to a performance, we’re not going to be neurotic,” Kaplan said. “My first step in preparing mentally is to accept that I’m going to have those thoughts of fear and therefore, when they happen, to be comforted by the fact that it’s normal.”

Training the mind is very difficult, and some musicians turn to artificial coping strategies.

Kaplan said one time, during his undergraduate days at UCLA, he decided to try out beta blockers, medication used by many performers to block adrenaline responses from interfering with their performance.

After taking the commonly prescribed drug, the

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FIGHTING FOR HOME

E

very year, millions of monarch butterflies migrate across international borders in hopes of finding a home where their future generations will prosper.

The black-and-orange butterfly, with its migration patterns, has become a common symbol for the undocumented community.

It represents the freedom for humans to immigrate to different parts of the world, said third-year film and television student Nicole Corona Diaz.

Corona Diaz, like thousands of others within the undocumented community, has benefited from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. She is what many refer to as a “Dreamer,” an undocumented immigrant who was brought to the United States as a child and has benefited from the DACA program.

Implemented by former President Barack Obama in June 2012, the executive order sought to delay the deportation of young immigrants brought to the country by their parents.

However, the program was subject to change when President Donald Trump’s

administration announced its end Sept. 5, 2017. Three days after the federal decision, the University of California sued the Department of Homeland Security over the administration’s decision because the University faced losing members of its community. Soon after, in January, the UC received support from Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and the Federal Appeals Court for the Ninth Circuit in November when they issued an injunction to stop the cancellation of the DACA program.

It required the government to continue accepting renewal applications.

As it stands today, the DACA program has not been cancelled – DACA recipients can renew their DACA permits and are unable to be deported from the U.S. However, the future status of the program remains uncertain.

At UCLA, there are communities of students and faculty who are still affected by the program’s unclear status. Nonetheless, they continue to advocate for the rights of the undocumented through fundraising, campaigning for social awareness and sharing their stories.

written by SUSANA ALCANTAR photos by NIVEDA TENNETY illustrations by ANGELA SONG designed by BILAL ISMAIL AHMED

24 24CATEGORY HERE?

NICOLE CORONA DIAZ Corona Diaz immigrated to the U.S. with her family when she was just 3 years old.

Now a UCLA student, she said the Obama administration introduced the program when she was a teenager. At the time, it was too early for her to think about college, let alone how to pay for it. But, when she started to consider higher education later in high school, DACA was already in place, opening the door for her to apply for financial aid.

“I grew up in the perfect period ... so I fit in this perfect window where the access (to higher education) was just granted for me,” Corona Diaz said.

However, Corona Diaz said she still faced hardships. Growing up, she was not comfortable talking about her immigration status, she said.

Her parents warned her about the risks associated with being undocumented, as well as their fears of deportation.

Corona Diaz said it took years for her to find the strength to share her story. In high school, she became comfortable talking about being undocumented with her counselors and close friends. In college, she finally was willing to tell a larger audience.

“I was still finding my own voice and having the strength and courage to say it because a lot of people won’t say it publicly,” Corona Diaz said.

“It’s definitely a process for everyone, one in which they shouldn’t be rushed and if they are not ready, then they are not ready.”

Motivated by her newfound willingness to speak and the fear that the newly elected Trump would terminate the DACA program, Corona Diaz decided to run for student government in winter 2016.

She said she felt running for student government was the first step in raising awareness about undocumented students and their narratives.

Corona Diaz served as Undergraduate Students Association Council general representative 1 for the 2017-2018 academic year. As a general representative, she collected information on the concerns of the student body and brought them to campuswide attention through social and fundraising campaigns. One such concern was the topic of immigration.

In February, she stood blindfolded on Bruin Walk alongside a sign that read, “I’m Undocumented. I’m called an ‘Illegal Alien.’ I trust you. Do you trust me? Give me a Hug.” She said she wanted to bring awareness to antiundocumented immigrant rhetoric used in conversations. She said she blindfolded herself because she felt it might incentivize people who dislike undocumented immigrants to approach her. She also was put into a vulnerable position because she couldn’t look at them. Overall, Corona Diaz said it was a positive experience, because countless people went up and hugged her when they could have decided to ignore her even if they agreed with her message. She said she was also surprised that people of all backgrounds came up to her as well.

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Corona Diaz and her team did educational work on campus and through social media, addressing the symbolism of the monarch butterfly in the undocumented immigrant community.

“Questioning the legitimacy of borders and reviving the narrative that humans by nature need to migrate creates a sense of understanding and acceptance for immigrants in this country,” she said.

Corona Diaz and the rest of the General Rep. 1 office also launched a crowdfunding campaign called #UndocuBruins through UCLA Spark, an online fundraising platform. The month-long fundraiser in

fall 2017 raised over $16,000 in scholarship money for undocumented students.

By joining student government, Corona Diaz said she brought the perspective of undocumented students to the table – a perspective she said that had not been prioritized enough before. Activism enabled her to find power in her voice and strength in community.

“I cannot function without activism, and my hope is that everyone finds their own voice and is motivated to speak for themselves when confronted by injustice,” she said.

EDUARDO SOLIS

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Third-year sociology student Eduardo Solis once thought he could only afford to attend a community college or a California State University to pursue higher education.

Growing up, Solis saw his older brother, who is also undocumented, settle for a school that wasn’t his top choice because he could not apply for financial resources to attend UCLA. However, once Solis was in high school, he was able to apply for financial aid through DACA. He said he recognizes the privileges, the support and protection he receives through DACA. Yet, Solis said he never feared his own deportation until now.

On the day the Trump administration announced the cancellation of DACA, Solis said he turned to the TV to see former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions deliver the information. Solis said the news left him in tears but he was motivated to advocate for immigration rights once the UCLA school year began.

“I’ve been involved with activism in different aspects of stories of my life ever since I was 12 years old,” Solis said. “I just reflect on the fact that I started sharing my story at such a young age because ... I thought to myself, ‘Why would I let someone who doesn’t see me as a human have that power over me?’”

As a legislative advocate for the USAC External Vice President’s office in the 2017-2018 academic year, Solis took part in phone banking events dedicated to DACA

and the DREAM Act. The DREAM Act would provide a pathway to citizenship for youth and young adults who were brought to the country as children.

Later in the year, Solis also traveled to Sacramento and Washington, D.C. to lobby for the DREAM Act, to keep it clean so that it would contain no attached legislation such as border funding or cuts to legal immigration.

Now as general representative 3 for USAC, Solis said he aims to showcase to the student body the major issues approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants face, such as the threat of deportation and how intersectional identities are affected by immigration policy.

“A lot of times, people don’t realize that there are a lot of Asian undocumented students,” Solis said.

“I’m also queer, and within the queer community, sometimes I feel like people forget that (for) undocumented queer immigrants ... deportation means being deported to a country that is very hostile.”

In October, Solis and the general representative 3 office launched the “ALL 11 Million” photo campaign, encouraging the allies of DACA recipients to extend their support to all 11 million undocumented immigrants, including adults who didn’t come to the country as children and students who don’t qualify for DACA. Solis said sometimes people don’t

realize that only being an ally to DACA recipients is problematic because it makes it sound as if only someone who speaks English and is educated is worthy of citizenship.

He and his team passed out flyers at the event and to passersby that addressed why only supporting DACA recipients is problematic and what it means to be undocumented. Solis said he believes the campaign was effective because UC administrators and professors, who oftentimes only show support to DACA recipients, came and took pictures with an Instagram photo frame prop that read, “I Stand with #All11Million.”

Solis said one of his main frustrations has been that people don’t care about issues like deportation until it personally affects them. After Trump announced the rescission, people close to him did not reach out to talk to him about it, despite understanding how it could change his life.

Still, Solis said he believes storytelling can serve as an immensely powerful tool to help people understand the undocumented immigrant struggle.

“The only way people can care about the issues that don’t affect them personally is by hearing, seeing and listening to the stories of people that are affected by these issues,” he said.

JANETH VELAZQUEZ Janeth Velazquez shared her experiences an undocumented individual in front of 400 people at the First-Gen Welcome Soiree at UCLA this quarter.

Now an alumna, Velazquez said she likely would not have been able to attend UCLA in the first place had it not been for the DACA program. During her senior year of high school, Velazquez said she had applied and been accepted to four-year universities, but her parents told her she could not go because they could not afford the tuition without financial aid.

“I couldn’t work, so I had to say no to college, and then I went to community college after. At that moment, that wasn’t the road I wanted to take,” Velazquez said. “It felt like someone else was making the decision for me.”

She said though she was upset with her economic position, she accepted reality by remembering that her ultimate goal was to attend a four-year university and that community college would help her get there.

Once she became a DACA recipient, Velazquez got a job working for as a public service aide for the San Francisco Department of Public Works. With her government job, Velazquez gathered enough financial resources to attend UCLA. She was initially uncomfortable sharing her experience as an undocumented individual out of fear that people would not support her or understand her current situation, Velazquez said. She wanted to share her journey so others can see that they are not alone. Sharing her own narrative at events like the

soiree helped her feel more connected to other DACA recipients, in part because doing so helped her accept her current situation, she said.

“I was very nervous speaking about my story, but at least having people more aware about the issue ... impacts real people,” she said.

Aside from sharing her story, Velazquez said she found other ways to express herself and her concerns.

For example, she marched in a strike in Downtown Los Angeles – something she said she doesn’t normally do – to protest Trump’s rescission of DACA and show support for the program. She also got more involved with the Undocumented Student Program at UCLA by volunteering at the Undocu-Orientation for the past two years. She was part of a Q&A panel at the orientation in September, in which she answered questions and helped students understand why choosing to attend UCLA was the right decision.

Though Trump’s decision to rescind the DACA program ultimately made Velazquez more comfortable sharing her story, she said it still affects her life negatively, as she feels discouraged from keeping up with ongoing litigation against DACA. She would rather like to know when an official decision about the program’s future is made, she said. In the meantime, she feels she has to be cautious.

“It feels like you are tippy-toeing with time,” Velazquez said. “You are not able to take certain risks because you always have to be prepared for the what if.”

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SECURING THE CAMPUS Though undocumented students have found their own ways to advocate for their rights and visibility, administrators and organizations at UCLA have also provided funds, legal services and implemented laws to ensure the campus remains a safe place for its students.

Founded in 2009, UCLA’s Undocumented Student Program assists undocumented students through different workshops that help students with issues such as housing and DACA renewal. The program also answers questions undocumented students We have to do might have on tuitionanything possible related matters, the to ensure their admissions process and establishing California academic success, residency. too and that they Following the Trump receive as many administration’s decision to end DACA, USP also resources as they provided students with are entitled. access to immigration lawyers offering their legal services for free.

Through the funds USP provided, Corona Diaz and Velazquez were able to renew their DACA statuses.

A year before the September 2017 announcement, Chancellor Gene Block formed the Advisory Council on Immigration Policy. Abel Valenzuela Jr., a co-chair of the council and a Chicana and Chicano studies professor, said that the council was created in the case that Trump’s immigration policies would further impact the campus and its student body.

“We knew that his targets were toward undocumented student immigrants. We were worried that he was talking about upwards of 850 students at the undergraduate level and upwards of 75 students at the graduate level,” Valenzuela said. “We had things in place, things being a committee, a counsel of worried people.”

Since its formation, the council has provided monetary support and conducted fundraisers for undocumented students. The members’ current goals include protecting UCLA students from possible detention or deportation.

Valenzuela, with assistance from a law student and close work with the council, drafted the Detainment Response Protocol and helped implement California Assembly Bill 21 – both of which outline plans for protecting students from the U.S. Immigration Customs

“

”

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and Enforcement.

Lisa Hasegawa, the council’s policy analyst and an Asian American studies lecturer, said AB 21 defines when ICE is allowed to come to campus for immigration enforcement – that is, when they are looking for a particular student who they suspect has committed a crime. She added that ICE can only enter UCLA for federal immigration enforcement action if they have a judicial warrant to do so. In the event that ICE does visit a campus, faculty and staff are to refrain from sharing student data.

To further help faculty and staff understand what to do and how to comply with California’s AB 21, the council composed a campus response guide that will be released later in the quarter. The guide outlines the steps faculty and staff should take if ICE were to come for federal immigration enforcement, such as informing Valenzuela, who acts as the Chancellor’s representative on immigration, of their arrival, Hasegawa said.

The guide will also be posted as an infographic around campus and in the dorms, Valenzuela said.

Unlike AB 21, which addresses how to respond to federal immigration enforcement on campus, the Detainment Response Protocol, completed this year, provides assistance to an undocumented student detained by ICE off campus, Valenzuela said. It outlines how the school would provide legal counsel and secure the release of a student from detention.

Though Valenzuela said he does not want to speculate on the likelihood of a student being detained by ICE, the council is prepared in the event that it does happen.

Moving forward, the council’s top priorities consist of developing, generating and securing resources for financial aid and scholarships for undocumented students. Valenzuela said many undocumented students do not get enough financial aid to cover the total cost of attending UCLA. He added that financial aid is a pressing issue for undocumented students because they have to balance other problems related to being undocumented in addition to being UCLA students. He said they also do not have access to the same resources as their documented peers.

“We have to do anything possible to ensure their academic success, too and that they receive as many resources as they are entitled,” Valenzuela said. “To make sure they join the ranks of the alumni. To get them out with a degree in hand so they can go out and do what other Bruins do. Change the world, become leaders.”

THE FUTURE AT A STANDSTILL More than a year of legal disputes and a midterm election later, the future of the DACA program still remains unknown.

After the midterm elections Nov. 6, the Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives, while the Republican Party will maintain its control over the Senate. The elections meant more federal representation for the Democrats, who tend to support immigrant rights, but they do not ensure an answer for the program’s uncertain status, Hasegawa said.

However, these results do mean there are more members of Congress who can propose legislation in favor of DACA. But for such proposals to be approved, they need to pass through both chambers and the president. Hasegawa added that a permanent legislative fix could include amendments in the language of the bill that are unfavorable to immigration advocacy groups, such as funding for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border or more law enforcement at the border.

Ultimately, the hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients might not learn any more about DACA’s status until the Supreme Court tackles the situation later in the 2018-2019 term, likely months away.

While the uncertainty surrounding the Obamaera program remains intact, DACA recipients at UCLA remain firm in their willingness to advocate for their own futures.

Corona Diaz said she hopes, moving forward, there is a focus not only on DACA, but on comprehensive immigration reform. People like her parents are still waiting for any new policy related to immigration because, besides proposals to increase border security, there haven’t been recent policies that could help them acquire citizenship, she said.

“We need to take a step back from focusing on border security and address the needs of

immigrants that are already within the country, how we can uplift their voices and help them with their immigration status,” Corona Diaz said.

While Corona Diaz hopes for more citizenship security within the U.S., Velazquez said she wants more freedom to cross international borders. After having studied geography, she said she would love to travel the world to study and do research but without U.S. residency or citizenship, she currently cannot travel outside the country. For now, she plans to continue traveling within the country, as she went to New York for a study abroad program in the summer.

Velasquez said she hopes higher education institutions will also focus on helping undocumented graduate students. She wants to pursue graduate school at UCLA but currently cannot afford it, despite her DACA status.

Solis said he hopes one day he will live in a house with a husband in the only country he has known, alongside his parents. To get there, he hopes the government creates a clean pathway to citizenship that does not incur any negative effects for future generations.

Ultimately, Solis said he wants students who are in the same situation his brother was in years ago to stay hopeful.

“I know that these times are extremely scary and uncertain, but the undocumented community has achieved multiple accomplishments before DACA even existed,” Solis said. “With or without DACA, I know that we will prevail and prosper.”

“

With or without DACA, I know that we will prevail and prosper.

”

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Slowing the Storm

written & illustrated by HANNA RASHIDI designed by JULIETTE LE SAINT

It’s funny how everything is so hurried when we’re young, even though it’s when we have the most time. We hurry to get to class, hurry to pick our majors, hurry to decide who we are and who we’ll be. I find myself creating new goals just as soon as I reach old ones, and on and on it goes. But one day that slows and stops as gray clouds reach across the sky.

I’m walking with quick steps, watching the leaves pass beneath my shoes. I briefly look up to avoid an impending collision with another hurried student and come to a stop.

Others make their way around me as I stand in front of Powell Library, with the gray sky above and rain beginning to fall, and I just stare. I never really looked at Royce Hall before, but I’m seeing it now. In this moment, nothing is clamorous or complicated, and that alone warrants remembrance.

I remember the day I moved into UCLA. Seven hours of driving in a car packed to its limits finally brought me to the place I had been anxiously imagining for months. My parents smiled as they marveled at the campus and the heat, then waved goodbye. I was left with my roommates, my unpacked boxes and a map of campus that, no matter how long I stared, refused to tell me where I was meant to go next. Soon classes began, and with them came a gale of activity that propelled me to ever higher speeds.

I remember my first UCLA sports event, the first A I got on a college paper, the first frat party. And yet, even though these memories are certainly the loudest and may stay with me the longest, they aren’t the ones I want to hold onto the tightest.

I also remember the night I knew I’d be leaving this place that I’d just begun to call home. I was surrounded by too many people in a room much too small for us, my hands trembling as I stared at my phone and read the words: Congratulations on your acceptance as a transfer to our class of 2021. Every plan I had made for my time at UCLA flew out of my head. The impossible happened, and now the moments I have here will be far fewer than I previously imagined, making each one more precious. Soon, I’ll find myself in a new place, surrounded by new people, hopefully finding a new home, but even so...

30 30

This is what I want to remember...

The yells of camaraderie echoing from dorm room windows as midnight came around on yet another finals week.

Heat pressing into my back from the overzealous sun on my daily hike to campus, when I had a brief break from classes to breathe, and maybe call my mom.

Soft fur of the familiar black-and-white feline who was always glad to see me, and who I would always stop to greet.

A cramped office full of connections to people and countless ideas clamoring to be heard.

Exhaustion dragging me under after the strain of a sleepless night, with only a grass mattress beneath me and sunlight as a blanket.

The hidden cove underneath dappled shadows with a perfect view of bronze statues.

The shade and quiet it provided were the eye in a relentless hurricane of information and anxiety spilling from the rooms of Bunche Hall.

Comfort found in a cushioned armchair, surrounded by books and the buzz of frenzied studying.

These things made the world spin slower and go quiet for just a few moments.

They were my constants in a time when everything was writhing around in a tangled mass. They were never phased by my mistakes or anxieties, and instead offered simple acceptance.

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This is who I want to remember...

The comforting shoulder to lean against as we stumbled home, leaving behind booming noise in exchange for quiet companionship.

Strangers and old friends I could sit and talk with endlessly. We filled our hours with ramblings on the weather, the state of the government and our existential crises.

The instructors who, despite my anxious insecurity in talking with them one on one, became friends and guides through the quagmire of college life.

My roommate clambering down a creaking ladder, the light of morning peeking from behind the curtains as I awoke to the reminder of her reliable presence.

Fingers gripping my own, shivering and clenching tighter in an attempt to ward away the mental demons, showing me a vulnerability I would never consider showing myself.

The giggling menaces that called themselves my roommates, invading my bed and stealing it out from under me, turning my mind away from chaos and my own powerlessness.

Clever hands plucking metal strings, playing the gentle soundtrack to our shared space as I began to love these people unexpectedly quickly.

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These people welcomed me, even when I was an unknown. I forced the clock to slow for them, and refused to let that infernal ticking rob me of the memories they created. They expanded my experiences past what I thought they could be. By learning them, I learned myself.

We all remember the landmarks of our memories, the events, the academics, the accomplishments. These memories are bright, loud and they demand our undivided attention. It’s easy to think that these memories are what shape us, but in doing so we yet again rush right past the soft, gentle interactions that we learn and grow from.

There will always be things we need to hurry toward. Some days we just have to run quickly, without looking up, to get out of the rain. Perhaps one day another student in our path will force us to look up and see Royce, but even so, the pressure will never really stop. And yet, there are moments we can hold onto that offer simplicity to make the desperate race in our heads finally slow down.

There are places and people who change us immeasurably, quietly, without us noticing, until we look up one rainy day and realize that they were the compass that guided us. These are the memories I want with me when I leave. I want them here, laid out in front of my eyes and soaked into my skin. I will remember the rare days of rain, the many exchanged smiles and above all else, the warmth that pervades every inch of this place.

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ON DEMAND ON CAMPUS written by ALEXANDRA DEL ROSARIO

illustrations by JULIETTE LE SAINT & NICOLE ANISGARD PARRA

U

graphics by MAVIS ZENG designed by CALLISTA WU

CLA’s streaming culture spans far beyond just BruinCast.

Students, whether they’re catching up on the latest episode of “Game of Thrones” at Bruin Fitness Center or rewatching “The Office” for the ninth time during their chemistry lecture, interact with content in ways unpredicted by the industry’s past. Though streaming has shifted entertainment from TV and movie screens toward the internet, the ever-evolving medium has allowed UCLA students to explore diverse collections of content while helping them find community.

RISE OF STREAMING Within the past decade, consumers turned their attention from the shiny gloss of DVDs and the heft of robust cable sets to the sleek design and seemingly endless variety provided by online platforms. Streaming, naturally, has become a norm in entertainment consumption but has also found ways to stand out from traditional TV and film.

“I’m interested in streaming because it’s ... a brave new world,” said Tom Nunan, a lecturer at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.

Though multiple streaming services have created their own paths to success, Nunan believes Netflix, the DVDrental-service-turned-streaming powerhouse, spearheaded the move to online content. In addition to providing its millions of consumers with an easy-to-use website, Netflix brought an impressively wide selection of television series

34

and movies to its diverse range of users.

“It’s the first time a distribution platform has said essentially, ‘We want to be your platform of choice for content, whether you’re 6 years old or 96 years old.’ ... No one’s ever done that before,” Nunan said.

He said unlike streaming services, broadcast networks like ABC, Fox, CBS and NBC are government-regulated channels that need to adhere to federal ratings and standards. In turn, such online platforms have more freedom to create content that best fits their brand, he said. As most online platforms want to cater to audiences of all ages, they produce content ranging from G-rated kid’s series to R-rated originals containing material like nudity and strong language. Netflix, for example, has created multiple kid-friendly shows but has also produced critically acclaimed TV-MA shows like “House of Cards”

struggles to cater to consumer needs as easily as streaming services do. The online platforms provide consumers with equally gratifying experiences with little to no cost to their pocket or comfort.

With diverse content, high-quality original series and films, Nunan said streaming services also cater to audience members who like to be entertained in the comfort of their homes. Streaming a movie or TV series online takes up significantly less amounts of time than finding a DVD rental distributor or waiting in line for a flick.

Additionally, the comfort of watching in their own homes allows consumers full control over their own viewing experiences. They’re easily able to pause, rewind and watch shows at their own pace, which was essentially unheard of for live TV, Nunan said.

“People were becoming more and more accustomed to watching entertainment at home and dedicating real space and resources to their home entertainment center,” Nunan said. “They would really have to be forced off their couch to go to a cineplex because there’s nothing that can

PRIME BRUIN BINGING GRAPHS

PREFERRED STREAMING PLATFORM

1. PREFERRED STREAMING PLATFORM

PERCENTAGES

81 NETFLIX 12 HULU 4 AMAZON PRIME VIDEO 1 FUNIMATION 1 CRUNCHYROLL 1 NONE

OTHER*

HORROR

DRAMA

COMEDY

3. FAVORITE GENRE TO STREAM ANIME

which contain profanity and sexual scenes.

Netflix’s 2013 remake of the BBC series with the same name was one show the platform produced to prove its original works provide the same high-quality entertainment as programs created by premium channels like HBO and Showtime, Nunan said. The series demonstrated streaming platforms could attach big Hollywood names, such as Kevin Spacey, to their projects and secure a couple of Emmy nominations and awards along the way. Other streaming services soon followed Netflix’s example with their own original series and movies – Amazon Prime Video with “Transparent” and Hulu with “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

The increasing popularity of streaming, like most things, came at a price. On the television side, cable and broadcast networks, according to Variety, experienced a drop of more than 3 million North American subscribers in 2017, citing the high prices for such programming. Cable subscription prices can range anywhere from $20 to over $100 a month, making a, at most, $13.99 streaming subscription for Netflix seem more worth the dollar.

However, streaming hasn’t negatively affected just the television industry, but the movie industry as well.

According to Nunan and evidence provided by the Motion Picture Association of America, the average adult consumer in the U.S. currently sees fewer than 10 films a year in theaters. Nunan attributes this low number not only to theaters’ inability to compete with a home viewing experience, but also their inability to captivate audiences.

“I don’t think the movie studios have figured out how to inspire people to go to the movies anymore,” he said. “I think the problem is that (studios) haven’t figured out how to make the moviegoing experience special, vibrant and addictive the way they’ve been able to do that for TV.” Though cineplexes have introduced measures to make the moviegoing experience more enticing, from high-end concessions to interactive screenings, the movie industry

67

41

3

3

6

* OTHER categories include ACTION, ANIMATED, CULINARY and SCI FI

5. STREAMED WHILE AT UCLA 77

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35

BRUIN BINGING

36

3

3

OTHER*

HORROR

DRAMA

COMEDY

ANIME

Current UCLA students may differ in fields of study, race, gender and background, but one thing remains certain for many of them: Steve Carell and the rest of “The Office” cast know how to entertain.

The 2005 hit comedy series was just one of many shows participants in a 120-student survey said they enjoyed streaming.

Other responses included ABC’s medical drama PRIME BRUIN BINGING GRAPHS “Grey’s Anatomy” and the Andy Samberg-led “Brooklyn 1. PREFERRED STREAMING PLATFORM Nine-Nine.”

In addition to replying with their favorite shows and PERCENTAGES films to stream, students across campus identified their NETFLIX favorite genres to watch, preferred streaming 81 services HULU 12 and the reasons for their selected platform. Nearly 82 4 AMAZON PRIME percent – approximately 98 students – of participants saidVIDEO FUNIMATION Netflix was their platform of choice, citing the1streaming 1 CRUNCHYROLL giant’s diverse selection of movies and shows as one of the 1 NONE service’s appealing characteristics.

Behind Netflix was Hulu pulling in 14 students, taking up 11.7 percent of the breakdown. Similar to Netflix, a majority of the surveyed Hulu users also cited the service’s broad selection as their reason for choosing the platform as their favorite one. However, others also cited price as a major 3. FAVORITE GENRE TO STREAM selling point for the streaming website.

Mel Ohanian, a first-year political science student, said she acquired Hulu Plus through a package that also offered Spotify Premium and Showtime for $4.99 per month.

However, in addition to the fairly affordable price, Ohanian said “The Handmaid’s 67 Tale” initially drew her to Hulu.

Despite completely catching up to the adaptation of the Margaret Atwood novel in a matter of days, Ohanian, like many other student participants, streams her shows for less than five hours a week, 41 more than 12 hours less than the average American watches TV, according to the Nielsen Total Audience Report for the first quarter of 2018. Though streaming can be therapeutic and help pass time, Ohanian 6

said she simply does not have time to stream and watches on her phone or laptop when she can.

“I barely have time to go to the gym, so it’s hard to make watching TV a top priority,” she said. “I’m also a freshman

“

Anything that can be streamed through your phone, you’re going to have a lot of affection for that, most likely.

so I’m trying to get used to the ... quarter system.”

According to the Nielsen report, young adults ages 18 to 34 spend roughly 3 1/2 hours a day on TV-related devices and services, falling behind both younger and older age groups who reached the five- to seven-hour marks. Reasons for the lower viewing hours in young adults can include increased schoolwork and study time, extracurriculars, and jobs, among other things. However, when they do make the time to stream, whether it be for hours a day or minutes a week, students can find ways to make their shows relevant in their lives.

Second-year physiological science student Yael Mendoza uses Funimation Productions, a streaming service which focuses on anime, to watch his favorite series. He spends around five to 10 hours a week watching anime and has watched nearly 600 episodes of his favorite show, “One Piece.” He said he particularly enjoys the show for the way it discusses real-life issues and makes approaching such topics easier.

REASON PREFERRED “It’s 2. one of myFOR favorite shows PLATFORM to stream because it has adventure, these aspects of friendships and it goes into GENRE PREFERRED 15 things that are a lot harder to talk about in real life, like 19 of subtle but it’s in there – slavery and OTHER slavery. It’s kind racism,” he PRICE 8 said. “You may not realize it, but those themes are tied into the anime.”

OF SELECTION 78 saidVARIETY More than half the student participants comedy was their favorite genre to stream. Such students said their favorite series included shows like “Friends,” “New Girl,” “Rick and Morty” and “The Office.”

HOURS PER WEEK USING SERVICE 4. HOURS PER WEEK USING SERVICE DRAMA

compete with your home viewing experience.”

However, streaming owes a major part of its popularity to portable technology. Devices like laptops, tablets and smartphones helped usher in the age of streaming as it played to one of its most appealing characteristics: portability. Depending on their choice of streaming device, viewers can choose to have either a solitary or social watching experience. The ability to stream shows or new content through everyday devices is especially appealing to college students, Nunan said.

“When you’re having a streaming experience, typically it’s coming through a piece of technology that you have a warm relationship with,” he said. “Anything that can be streamed through your phone, you’re going to have a lot of affection for that, most likely.”

When considering price, portability and full control of a watching experience, it’s no surprise that college students, too, have already made the move online for entertainment.

PERCENTAGES

48 LESS THAN FIVE HOURS A WEE 23 5-10 HOURS 24 10-15 HOURS 5 MORE THAN 15 HOURS 41

OTHER*

HORROR

DRAMA

COMEDY

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41

6

3

3

* OTHER categories include ACTION, ANIMATED, CULINARY and SCI FI

5. STREAMED WHILE AT UCLA

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GREY’S ANATOMY

FRIENDS

STRANGER THINGS

PARKS AND RECREATION

77 Zhang, the president of JAC and a third-year English student, said the club is a space to combat the stigma of enjoying and pursuing “nerdy” hobbies like watching anime. The 100-member club hosts anime screenings 61 like61trivia nights, to and various anime-themed activities, 59 bolster a passion for Japanese animation.

54 “That’s the biggest importance of having clubs like these on campus,” she said. “It represents a side of culture that I think is less appreciated, and I think giving it a spotlight and a forum of a club in a big community really helps 43 people find their place on campus and become more comfortable with themselves.”

So far, the student organization has screened episodes of anime series like “That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime” in large viewing spaces in Perloff Hall. During these meetings, students sit together, watch an episode and share their reactions and thoughts with other members, said Jerry Li, JAC’s executive vice president and a third-year biology student. The meeting environment encourages both new and returning members to engage with each other and the anime.

“Viewing in clubs is completely different than watching it by yourself. We want to give members a reason to wait for the screenings at the actual club, as opposed to watching it by themselves,” Li said. “That whole environment where you get to hear what everyone else thinks of the film or show as it’s going on is a very special part of the club, it’s what convinces members to join and stay.”

From club screenings to Westwood dinner debates, BLACK MIRROR

Streaming not only allows student viewers to connect with their favorite characters and plots, but also fosters a sense of community that transcends the confines of the screen.

According to Landau, streaming is a peculiar and paradoxical form of entertainment because although it is a solitary activity, the online format also promotes the creation of entertainment-based connections.

“When you’re watching a show, whether you’re in the same room (as friends) or not, everyone’s participating at the same time. Most people probably choose friends based on who (is) interested in the same shows they are and it just becomes something people talk about,” he said. “You want to be able to be part of that conversation.”

By bringing communities of students together, bingewatching and streaming television is somewhat akin to extracurricular activities, Nunan said.

He added, during his university days, some of the major points of connection were through fields of study or off-campus organizations like sports or Greek life. With streaming and technology now, he said students can also build community based on a common love for genres or shows.

“You can share the content together, you can have clubs where you watch things together,” he said.

One such club is the Japanese Animation Club. The organization seeks to provide anime enthusiasts with a community of other people who share a similar passion for the genre and its various series, said Mary Zhang.

3. FAVORITE GENRE TO STREAM

THE OFFICE

SOCIAL STREAMING

FAVORITE GENRE TO STREAM

ANIME

As it is, UCLA students experience the need to juggle sizable amounts of academic, professional and social stresses. However, their streaming habits and preferences may say something about their own emotional needs for connection and escape, said Neil Landau.

Landau, the assistant dean and co-director of the MFA screenwriting program at the UCLA School of TFT, said the comedy and drama genres – the first and second most popular genres, respectively, to stream among UCLA students – tap into viewers’ desire to live a second life. Living a second life through favorite characters in a comedy or drama series, Landau said, allows viewers to escape the stress of school without any real-life consequences.

Other popular shows among UCLA students, like the dramas “Game of Thrones” and “Grey’s Anatomy,” are series that also allow viewers to become emotionally invested in the characters or the storyline, Landau said. He said the shows can present a kind of microcosm for emotional issues and hardships viewers might be dealing with. Because viewers can see themselves and possibly their own trials and tribulations, such as heartbreak, represented in shows like “Grey’s Anatomy,” they’re able to have some cathartic release and validate their own feelings, Landau said.

Similarly, comedy can speak to viewers’ needs to feel accepted and part of a community, he said.

“It’s a way to connect to a community in a second life as opposed to in your first life. ... There are consequences, you can get rejected or may not be accepted, but when you watch ‘The Office’ you belong, you’re part of that group just by tuning in,” Landau said. “You can play it safe and get that itch scratched.”

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Most people probably choose friends based on who are interested in the same shows they are and it just becomes something people talk about. You want to be able to be part of that conversation.

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THE OFFICE

Mendoza said his interest in anime and superhero series has allowed him to find like-minded communities both on campus and beyond UCLA. He recalled using streaming services as a conversation topic get to know his roommate better and learn about the shows he watches. However, through social media and the internet, Mendoza uses his love for shows like “The Flash” and “Arrow” to connect with other fans.

“I followed the actors on social media and there I found people who are passionate about the show and

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5. STREAMED WHILE AT UCLA

PARKS AND RECREATION

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superheroes in general,” he said. “It’s a good community to talk about the show, what they like or dislike about the new episodes that come out.”

Entertainment, specifically with the rise of streaming 41 platforms, has allowed viewers to find commonalities with others beyond their own communities, Landau said.

Anywhere he goes, Landau said he notices other people using entertainment as a kind of social currency to meet, either physically or virtually, 6and understand each other, 3 3 to lasting connections. leading “Sharing and experiencing the lives of others, (fictional * OTHER categories include ACTION, ANIMATED, and real), plants CULINARYseeds and SCIof FI empathy. It’s like having digital pen pals or friendships on demand,” he said.

BLACK MIRROR

members of JAC use their similar interests in anime as a platform to build new relationships and come out of their shells, Zhang said. When the club isn’t able to show its selected series in their entireties, members will watch the episodes on their own or with a group of friends, allowing them build their own meaningful connections beyond JAC, Zhang said.

But even if students aren’t involved in clubs like JAC, they still find streaming as a way to feel more connected with popular culture and build communities based in their favorite shows.

Ohanian said that the fast-paced nature of streaming allows her to catch up on hit TV shows. In turn, she said she’s able to feel more in the know about buzz-worthy shows.

CUTTING THE CORDS Television networks and movie studios, despite the increasing ubiquity of streaming platforms, continue to produce critically acclaimed and popular content.

With dramas like “This is Us” and “Pose,” cable and broadcast networks have still been able to pull in audience members and high ratings. However, it won’t be too long before TV corporations will completely make the move to online platforms, Landau predicts.

“I think people will continue to cut the cords and you’ll just turn on your TV and you’ll see a bunch of apps,” he said. “You’ll see (entertainment) companies continue to consolidate into fewer and fewer monolithic corporations.”

As the Walt Disney Co. acquired 21st Century Fox and Comcast purchased NBCUniversal, Landau thinks streaming giants like Netflix will soon be taken in by larger corporations like Apple. Such consolidation could mean safer, more brand-oriented content creation supervised by patent companies and their shareholders.

Though movie theaters and cineplexes might take more immersive approaches to cinema, such as including virtual reality, in the near future, Landau said those spaces are becoming increasingly similar to bookstores. Like some bookshops, movie theaters are bound to close as people continue watching movies in the comfort of their own homes.

Nunan also said he believes television networks will soon be a thing of the past and streaming services will become the norm. The future of televised entertainment, he said, will be mostly subscription-based, with the exception of a la carte purchases.

“I envision small-screen entertainment opportunities being driven strictly by show choices, versus network choices,” he said. “If you want to watch ‘Game of Thrones,’ ‘The Walking Dead,’ ‘America’s Got Talent’ or any of your other favorite scripted or unscripted

shows, you’ll either do so via a broad subscription ... or a specific a la carte purchase, like (how) pay-per-view or ondemand works today.”

To students, the future of entertainment platforms remains uncertain. Ohanian said she thinks more original series will result from the continuous growth of streaming platforms. After the precedent of original content from services like Netflix and Hulu, Ohanian said she thinks more original shows will continue to appear since streaming has become a part of daily life.

On the other hand, Mendoza said he doesn’t think TV platforms will necessarily go away just yet. He said while he thinks streaming will continue to grow, cable networks will remain present and will continue their regulated weekly, biweekly or yearly episode paces as before. A oneshot release of all seasons or episodes of a series is not possible, he said, because filming or animating them takes time.

Traditional models like cable television and movies are experiencing drops and their respective watching modes may be a thing of the past. Change in entertainment formats, platforms and distribution is inevitable, Landau said. However, despite the ever-evolving landscape of new media and technology, he said some things will remain constant.

“As technology changes, things will shift,” Landau said.

“But what won’t change is that there will always be a need for new, great stories and great characters.”

PRIME | FALL 2018

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LETTING OTHER PEOPLE MAKE DECISIONS ON MY BEHALF WAS SO EASY, BUT IT NEVER FELT RIGHT. I NEEDED TO STEP FORWARD AND SPEAK UP.

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I WANTED TO REMIND MYSELF TO LIVE LIFE UNAPOLOGETICALLY AND TO KEEP PUSHING FORWARD – CHANGES THAT I’VE BEEN TOO NERVOUS TO MAKE FOR YEARS.

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