I visited the UCLA School of Dentistry today. As you would expect the experience was a bit harrowing, and I didn’t even have any work done. When it comes to South Campus I’m automatically lost. I asked a cute dental student how to get to the Student Affairs office and he walked me down the stairs. If there was a Trivial Pursuit about UCLA and we had to identify buildings on a map, I’d so lose when it came to the Health Sciences building and all of South Campus. It’s a good thing I didn’t show Oso that part of campus, or I would have lost my credibility as a tour guide. I found a good friend and former staff member from MEChA Calmecac, M, working as an information officer in the officer. She gave me two manila envelopes full of testimonials from dental students talking about how the astronomical fee hikes have personally affected them.

I left the school, following the directions M gave me which would have led me back to my usual part of campus. Instead of returning to Kerkchoff, I headed over to the Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden. Despite being at UCLA over 7 years, I’ve never actually been to the garden, but today I made it before closing time and wandered around for a bit. Since it was a pretty gloomy day, there were only a few people there. Once I was further into the garden, the only indicator I had that I was still at UCLA and in LA was the hum of traffic on the eastern end of the garden and the sight of a high rise Health Sciences building.

I took a seat on one of the many benches and started going through the two envelopes and 81 testimonials. I chose the bench because it was surrounded by a bunch of bamboo with all sorts of carving. There were figures in an Asian language, hearts with initials like “RD + PK, 1999,” and random words.

I found the message above most inspirational.