Explore USC: Day 2 - Finally at USC!

Obligatory photo with Tommy Trojan.

After waking up for approximately the fifth time, and still finding that the digits on the iHome begin with 03, I decided to give up sleep for the day. It was clearly not working out. Instead, I had the marvelous idea to watch British YouTubers vlog at Venice Beach. In light of the previous day's events - not a great idea. Anyway, watching vlogs, staring at the parking structure outside my room and reading through the spring class schedule at USC somehow managed to take away 4 hours of my life, so soon enough it was 7 a.m. and time to get up.

My plan was to check out from the Radisson at 9, and arrive on campus by 9:30, which was the time the registration was set to begin. Ahem, I'm not too great with getting ready in the morning (mostly due to my eternal dissatisfaction with my hair, which I happened cut by 9 inches 2 days earlier) and I also forgot to hang my overpriced breakfast selection on the door, which left me with nothing but a Neapolitan wafer bar I'd brought from back home, but other than that I was all good, and ready to go.

After looking through the drawers three times and taking five pictures of every single piece of furniture, I finally took off, down to the reception, got my $100 deposit back, and off I was to USC. That's right, I was about to step onto the campus I had been dreaming about for the past five years. And it was intimidating.

It was intimidating, but also incredibly beautiful. All those buildings I saw in pictures - the Von Kleinsmid Center, the Doheny Library, but even Birnkrant Residence Hall - materialized in front of me, and instead of being underwhelming the way I thought they would me, they all managed to blow me away. I mean, we all think promotional photos and glossy brochures are filled with color-corrected, over-edited photos that have the pure intent of luring people in, but that's not the case with USC. The University of Southern California is even more stunning in real life.

Honestly, I almost got lost, since I was so busy looking around campus that I probably missed about three of the arrows saying EXPLORE that were supposed to lead me to check in. But I somehow got there anyway, and was greeted by an incredibly friendly & enthusiastic (this just about describes everyone I met) Theater major girl, who took my luggage and led me to check in, where I was given a free T-Shirt, a name tag and a folder that completely singled me out as an Explore student, but contained the campus map and program so necessary for the day. They also paired me up with a girl called Joanne, as we were both there on our own.

I have no idea what that Xxii was doing there...

The first program we took part in was the campus tour, the best part of which was our tour guide, Maddy, walking backwards. Anyway, she basically told us how back in 1880, USC had one building (now Alumni House), and the rest was all mustard fields, but then the university gradually started growing, and now it's midst one of its biggest ever projects, University Village. She also told us about the rivalry between Anna Bing and Eileen Norris and the inverted fountain resulting from it, the USC Instagram spot, and about the one person who actually joined the other tour group when the opportunity was given. And about a lot more, of course, but I won't spoil it for you - after all, who knows, you might end up visiting me there one day!

Next up was the USC Bookstore, which Joanne and I visited with two other girls - another Joanne and Alyssa. The bookstore, well...it's full of USC merch. Seriously, not just baseball caps and T-Shirts, but fuzzy socks and bobblehead dolls and bamboo salad tongs, and - as a prospective Trojan - I was inclined to buy all of it, even after seeing the hefty price tags. Yet it is in these moments that I appreciate my indecisiveness, thankfully, so I ended up leaving with nothing more than a key chain and kitchen magnet. And I feel like I made the right decision.

Following our bookstore adventure, we took part in a neighborhood bus tour, in one of those cool USC buses...

...with the coolest tour guide in the world, who berated everyone who had never been to In-N-Out Burger before - me included - and basically only talked about food. Well, mostly at least. Anyway, I couldn't really get that much out of the bus tour, but if I had to pick my favorite part of the 'hood, I'd pick the Greek Row. It was like a scene out of the movies...

After the tour, we had an hour to eat, so we decided to go to this "hidden gem" restaurant on campus, called Lemonade (it's actually a chain, but I didn't know that back then...). Erm, I guess the admission counselor guy we'd asked told all the Explore students about his secret place to eat, because by the time we arrived, Lemonade seemed not so hidden. And most people there wore name tags and were carrying folders around. Aside from that, though, food at Lemonade was perfect. I also tried red velvet cakes (you know who you are, thank you for the suggestion!), which I've been trying to find ever since in Hungary. So far, I have failed.

This is where USC students eat. For real.

Lunch was followed a Thematic Option presentation, which is basically a reading and writing heavy honors alternative to the general education curriculum. I, personally, have decided to apply and am struggling with the application questions ever since ("What do you feel ambivalent about?"), but Joanne virtually ran out after hearing the words "reading" and "writing" so many times. The guy giving the presentation was pretty funny, though ("Ask a question! Any question! Even what USC stands for!" or "That's why the graduate employment rate is so high here! USC just hires everyone after commencement!")

And now comes the best part...the Welcome Presentation, held at the Bovard Auditorium! I'm going to summarize it in bullet points:

• Kirk Brennan, the Director of Admissions, is the best. And he's a pretty avid Twitter user.
• Miloni Gandhi, the Associate Director of Admissions who admitted me, welcomed me personally on stage, and I even had the chance to wave at her & she waved back and it was perfect.
• In the application, we had to describe ourselves in three words. Here are some examples: worthy, of, admission; "very weird" as one word; "quirky", written about 50 times (for the record, I think one of my words was "scripturient")
• Best invention, according to two admitted students: the Common Application *facepalm* (I put the toothbrush, though, so I'm not judging)
• SURPRISE PERFORMANCE BY THE TROJAN MARCHING BAND!!! And the admission committee just started dancing out of the blue! And we all had to hold up the victory sign. And everyone check out the marching band!

The Kids Aren't Alright

This will be a little anticlimactic now, but after the Welcome Presentation, the four other School of Cinematic Arts students and I went to our school-specific presentation, where we toured all (well, a lot) of the film school. We saw a Foley room, a sound stage, many screening rooms, old cameras and hundreds of signed film posters. We also got another gift bag, and an SCA T-Shirt that I wore on my first day back at school. There was also a video introduction and a student panel, and I loved every moment of it.

When this was done, I was matched up with my host, Megan (shoutout to Megan!), who has the best shoe collection in the world and is also a Critical Studies major. We then got my luggage, dragged it across campus, went up to her dorm room, then went on another tour around campus (the fountains! the fountains!). Oh, and we also had dinner at the main dining hall in between, and I had a milkshake (called Chocolate Sunscreen) at Ground Zero, an amazing performance café with live music. And I also met lots and lots of people and had an amazing time, and proceeded to fall asleep at 8 p.m.

So many fountains.

The Traveler, USC's official mascot.

Random campus photo.

The rest of the night is vague...Megan went to the library, I slept on the floor in my sleeping bag, I began re-reading my application and realized that I forgot everything I knew about post-modernism, and...and...

TO BE CONTINUED

Arctic Monkeys Concert

Prior to attending this concert, I had the privilege of seeing one Arctic Monkeys T-shirt in person - mine. Now I don't know whether I can ever wear that shirt again without sacrificing the last shreds of my individuality. Especially since, thinking it would be completely original to wear a flower crown, I had to face the fact that about 80% of the girls present had the same marvelous idea. So. Many. Flower crowns. So. Many. Arctic Monkeys T-shirts. I mean, where did they even get them from? I had to order mine from Etsy, and for some mysterious reason it shipped from Bulgaria.

Anyway, the concert being discussed here took place at the Volt Festival, which is an annual music festival in Sopron, Hungary. I'm not much of a festival person myself (don't mind the festival, do mind the all drunk people), but, I mean, I'd been longing to see the Arctic Monkeys since SEVEN years, so I had to be there without question. I bought my ticket the first day it was available, and within the first hour. And so began this epic journey...

...which continued at 11 AM at the train station. Now, I was a bit worried about getting there, since I knew absolutely no directions or transfer options whatsoever, but all my worries evaporated when three kids about my age sat down next to me. From then on, the three hours spent on the train were a blast. We talked about the concert, about traveling to London, about not exactly liking our capital city, about how the Russians have a separate word for three-day sleep deprivation and so on... I didn't even get to continue reading my copy of On the Road, which I've been struggling with for a year precisely.

By the time I got to the venue, it was 4 PM and by the time I found my friends, it was 4:30 PM, since during the time I took the bus there, they were walking down to the station. What a perfectly coordinated meeting, right?

We still had a couple of hours to kill until the concert started, so we left the venue and were walking around town and, well, this is the part of the day that is better left censored... Erm, so, long story short, while the friends of my friends were eating shrooms and going psycho with seven other people in a one person tent, my friend and I went to see the opening act, which was The Strypes. And they were surprisingly good, really! I spent my time staring at the lead singer, who happens to be gorgeous, but it turned out that he's younger than me, so I transferred my affections to this random guy standing next to me. So it was perfect. Well, except for the tiny detail that I urgently needed to use the bathroom - which is a total mood killer. Oh, and that I couldn't change my camera's settings from B&W to color. And I couldn't find the flash either...

The first color photo I took - of The Strypes

By the time I got back from the bathroom, a huge crowd had gathered in front of the main stage and I couldn't find my friend. Nice. But after a couple of phone calls, raised hats and aggressive elbowing from my part, I did manage to find her, she dragged me into the great sea of Arctic Monkeys T-shirts, and before I noticed, we were already in the front rows. And we were pushed and kicked and jumped upon, but there we remained.

AND THEN IT WAS 9 PM AND THE CONCERT STARTED. And...they were there!! The four of them, they were there, in front of me, and suddenly I couldn't see because everyone was raising their hands and I couldn't hear because everyone was screaming and then they started playing Do I Wanna Know? and we were all singing along and my gosh, it was good! I mean, it wasn't 2007 Glastonbury good, but it was as good as it gets! Here's a video of it that I did not film (mine turned out to be OK, I just don't upload videos that much) but it's the best you can get!

So the concert lasted about one and half hours, and it was a blast. Really, all the reviews I've read since unanimously agree that it was boring and that they played lifelessly, but I couldn't disagree more. It was a decent concert. Apart from the ones in the UK, it was like every other Arctic Monkeys concert. I don't know what everyone was expecting and I'm sorry they didn't get what they hoped for, but personally, it was everything I wanted to see and hear and experience. The only thing I disliked was the setlist, which - apart from a few classics - was mainly from AM. Now, AM is my least favorite album of theirs, and not hearing much of their previous songs, especially When the Sun Goes Down, kind of broke my heart. I mean, they performed 505 which partly mended it, but still... Anyway, despite that, this was absolutely the best concert of my life. It was also my first proper concert (bad Hungarian bands and that arcane Patti Smith concert don't count), but it was the best.

Here are some photos:

Following the concert, we roamed the streets again, bought/stole posters, packed up, went dancing and before 3 AM, I was on the bus taking me to the station. 

The train was full of sleeping people, and I joined in.