When I committed to attend UCLA, I kept on hearing the same piece of advice repeated over and over: "Hit the ground running." It is sound advice, because the quarter system goes by quicker than most people expect. Imagine surviving your first week of classes. You're just getting settled in, and you think that you can actually survive this term. Then imagine going through your second week of classes, and realizing that you're halfway to midterms already. If you're unfortunate to have a major in the life/physical sciences or a mathematics related discipline, you'll probably already have taken a midterm or you'll have your first one next week.

This tends to breed panic in most people, and it certainly did so when I first arrived at UCLA. Lower-division classes require less work, not because the reading is easier to comprehend or because there's less work to do per week, but rather because someone else is probably not doing their work because they expect the class to be easier or they're procrastinating. That means that the person is doing less work relative to me, and I end up earning a higher grade. The simple fact is that nearly everyone is smart at UCLA, but not everyone does their work on time. Upper division lecture-based classes are typically half the size of their lower division equivalent, and so the fact is that I have to master the material in greater detail to get the same grade because there are fewer people in the class. The amount of effort put into the class is always a variable, and I've been in classes with a hundred other people where the class distribution has been released and some person has received a final grade of 12%.

That's why everyone said "hit the ground running" to me when I first started out at UCLA, because no one wants to be the person comforting the student who's just failed their political science upper division class with a 12%. I found the advice quite amusing. As eighteen year-olds go, I thought I knew everything. I never verbalized this, but in my head, I was wondering, "What did they think I was doing in high school? Taking naps all day and sleeping in class?" I had successfully survived four years of honors classes, taking at least six classes a semester (although in senior year there was an option to take five), did internships and extracurriculars, and did ad hoc tutoring for my friends and peers as necessary. But the simple fact is that discipline in high school and discipline in university are two different beasts. Entirely.

I quickly learned that when your parents aren't around to check in with you, even if they're like mine and ask me to take a break to avoid deteriorating my already-bad eyesight even further, it's quite easy to get sidetracked and to browse the black hole of the Internet for hours upon end. It takes more discipline, not because I hadn't learned it in high school, but because I had to apply it in new and creative ways to ensure that the same level of productivity I achieved in high school could also be brought over to university as well. In plain terms, I had to learn a new level of discipline. (I'm still working on it.)

I have to amend that piece of advice. I do my readings when I have spare time, not just the day before. I am always thinking about my work not only for this quarter but for next quarter too. Occasionally, I will actually do next quarter's readings during school breaks, so I won't be overloaded with reading over nine hundred pages of Anna Karenina and watching the 2012 movie in the two days before a ten-page paper comparing the two works is due. So I got told "hit the ground running." But people hit the ground running, and then they run out of breath and start to walk instead. It's not a useful way of life, and so I want to amend that by saying instead, "never stop running."

No matter where I am, I don't want to stop running. It doesn't mean I want to forsake fun and pleasure indefinitely for work, because I do believe in a healthy balance of the two. Rather, it's that work isn't something to be started on with a blaze and end with a whimper. That usually results in an end product that no one's too happy with because the overall quality of the work is lower. I believe in keeping a schedule and maintaining discipline. It is incredibly hard. I like spontaneity and value opportunities to enjoy my college life outside of exams and papers. But I don't like to lose sight of what happens after graduation, and as frightening as the prospect sounds, I want to be prepared for that eventuality. So I don't stop running.