Darren's 340 Blog

  Online Classes I was supposed to study abroad in Korea during the spring semester but the week before my flight, USC cancelled the program altogether because of coronavirus. As a result, I ended up having to take online summer classes in order to make sure I could still graduate on time. Instead of the 18 units I would have gotten from studying abroad, I was only able to get 12 units from the summer courses. This made it so I have to currently take 20 units in order to make up for those lost units and still be able to graduate on time. It’s a bit daunting to be taking so many units in a semester and I hope this semester won’t be too stressful. Since I had summer classes, I ended up getting used to online classes. Since there aren’t any in-person classes this semester and I don’t have to walk to them, it’s a lot more convenient to take classes. I don’t have to worry about getting up extremely early to get ready, nor do I have to worry about being late and missing the bus to school...

Love, Loss, and What We Ate by Padma Lakshmi I chose to read Love, Loss and What We Ate because I thought that love and loss would make for interesting topics to read about and of course, was curious about food as well. In her book, Lakshmi talks about her failed marriage, her illness, her childhood and family, her young adult life and career aspirations, and her daughter. In the midst of all these topics, she always finds a way to weave the topic of food into her writing. She talks about how certain foods comforted her and brought back memories and how her desire for food keeps her moving forward in life. Her thoughts on food are very novel to me because she has gone all over the world tasting all kinds of unique foods. She talks about how she has had cheap food, expensive food, European food, American food, and Indian food. She has also been on a few cooking shows. Whenever she feels down, Lakshmi goes for Indian food full of spices that reminds her of her mother and her upbringing...

  What If We Could Make the Sun Do Our Bidding? Pollution? Gross, Get Rid of It I woke up to the slightest tint of red light peeking through my curtains when I woke up for class at 9:30AM on a Wednesday. “Wait a minute,” I thought to myself, “Shouldn’t the light be brighter at this time?” I got up and decided to let the light in fully, hoping the red light didn’t signal a fire in my own yard. The extended news about the California wildfires was all the danger I needed in my life. Thankfully, there was no fire. But as I drowsily looked out the window, I questioned everything. Why was the light level the same as the brightness of the pre-dawn sky? Had time broken? The sky was completely overcast with a strong red tint. By the time my first class was over at 12PM, the sky was even darker. I learned that the wind had carried smoke and ash from fires from Northern California and Oregon, scattering the sun’s rays above the layer of clouds that typically defines San Franciscan weather. Wh...

  Love, Loss, and What We Ate by Padma Lakshmi When I first began reading this book, I was under the impression that Lakshmi was going to talk extensively about her marriage and her subsequent divorce. However, she gets to the main points very quickly in the first chapter. Even though she doesn't talk about it for too long, Lakshmi uses an assortment of adjectives and descriptive language to bring the story of how she met, married, and divorced her husband to life. Lakshmi carefully balances out her complaints with her reasons for being happy. I could clearly see how she had many misfortunes in her life, but the way she wrote made it so it didn't sound very irritable. Lakshmi begins many new ideas in her book by honing in on some related element that is part of the story that the reader is coming across. While this sometimes made me confused as to where the story was going, it made the transition very smooth and kept me from experiencing a feeling of choppiness. The most detai...

  Undergraduate Student Consultant Most people from Marshall don’t know what an undergraduate student consultant is. If I didn’t have my East Asian Languages and Cultures double major, I probably wouldn’t have known about it either. I first learned about this job from my Dornsife advisor and was an undergraduate student consultant for three semesters. If the pandemic didn’t exist, I would be looking forward to matching with a potential graduate student on campus right now. An undergraduate student consultant, or uSC for short, works with one or more ITAs(international teaching assistants). These ITAs are international graduate students who know enough English to communicate information about their field, but not enough to teach as a proper teaching assistant yet. Most of these ITAs don’t have anyone to speak English with outside of their classes. Even within their classes, they usually speak their native languages with other students from their country. My job is to help the ITAs b...