Best memories come from time well spent

Johanna Davy
Published: Monday, June 14, 2004

I’ve been at the Daily Bruin for five quarters. I wish I had been here for all four years.

I am almost 22, graduating with two unemployable majors (French and English), and about to head off to Montpelier, France, to teach English to French children.

There are a lot of things I wish I had done differently at UCLA (studied more, joined more clubs), but I don’t regret the time I spent at The Bruin.

Some of my fondest memories include wandering around Westwood singing “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” with the A&E music writers, playing spin the bottle at 4 a.m., and finding out at the Daily Bruin banquet that a bunch of A&E girls had made out with a certain male writer.

I’d been a Bruin reader since my freshman year, but the thought of joining never occurred to me until winter quarter of my junior year, when I went to a party thrown by my friend who was then head of the design department. I met a bunch of Bruin people and thought, “Why not apply?”

In spring quarter of ’03, the A&E department switched from a daily page to a weekly magazine, which gave us more creative freedom but caused me endless irritation when I would see people pick up the newspaper on Thursdays, pull out the magazine – and put it back on the newsstand! Grrrr.

We work hard, people. It’s not all free movies and interviews with Ashton Kutcher.

I don’t know where my life is going after next year – whether I’ll pursue journalism or marketing or PR or achieve my ultimate goal of becoming a trophy wife.

But if I can give one piece of advice to my fellow Bruins (and these Daily Bruin columns are all about strangers giving advice that will probably be ignored), it would be this: This is your time. Don’t waste it. It will be over before you know it.

Davy was a 2003-2004 dB Magazine film writer.