i (heart) uva

Hi, I’m Alice and I’m currently a second year at UVA. My anticipated major is Anthropology, possibly a double in Foreign Affairs. Long story short: I was born in New Jersey but I have lived in Taiwan since I was four years old. I went to a little bilingual school in a city called Hsin Chu. My interests are all over the place. At the moment I love alternative music, strawberries, Arsenal (CL draw in three hours!), 30 Rock, New Orleans and this Korean drama called Boys Before Flowers.

It is almost 3 AM right now. One thing I learned at UVA is that there are NEVER enough hours in a day to do everything you want! Thursdays are my long days BUT I have Fridays off! After classes ended today, I headed towards the Second Year Dinner Series. SYDS is basically a dinner where you can eat really good food and have a roundtable talk with professors and faculty. We really do have an amazing set of professors and faculty here, they genuinely love to hear what we think and LOVE to tell us what THEY think. Haha. It’s their job anyway. The food was SO good. Dinner was paella and tortellini. Dessert was homemade coffee ice cream and soft cookies. I’m hungry all over again thinking about it. So onto the point of the post:

Why did you choose to come to UVA?
My brother attended UVA too. He is both the reasons why I wanted and did not want to come to UVA. He always told me how great UVA was and I always looked up to him. But it was also one of those “I was growing up in his shadow” ordeals. And then I thought, well my brother is graduating and UVA is big anyway - so no one that knew him will know me, right? Wrong. But that’s a whole other story that I can elaborate later! Haha well, another important reason is that I got into my other first choice, it was a much smaller school that was focused on a particular area of study. What if I found out I hated it or didn’t like the subject at all? Which turned out to be true, by the way. Most people don’t end up majoring in their intended major. I know this is true for many of my friends who had pre-med or pre-comm dreams that drifted into Astronomy (seriously), East Asian Studies or Studio Art. You are exposed to so much more here and when you find your passion - the sky is the limit. And at UVA, there are so many opportunities you can take part in. Plus, did I mention how beautiful UVA is? I’m beginning to smell spring in the air. It’s going to be gorgeous.