UCSD, Successfully Graduating Illiterates Since 1960 Should I go on a Friday, a Saturday, or a Sunday? Should I go alone, with a friend, or a crowd?

Should I go to Mission Beachs fun boardwalk, La Jolla Shores beautiful vista, or Pacific Beachs beautiful people? Should I go early in the morning to watch the tide leave for the day, mid-afternoon to take a nap basking in the sun, or should I go during the sunset when I can be awestruck by the colorful transformations of the sky as the sun leaves for the day? Should I take a sandwich for lunch, some water to keep me hydrated, or maybe just a granola bar to hold my hunger until I leave the beach? Should I wear my simple black Ripcurl swimsuit, the blue ones with black Hawaiian flowers, or my cool O'neill camouflage ones with no pockets? Should I take a football to throw, a Frisbee to play with, or a book to read? Should I take the 30 bus with its unpredictable crowd that is sure to be a source of great tales or should I take my 1993 blue Corolla with no air-conditioning that is sure to be a source of great pains? Or maybe I should convince my friend to drive even though driving with her can best be described as playing Russian roulette. At the beach should I sit next to the two teenage boys playing soccer, or the big family having a big Easter picnic/family-reunion? Or should I spread my blanket near the surfing crowds empty towels for some true peace of mind? Once settled at the beach I realize I wish the weather was just a few degrees warmer and without this uncomfortable chilly breeze that is giving me goose bumps. I wish this family of four would move their bocce ball game. I know one of these times the ball will accidently roll over next to me and they will say, oh sorry.1 I wish these flying custodians of the beach would leave my side and go to another one of the countless parts of the beach that has loose scraps of food. I wish I had not lost my sunglasses a few weeks back during a
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I was totally right. The ball later did roll over and I got the oh, Im so sorry.

flight, could wear them right now, and avoid having to squint all the time. I wish I could one day live in those amazing houses looking over the Pacific. They really do look magnificent. Describe the beach as a feature of student life at UCSD. The assignment seemed so simple and pointless I almost shrugged it off. I dont care much for busy work, I never have. I like learning, but I only like learning things that I think matter. Like sciency things that can help me one day cure a disease, save the world. Stuff like that. I dont need someone telling me to be introspective or pay attention to my surrounding. I do that myself all the time. And the prospect of a poor grade scares me less than a fawn scares a cheetah so that was not going to get me to try hard for this thing. However, in a sudden burst of determination I decided to take this assignment completely seriously and try my best. I picked a fight. To those who know me well, me picking fights should not be a surprise. Im not talking about fisticuffs. Im talking about mental fights. I randomly choose things that interest me, or more recently things that do not interest me at all, and give it my absolute full effort. For example, once as a Freshman, a similar burst of determination had resulted in me standing in a shower-stall for four hours. I still remember some of the minute details of the night three and a half years later, and I can confidently claim that the four hours is not one bit of an exaggeration2. During this time I sent hundreds of text messages and experienced the entire spectrum of intoxication. I was dressed to go out, wearing my number 23 Standford jersey and black Quicksilver shorts, but ended up going only as far as the 3x3 shower-stall of my dorms. Why? Because on my way out of the bathroom I had heard the voice of my Resident Advisor (RA), who was in charge of policing our dorms for things such as underage drinking, which I was definitely doing. And boy did she seem to take her job seriously. For a
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Witnesses available upon request.

few seconds I was scared and retreated to the shower-stall but I never imagined I wouldnt come out for four entire hours as she sat in my dorm and talked away the night with my suitemates. What people that hear the story or were there that night most often ask is why didn't I just give up, walk out, try to walk back into my room, or just hope the RA did not notice my drunkedness? Even when my RA found out, as this story was bound to get around, she asked me how could I possibly stand drunk for four hours and not try to at least walk out of the bathroom and into my room. There are two different answers I give to people who ask questions regarding that night. I tell the majority of the people I was too drunk and didn't want to get caught drinking so early in my freshmen year. The truth is, that is a total lie. The fact of the matter is, even though the thought of walking out of the shower-stall crossed my mind, it was never an option for me, ever. For me this quickly became a challenge. A fight I picked and was not going to lose. After the shock had worn off I had realized the consequences of getting caught would not be that dire. After-all, underage college drinking at the dorms is as common as, well, underage college drinking at the dorms. But, after the first couple minutes gone by I had decided I was going to make it through. There were countless other parties and intoxicated nights that year that I have little memory of. This night I still remember. This fight I randomly picked. This fight I won. Now four years later, this beach assignment had quickly become another fight I had chosen and was determined to win. I think I had chosen this fight because I wanted to believe at some point over the four years of college I had learned to challenge my own stubbornness in believing I knew what matters. I wanted to see what this assignment had to offer before I rejected it if for nothing more than the chance to say, I tried, but I learned nothing. And I

mean it wasnt like the assignment was that difficult to complete. I needed to go to the beach as homework and this being my last quarter in college, at this point I was pretty sure I would NEVER be required to go to the beach as homework ever again while I would regularly be required to read countless more scientific articles at work and maybe even write a handful of my own. I knew I would soon have time to do things that matter. It seemed like a worthy fight to pick. As I later thought about the essay I turned in, which eventually became the opening of this paper, I realized the most salient thing about my experience had not at all been the visit to the beach itself but the fact that I had actually decided to go to the beach and give this assignment a real try. I am sure if this assignment was given to me my freshmen year I would have blown it off and given it the effort I thought it deserved, not much effort that is. So what had I learned throughout my time at UCSD that made me give things that I used to deem unimportant a chance? Why was I so determined to do well on an assignment I was sure would be useless to me and achieving my goals in life? How had I changed over these years? The first obvious area I explored was in academics. I thought about the classes I took and the things that were taught in these classes. This made me think of all the GE requirements I forced myself to battle through. Classes I didnt really like that much, but tried a bit in because they were taught by passionate professors. I thought I had stumbled upon something here. Maybe it was the classes I took, specifically the GE requirements, that made me pick fights and give things a try. However, after giving it much thought, I rested upon the conclusion that it cannot be the classes I took because while thinking about the things I learned in the classes I took throughout my four years here, I realized that I am really graduating college as an illiterate.

Academically I have honestly learned nothing. Im sorry UCSD, but its true. I cannot recall how to solve a convergent infinite series. I have no clue what the Planks constant is, or how it is used in physics. The only thing I remember about Avogadros number is that if there were that many marbles on Earth, it would form a layer about six inches deep3. I cannot anymore tell the difference between an augmented 4th or a diminished 5th even though I got an A+ in music 1A, my only A+ in my four years of college, and definitely answered this very question correctly on the final for the class that I missed no questions on. I also will no longer be able to correctly point out Brocas and Wernickes areas of the brain, let alone tell you about their significance in speech. I know there is a curve for supply, and Im certain that there is curve for demand, but I cannot remember anymore which side of their intersection a company wants to be on. All I learned from ten weeks of professor Churchlands amazing philosophy lectures was that there are multiple branches of philosophy, and something about a Chinese room. I have taken three quarters of CAT, two with Professor Doppelt, and all I can tell you about this program Sixth college so prides itself over is that I would unplug the damn violinist4. Im afraid it gets even worse though. My major is molecular biology. I love science. I enjoy research. I find myself reading scientific articles for fun. I consider biology my TRUE passion and cannot wait to do it as a living. However, I dont recall most of the enzymes of glycolysis I worked tirelessly to memorize. I cant name all the proteins involved in signaling for cell division. I cant tell you which protein is found only in the Golgi

I also know that my best friend whom Ive known since middle school has the exponent of Avogadros 23 number as his birthday. The exponent of Avogadros number is 23 (6.022x10 ). My best-friends birthday is rd October, 23 (10-23). 4 Argument used by Judith Jarvis Thomson to defend the womans right to chose in a paper called A Defense of Abortion

complex and which only in Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER)5. I forget if the cleverly named cancerous gene BAD is a tumor suppressor (tumor-avoiding) or an oncogene (tumorcausing). Even though I absolutely loved every lecture from Professor Seairs Bacterial Genetics class, all I can honestly tell you about bacterial genetics is that bacterial genomes evolve by minimizing their genome size while eukaryotic genomes evolve by expanding theirs, a fact we covered in the first lecture and a class I had only weeks ago. In four years Ive taken 40 classes, equating to well over 80 midterms and about 40 finals. Ive stayed up all-night writing lab-reports and have definitely seen the sun rise on numerous occasions while I finished papers for political science, philosophy, critical gender studies, and of course, CAT. Throughout my college life Ive gone through enough cans of Redbull to personally finance one of those Red bull Mini Coopers, probably more cups of coffee than an average Starbucks sells in an entire day, and at least one entire crate of Cup ONoodles. Yet unless I looked at any of these papers I worked so tirelessly on and lost so much sleep over, I would not be able to talk even 2 minutes about any of them. The fact that it seemed I had learned nothing academically significant in the four years of college classes was a depressing thought to me. However, I knew deep within my heart that I would not trade the past four years of my life for anything in the world and I had changed for the better because of my experience at UCSD. There was no doubt in my mind that college was the greatest chapter of my life and so integral to my happiness that I keep myself in denial about my upcoming graduation. But, looking back and trying to reflect on what had made me really give this beach assignment my full efforts, it seemed I had learned nothing academically valuable from my classes that changed me.

I can however show you which is the Golgi and which is the ER on a map of the cell. I learned it in 7th grade by making a model of the cell using six different colors of play-doh in Mrs. Browns science class.

So I started to look at the most salient experiences throughout my four years of college. I soon realized that many of them were similar to the shower-stall story. Instead of being about the classroom, most my greatest memories were about just normal every-day life. During my four years in college I had wasted my time having fun exploring new things and just truly enjoying my newly found independence. Once during my freshmen year I had stayed out partying and drinking past sun-rise, finally falling asleep well past 6:30a.m on an inflatable island that my dorm-mates and I had erected in the communal kitchen. I was completely blacked-out with five people I had met only a few days before. During the four years I had also met my first-love, traveling the 150 miles to see her every other weekend, getting on a total of four busses and trains6, and never once being upset for traveling the 10 hours to see her for only 44 hours even though it made handling school-work that much more challenging. In my four years I also went through a break-up with said first-love only nine months later, in the middle of my Sophomore year. I was moping, crying, being most likely clinically depressed, gaining weight, the whole nine. Less than a month later I lost my uncle, who had been like a father to me, to ALS7, a debilitating disease that in 24 months took him from full health, to crippled, to dead. I would never see her again. I would never see him again. I was devastated and depressed. During the next few months I was not going out at all and found myself focusing solely on school and my grades. It worked as I did really well in my classes. During this time I refused to move on and continued to feel bad about myself. Eventually, my life-style angered me and I felt disappointed in myself. So I once again picked a fight. I forced myself to use the upcoming summer to help me move on.

The 101 from UTC to Solano Beach train station. The Surfliner to LAX (Not the airport, the train-station). The Purple-line to Wilshire/Western Station, the 720 express to Wilshire/Beverley Glen, then walking 1.2 miles to campus. Total time, EXACTLY 5 hours door to door. 7 ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

That summer for possibly the last time in my life I did NOTHING. I did not work. I did not take classes. I did not really travel8. I did not read books. I did nothing productive. Once when I was talking to my uncle about his disease and how he learned to cope with his diagnosis, his death, he told me in life in order to understand happiness you have to let yourself feel sadness, experience it, then look back and appreciate that ability to feel such a great emotion, and just move on and enjoy the rest of your life. I used the summer to do exactly what he said a bit in his honor but mostly in an attempt to help myself move on. I wanted to give the idea a try because I wanted to win my fight. I thought about her. I thought about him. I cried. I spent time with only my few close friends that I had stayed in touch with since middle-school and my family. Then school started, my Junior year, and it was time to go began anew and finish my fight. To really win. With my new-found time, and determination to change my life for the better, I stumbled across the UCSD Ultimate team and gave something I never thought I would a chance. One Saturday afternoon only a few weeks in the school year I was at the library doing homework with my friend Eric when couple of dudes9 in a blue jersey with a squid on it and a Frisbee in hand suddenly mobbed him. Yo Monstro, wanna go throw as a break? I was totally perplexed. Monstro? The giant whale in Pinocchio? What was happening? Who were these guys? Throw a Frisbee as study-break? What are we, 12? When Monstro returned, I asked him about this frat-like series of events. He told me that he played for the UCSD Air Squids, the UCSD Ultimate club team. I thought to myself: Frisbee? Seriously? People play Frisbee as a sport? And competitively? What a
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I went camping near Don Pedro Reservoir, 140 miles east of Oakland California, for my 19 birthday with some friends. 9 To the fullest extent of the word

th

bunch of little hippies. However, I was a bit too intrigued about this Monstro character to make fun of him for playing with a childs toy and risk having him not tell me more in his spite. I kept quiet and asked him the story behind his name. He said every new person who joins the Ultimate team, the sport apparently was NOT called Frisbee, as a tradition gets a nickname from returning players. This nickname is born out of an info-sheet that first year players turn in to the team upon joining the team. His eyes were gleaming with excitement as he explained to me how his picture had suspiciously resembled an old player and because he had denied any connection to this person they wanted to name him Pinocchio because they thought he was lying. However, in their opinion Pinocchio was a bit lame, so they named him after the monster than ate Pinocchio, Monstro. So that is why he was called Monstro. He then told me about some of the rules, that the sport involved a ton of running, and he tried to convince me it was the most fun game he had ever played. He told me to give it a shot and come out the next Tuesday at 7p.m on Warren field as they were still holding try-outs. I instantly shrugged it off. I made couple of jokes about Frisbee, he smiled and agreed with the ridiculousness of this sport, and we didnt talk about it anymore the rest of the time. I had played volleyball for eight years before starting college and the only thing that had kept me from trying out for the team my Freshman year was the fear of being overwhelmed with school-work. A few months into the year I realized that there really was a lot of downtime and was considering joining the schools club team. However, my longdistance relationship began and my free time dramatically disappeared. However, I missed competing. I never liked the idea of school being a competition and I liked to focus my competitive edge on a sport rather than academics. Therefore, in my attempt to win my fight

over my own self loathing and also do something a bit competitive, I had decided to start going to the gym. I could compete with myself to get stronger and because of the aforementioned series of unfortunate events (the break-up, my uncles death, and my indolent summer) I had gained some weight and going to the gym seemed like the logical thing to do to help me with that area also. However, although I became addicted to the habit and the idea of getting stronger and was going to the gym religiously, I never loved doing it. While at the gym that Monday, I decided to give Ultimate a shot since it apparently involved a lot of running and I hated running on the treadmill. What was the worst that could happen? I would just quit in a few months if I didnt like it. I hated the idea of playing Ultimate, the people seemed too stuck-up to even call it what it was, FRISBEE, but I just wanted to try it out. To give it a chance and see if it could help me. During this school year I met some of the greatest guys I could ever imagine while playing on the UCSD Ultimate team. I learned to love a new sport I could not even call a sport a few months earlier. By the end of the year I had absolutely won my fight. I was happier than I had ever been in my life and doing better at school than ever. And I had definitely come to realize this sport wasnt Frsibee, this was Ultimate. My nickname became Nagana, Nags for short. My info-sheet had a quote that reminded them of Michael Bolton. Michael Bolton had reminded them of the movie Office Space, which reminded the returning players logically of Samir Nagheenanajar. In one specific scene, two talent consultant who are planning to layoff Samir say to Michael Bolton: Samir NagNagwell Nagana work here anymore. That had reminded them of me. I was Nagana. Navid Nagana Zohoury. When they told me I instantly loved it. It was perfectly fitting. People already mistook me for Indian even though Im Iranian, and Office Space was the movie I had

watched with my ex-girlfriend on our first date. As Navid Nagana Zohoury that year I lost a total of 40 pounds and received two of the five Provosts Honors I have received in my four years at UCSD. I was happy and had won my fight. So now with graduation only weeks away, while trying to reflect on my years here at UCSD and how it had changed me and made me want to give things a shot, the only things I felt important in my life were not at all academic related but rather about how I dealt with various real-life situations I faced throughout my four years. It seemed in my four years at UCSD I learned way more about partying, meeting girls, losing a loved one, and playing Ultimate than I learned about physics, political science, philosophy, or even my major molecular biology. How could I justifiably sit here and not feel an ounce of guilt even though on the surface my parents hard-earned dollars seemed to have gone to a complete waste? I had to try and figure out the real role academics had in my college career. I decided to go back to the classroom once again and maybe try to find an over-arching theme. However, all I could come up with is that I may not remember at all how I did something, even after spending months, or in some cases years studying it, but as long as I do the work I can still get recognition for doing it. After-all, in a few weeks I will have a college degree under my arm and as I proved earlier, I am a complete illiterate. And once I have my degree no one will ever ask me most of the sciency things I supposedly learned in college. And the things I may be asked about one day in job interviews, talks, or lectures? I guess the second academic thing I can say I learned in college is that I can sufficiently learn copious amounts of material starting only a few nights before they are needed from me. So overall the classrooms side of college seemed to train me to study, cram, and just get through things and taught me that I can succeed at anything I ever take on even if I dont remember how I did it.

I was definitely not content with the idea that this was the point of college. I wanted to think my parents dollars went even further than just making me arrogantly confident about my future success and ability to do anything I really set my mind to. So I turned away from academics and looked back at these life experiences that seemed to have stuck out during my college life. This is when what I would like to think is the real purpose of college finally dawned on me. Although the University had an outstanding academic environment within the classroom, what was more important was it provided me an environment where I learned to deal with and conquer some tough real life experiences outside the classroom. From outside of the protective and predictable lecture-halls of the university, but still loosely and securely within its grasps because of classes and assignments, I was allowed to safely10 learn about myself and battle through real-life experiences. The university was always there as a back-drop if I needed to return to it in a moment of discomfort if I didnt know how else to deal with my problems. I could always focus more on school if other things in my life were not going well. After-all at least I have never had a quarter of all A+ grades and focusing on school I think at the very least bought me time until I figured out how to handle the issue. Therefore what I think was the most important thing I learned in college is that I had these four years to live by myself, experiment, face real life problems and learn to conquer them. I learned to make friends and establish a network, live on my own11, cook12, fall in love, lose a loved one, to move on, get myself out of depression, have fun13, try out

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Relatively. While living with others. 12 Im still actively trying to expand my menu past pasta, chicken, rice, and vegetables. Me and one friend started a tradition where we drink our fair share of beers on Fridays and cook something random out of that months Home Cooking magazine. 13 study hung-over the next day.

something new and different, and when looking to solve a problem, just always give things a chance. I feel these are truly invaluable lessons that I successfully learned only because of college. I came to college thinking I can, and I will, learn everything about molecular biology and that academics was the main point, however now I realize SO WHAT if I forget exactly the things I am suppose to know. It was not about the books and grades to begin with anyway. College was about learning how to win the fights one faces throughout his or her life. So now Ive decided to pick a new fight. Ive decided to use my education and opportunity in this world to somehow make the world a slightly better place. Its going to take a long time. Its going to be a hard fight. But Ive picked this fight, and thanks to UCSD, I will win this fight. So thank you UCSD for graduating this illiterate and teaching him how to fight. Keep up the good work.