As UCLA students, we are always reaching for the next biggest thing as ambitious, high-achieving people. However, ambition without passion is simply a transaction. A piece of your soul is bartered for a piece of external validation.
When we leave college and no longer have grades to define us, please remember to keep curiosity alive and never stop learning and growing. I want you all to remember it's your relationships with the people around you that shape who you are.
I like to think that my journey at UCLA can be defined by the Hall-Petch relationship. I was told this was going into the MRS newsletter, so I’m going to make A LOT of MSE references (sorry)! The Hall-Petch relationship explains how smaller grains in metals make it stronger because they stop dislocations from moving, making the metal less soft, bendy, and harder to deform.
The experiences that made me feel the smallest, and not because I'm 4'11, make me harder to deform now. What's college if you haven't experienced a class with Professor Morris Wang and CAPS? I kid (a little). It's because of Professor Wang that I know what the Hall-Petch relationship is.
I used to struggle intensely with comparing myself to others, but when I leave this place, I don't want to be a derivative of other people. I want to define my success on my own terms and not with respect to others.
Another thing I learned in my metals class is that there are trade-offs to everything. For example, when you add carbon to iron through the process of carburization, it strengthens the iron but makes it more brittle and less ductile. So when we add too much stuff, or carbon, onto our plates, there are trade-offs to what we can devote our time to. Then, sometimes, we as people become too brittle and fracture. What I'm trying to say is, sometimes less is more. Sometimes we need to be more ductile and accept that we can't solve every single problem that comes our way (for now). But the important thing is to always try again later.
I added a lot of materials engineering references to prove to my parents that I made paying tuition worth it and that I gained an education. Thank you mom and dad. A little bit of gratitude goes a long way, so if you read this, I want you to thank those who helped shape you into the person you are today, whether that be your parents and professors, or friends and enemies. Thank you, Professor Kakoulli, for teaching me that without people in the past to learn from, we wouldn’t have the foundation of ideas to build on today.
