To summarize the first week of AYA in one word, it would be “new”. The first week of AYA consisted of me meeting new people who come from different schools and locations. I got to learn about a lot of individuals’ hobbies, passions, and their reason for joining AYA. The first thing I did when I came to USC and the Annenberg building, was explore the outside of it. Thankfully I was able to find the building with the help of my parents, USC is very large so I was happy that I could easily navigate the streets and paths.
I liked the buildings architecture and style, I thought it was very classy and old school, I loved the red and gray brick. When I first arrived at the Annenberg building during the welcome breakfast, my mind was filled with terror, I was nervous about what to expect. I’m not a very talkative individual, so me meeting new people was pretty frightening, I didn’t want to come off rude or weird.
However, the staff were very professional and welcoming. I like Mr. Rogelio’s calm and cool composure and his relaxed tone, I think it put me in the right mood and showed me how the class atmosphere was going to be. Mr. Lopez was very passionate in his presentations, I could tell he put a lot of thought into it, I also admired his experience in Journalism. His work experience at KTLA definitely made me more calm about the class. Their have been many instances where teachers aren’t the best at explaining things, but Rogelio and Mr. Lopez is certainly not a part of that group.
As far as how the class went, I think everyone is pretty shy to talk out loud. Everybody, including myself, is pretty afraid to answer questions and give feedback. One thing that I think people are definitely not looking forward to, are the facilitating in Mr. Rogelio’s class. For me, I have never facilitated a conversation, it is not something that we do at our school, so I have no idea how to not make a conversation go smoothly.
Outside of the classroom, I enjoyed taking long walks around the USC campus, the entire campus is very beautiful. There is lots of greenery, statues, and buildings, my favorite building is probably the USC Marshall building. I took some pictures of Tommy Trojan, another statue at the quad, and a sticker I bought from the USC Bookstore.
Something I enjoyed during the first week at AYA was the two field trips we went on to the African American Museum and Japanese American Museum. Something I liked during the trip to the African American Museum was the different sculptures and paintings in it. I have never been a huge art guy, but these sculptures were very unique and weird, so I liked that aspect of it. My favorite sculptures were the heads and glass artwork.
Communicating Change 