A New Experience - LA week 1

(Also enjoy this photo from LA with the sunset and my macarons)

Moving to Downtown LA was not ideal yet it was something I’ve dreamed of doing for two years. When ASU presented the opportunity to students to do a program in Los Angeles back in 2021, I immediately knew it was what I wanted. Originally, I had planned to participate in the digital broadcasting program our school has in LA, but earlier this year, our school created a new program called the “Content Studio.” It would be a program where students learn to make social content not only for brands, but also for themselves to grow their own identity.

Social media is another thing that I have always been interested in. I love the way it allows stories to be told and voices to be heard. I want to be part of that atmosphere.

If only it was easy to move to another city for a few months and for Los Angeles to not be the place for all social media happenings.

I started my journey to Los Angeles a couple days before the program began to give myself sufficient time to get adjusted to my new surroundings. Although I’m starting to realize there will never be enough time to get adjusted to Downtown Los Angeles. To all the noise, car honks, people and street lights, it’s a lot. And bonus for my experience, a homeless person starting a trash fire in the middle of the night to trigger the fire alarms in the apartment building.

Luckily, my mom drove over from Phoenix with me and we tried to make an adventure out of it, but that was hard when we were getting on each other’s nerves and running on very little sleep. We also quickly discovered how much I hate driving in Los Angeles. I’ve been to the city before, but driving in it is a whole other giant to face. Let me just say, I’ll be walking a lot to my destinations.

We got to the apartment building I would be living in and came to see how difficult it is to even try to park at one of these places. After a failed gate card, tears (lots of them), and another trip to resident services, my gate card to the parking garage finally worked. And then came another breakdown.

Everything had caught up to me. All the emotions, the lack of sleep, the realization of what I was doing.

Literally all of it.

In that moment, and even in the ones leading up to it, I questioned the short-term move. I didn’t feel ready to leave my mom, my cats, my friends or the city that I now call home.

It’s taken time, but I’m slowly adjusting to the new setting. Yes, I still cry when my mom sends me a video of my cat meowing or talking to my friends on Zoom wishing I was there, but settling into a routine has helped me.

I go to school for 8 hours a day, come back to the apartment, chat for a bit or walk to the nearest grocery store and then go work out. And if I have some time, squeeze in the next episode of Love Island and gossip about the trashy men on the show with my roommate.

At school, I sit in an office building, antsy to be doing something other than sitting. I enjoy making content for myself and even developed my own podcast, an idea that finally materialized after years of thought into what it could look like. I’m looking forward to what the program will teach me, the skills I’ll gain throughout these next 10 weeks and the media I’ll produce.

Yet it still doesn’t feel normal. I can have my routine and my places I go to every day, but I still feel out of place. Like I was plucked from Phoenix and just dropped in Downtown Los Angeles, expected to know everything when I really just kind of want to go home to my people. Some days it hits harder than others, but I know that I’m only here for a short amount of time and then I’ll be back with the ones I love in no time. And who knows, maybe I’ll come to love LA, but for the time being, my heart is home.