UCI Fencing Club (12/06-08/07): The UCI Fencing Club is a club dedicated to practicing and competing in the art of fencing. It is an extension of a beginner fencing class at the Anteater Recreation Center on campus. The club meets every Wednesday and Friday night to practice and teach new techniques. We participate in competition both in the club and at other school such as UCLA, USC, and UCSD. Participation in the club was one of the first times I’ve engaged actively in an intensely competitive sport. The greatest reward from the program is learning to manage myself and having responsibility toward commitments, as well as improving my work ethic. Practicing for a competition in epee takes patience, hard work, and most of all, time. I learned to make the most out of practice, show up on time, and manage my schedule in order to properly fulfill the commitment I’ve made to all the other people in the team. I improved my work ethic in pushing myself to keep practicing 2 or 3 hours in where my thighs burned and I couldn’t see from the sweat dripping into my eyes.

Jiu Jitsu (05/07-Present): I attended and train Jiu Jitsu both at the ARC with a small Japanese Jiu Jitsu class which meet for two hours every Monday and Thursday, as well as during summer at the Gracie Barra Brazilian Jiu Jitsu School. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is a martial art which involves largely joint-locks and take downs. It is a complicated martial art and takes years of hard work and training to master. Though it is largely an individual sport and martial art, what I have learned most of all from it is teamwork. In practicing a sport in which one could easily cause major injuries to your sparring partner, one has to learn to trust and depend on your opponent. However, in practicing long hours with my classmates I learned to not only trust them, but also depend on them in my training. I also learned to be able to accept more feedback from other people. One needs to pay attention to criticism in order to improve in such a physically and mentally challenging art, thus I learned not to be defensive about criticism, but instead use it to improve my technique.

National Society of Collegiate Scholars (04/06-Present): NSCS is a national scholars association which involves scholarship, internship, and volunteer opportunities on the national scale and an active club at UCI. The club is involved in fundraisers for disaster relief efforts and for the club, volunteer project, and social events. Though participating in the club on a weekly basis has taught me many things and helped me develop many important managerial skills, the most important thing it has taught me is communication. The club is full of people from very diverse and different backgrounds. Being an academic oriented organization it also has many members who have strong opinions on many different subjects. Being myself often very stubborn in my beliefs and thoughts this led to disagreements. However, I learned to give proper weight to other people’s opinions and to express my own in a respectful and logical manner.