Tag Archives: usc

L.A. Life

Metro to the Beach!

By Zsuzsa Londe

Here is a suggestion for your Labor Day Weekend: try the new Metro Line to go to the Santa Monica Pier or the beach!  The Expo Line has a stop at the South Campus gate of USC, the Expo Park/USC station. Just walk past Tommy Trojan, continue on Trousdale Parkway to Exposition Blvd, and there take the Metro towards Santa Monica. You could be watching a beautiful sunset off the pier or from the beach within 40 minutes.

Once there, don’t miss a stroll on 3rd Street Promenade, a fun and store-filled walking street just a few blocks from the pier.

HAPPY LABOR DAY WEEKEND!

Here are useful resources:

The metro map/stations: http://media.metro.net/riding_metro/bus_overview/images/806_2016-0522.pdf

How to get the tickets: https://www.metro.net/riding/fares/  ($1.75 one way)

Buying graduate student tickets at USC: https://gsg.usc.edu/resources/tap-program

The Santa Monica Pier: http://santamonicapier.org/

Live webcam of the Pier: http://www.pacpark.com/the-park/live-cam/the-park/

Featured image by Christina House for the Los Angeles Times

L.A. Life, USC

Japanese-American Fusion in L.A.

By Lian Eytinge

Last summer, I had the pleasure of participating in the Global East Asia Program, hosted by the East Asian Area Studies Department. It is a four week summer class that takes place in both USC and a country abroad, in this case: Japan. In this blog post however I want to share with you the great things we did before we went abroad because not only did we get to study and research in Japan, but we also got to learn a lot about Los Angeles and research right in Downtown LA as well!

Photo is author’s own

After our daily lesson on campus, we went to Dodger Stadium and took a tour of the historic ball park. It was a really special thing to do, as they only offer two public tours a day!  On this tour, we learned about the history of the Dodgers team and gained insight on how this traditionally American game opened up and accepted Japanese players. I learned that the Japanese actually share the same reverence to the sport as do Americans and this commonality allowed the two cultures to have a mutual respect for one another. I had never been to Dodger stadium before so this was certainly an eye-opening experience.  With the stadium tour complete, we then went to speak with Mr. Okasaki, a Japanese American who merged his heritage with his passion for baseball, and went to live in Japan to gain experience on a Japanese baseball field. He then returned to the US and earned a job with the Dodgers. He told us about how rewarding it was to sign two Japanese players to the Dodgers as well as shared a couple frustrating stories about the difficulty of translation and cultural difference. It was really inspiring to hear about how he created his own career path by following his heart.

Photo is author’s own

The Japanese American National Museum was next on our list. We went to the Hello Kitty exhibit and saw how a tiny coin purse turned into an international icon for cuteness. Seeing how Japanese Hello Kitty or “Kitty-chan” was able to warm the hearts of people around the world was thought-provoking because it showed how Japanese cute culture is accessible and attractive to people all around the world. Other than the Hello Kitty exhibit, there was the permanent installment of the history of Japanese Americans. This museum is important because it shows what kind of struggles racial minorities face in America and acts as a home to the important history of the  hybrid culture of Asian Americans, specifically Japanese Americans. Going to this museum was such a rewarding experience; you can learn so much from the pieces and the people presented in it. If you’re ever in the Downtown area, you should definitely check out the museum and the area called Little Tokyo that surrounds it!

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Outlook, USC

The Revolving Door

By Zachary Cantrell

Graduation. I can feel it hovering over nearly every conversation I have with my friends, colleagues, family, and even acquaintances, like a ponderous star destroyer, a harbinger of the end times.

“You’re almost done!”

“The last leg…”

“Make it count!”

“The last push!”

It makes me feel as if I am reaching the end of the line. The big race. My life. Honestly, it starts to feel that way sometimes. It’s as if I have lived out my life of education, and beginning my life as… a real person, I suppose? It’s positively daunting. How do I completely construct a new life? I have been wrapping my mind around this for months now, until recently when I began to look at things in a slightly different way. This is not an ending of one life and the beginning of another. Afterall, we only get one life each!

It sounds ridiculously obvious. Of course we only have one life. Here is a different way of looking at it. Last spring, I was in an acting class with a professor named Joseph Hacker, which I enjoyed immensely. One day in class, he said something that gripped me, and stuck with me all this time: “This is the work.” Basically, what we do here is not in preparation for something else. It is not two separate things, the preparation and then the thing, but the preparation IS the thing. It’s all happening, in the here and now, on a continuum.

I could write this off as an isolated circumstance, since I usually like to have more than one credible source on such matters (thank you, Writing 340). However, I was recently in a production of a play by Tom Stoppard called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Forever a fan of Stoppard’s writing, I took his printed words to heart, especially the phrase, “Every exit is an entrance somewhere else.” It nearly blew my mind. Our lives are not a play, with different scenes to mark the biggest moments of our adventure. Life is a revolving door, out of one place and into another. It’s all there, it’s all fair game, and it never stops.

What I am getting at with all of this existential blathering is this: What we did here, are doing here, or will do here at USC is not preliminary. Maybe for some classes it is about going through the motions for the letter grade, or maybe some of the people I met here will never enter into my life again. However, I cannot deny that all of it, “significant” or not, has played an essential part in my identity, here and now.

Graduation is neither an end, nor a beginning. It’s a part of the whole, and a very important one at that. So whether you are walking the stage this Friday, or just beginning your time here at USC, think of it not as a means to an end. Dig deeper. Consider how this university changes you, and how you change it. Because I guarantee that, no matter how big or small the changes are, they are there. And they matter.

Featured image from Pxfuel

Zachary Cantrell is a senior in the BFA Acting program at USC. He has performed in numerous productions during his time here, most recently with Downtown Repertory Theatre at The Pico House. He is also currently pursuing a minor in Cinema. In his free time he enjoys reading, playing racquetball, and bouldering.