The Best Friday Night Ever

As a senior, life can get pretty crazy sometimes. We hear all these stereotypes about “senioritis” and the like. However, this is one of the busiest times of the year for all seniors. Our classes haven’t exactly slowed down. In fact, it’s the opposite. This stuff is the real deal, and the classes I’m in now are incredibly relevant to the industries I want to work in. In addition to all the involvements we’ve maintained outside of the class, there is the added time spent on locking up that full time employment. We are at the peak of recruiting season right now, and all our career centers are in full swing. Applying for jobs, and grad school, and generally planning the next year or more of our lives, is forcing some of us to realize that our friend groups are going to be forced to geographically split soon. I know my Trojan family and the friends I’ve made here are mine for life, but I also realize that we are all going to go to a lot of different places to pursue careers, further education, dreams, and the like. With this realization, I have definitely made it a point this semester to set aside at least one evening every weekend for a large group of friends to get together and have an insane amount of LA fun. This past Friday was probably one of the best Fridays I have ever had as a student here.

On Fridays I have one class that ends at noon. After that I am free to workout, and then I usually do homework until the evening. This past Friday, it was business as usual until about 5:30pm. Me and my fellow freshman academy coaches (one of my involvements I will be blogging about this week) all took it upon ourselves to get some bonding in. I absolutely love all of my co-coaches. In the midst of planning activities for all of our classes and the freshmen we get to work with, we often forget to throw in some co-coach bonding time for ourselves. The stars aligned this past Friday, and about 15 of us (half our staff) were able to hit up UltraZone laser tag in Alhambra. This place is great! It is a two story laser tag arena. We are all pretty competitive and got really into it. At first, we split our coaches into two teams against each other and a third team of strangers. This place has a 3 team system, with each team having its own base. Points are allotted for hitting the base of your two opposing teams, or for shooting the targets on any of your other opponents. However, shooting bases is worth 2000 pts a base. So essentially, it becomes a game of how many people on your team can find opponents’ bases and hit them (some other teams employ aggressive defense). I had the distinct advantage of playing at this particular laser tag arena prior. The first game we played was boys versus girls. I led the latter team to a heartbreakingly close loss. However, when our forces united against two opposing teams, we acted as Team Red and completely dominated. It was a good reminder that together, we are all a stronger team. I hope we can get out and do it again soon!

However, the evening didn’t end there for me. One of my best friends here, Will, was celebrating his birthday that same night. I had planned quite the adventure of Indonesian food, salsa dancing, and karaoke. Given my excellent planning skills, I said goodbye to my fellow coaches, and was able to walk 4 minutes to the Indonesian restaurant I had selected to meet up with my other friends at. They were a few minutes late, but there was still a table ready for all 12 of us. The food was delicious, speedy, and so cheap! I think we all really enjoyed it. I will definitely be Yelping about this place. The service was also wonderful! We had to rush off to a salsa lesson at 9pm, and didn’t order until about 8:20. The food was in front of us about ten minutes after we ordered it, and we were able to leave half an hour thereafter. Luckily, I had picked a salsa club almost directly behind the restaurant for us to attend. Several of our other friends met us there, and we took an intro to salsa class with about 15 of us, as well as other patrons of the club. It was so much fun, and I think we were some of the best students in the class:)

After the lesson was over, the first floor of the studio (La Granada) turned into a vibrant social salsa dancing floor. We all took turns putting our new skills to the test with each other, other people from our lesson, and some new people we met on the dance floor. As a girl, I feel so lucky when it comes to salsa. Most of the pressure is on the guy, as the lead. You just need to be able to keep up as a follow. I am always happy when more experienced dancers ask me to dance, because that is how I get better! Friday night was a night of huge improvement for me, as I danced with lots of partners who had years of experience. I was thankful for their patience, and had a lot of fun! It was also a great workout. I think all of us worked up quite the sweat!

For the final portion of the night, all of us ventured to North Hollywood for some karaoke. I have to say, the setup was a little disappointing. We arrived and saw that the venue was a lot smaller than we would have anticipated. Karaoke seemed to be a secondary activity to the general talking/mingling in the very narrow space. However, our group of now 17 people got in line to start making some requests and we brought the house down. The whole vibe of the place changed, and karaoke became the focus once we started taking the stage. We encouraged way more participation by all other customers, and all of us rocked out until closing time. Myself and the birthday boy, Will, did a duet to Kiss by Prince. It was a little bit of a struggle, given that we only knew the chorus. But somehow we worked it out! I also did a duet to I Try by Macy Gray with my homegirl Rebecca. That one I definitely knew all the words to. I have to say the highlight of the night was when my friends Kristi and Kelsey got up to the mic, and led the whole group through Lucky by Britney Spears. It was a magical series of moments that I am sure none of us will forget. Afterwards, we all came back to my place, and watched a couple episodes of Archer before crashing.

I am going to have to say it was the best Friday night ever. I hope to top it soon:)

Best,

Radhika