Takeaways from living in Los Angeles

“I want to go places and see people. I want my mind to grow. I want to live where things happen on a big scale.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Ice Palace

Five things that helped me be happier:

1. Working out three times a week. Joining a gym with a tight community helped me get in shape and meet new people! Crossfit gyms are especially great because all the workouts are done in groups, and you generally see the same people coming to classes.

2. Going out at least twice a week. One of the best pieces of advice I read this summer is from Thought Catalog, and it goes like this: If you’re feeling depressed and you’re not sure why, there’s a 70% chance you just need to leave your apartment and be social.

3. Gaining a new skill. I wished I'd put more effort into learning how to code, but one fun cs project I did over the summer was the redesign of Harvard Fusion Magazine's website.

4. Talking to friends and family back home. It's easy to take them for granted, but they're the only people who will always be there for you when you're feeling down.

5. Reading self-help books and books written by comedians.

One website that might improve your LA experience: http://www.dailyiso.com/

One really important thing that I learned about myself:

I love living in the middle of a city. I love seeing the sides of skyscraper buildings glitter with lit office rooms. I love seeing a cluster of skyscrapers getting closer and growing bigger as I drive deeper into downtown. I love how the skyscrapers loom over me, making me feel so apart of the city yet so small in its history. I feel awe when I'm in a car going down the highway, and I see downtown rising before me. It's cheesy, I know, but I freaking feel like I'm going home.

One thing I wish I had done:

Stay as long as possible on the west coast. I went home on August 15th, which I now realize was horrible decision. I don't return to Boston until the 31st, which gives me almost a full three weeks at home. In that time, I could have couchsurfed through San Francisco or visited a friend in Seattle. I'm annoyed that I missed the chance to get more out of my west coast experience. From now on I will never spend more than a week and a half at home. I've realized that a week and a half is the perfect length of time to hang out with my family and friends while still being relieved to get out of the house at the end of my visit.

Takeaways from my internship

Advice for work:

1. At the beginning of the summer, make sure you set up the metrics of your internship with your supervisor. In other words, make sure you know what qualities will make you a good intern in the eyes of your boss. This will also help you think about the end product of the internship: what you get out of it, what you deliver to the company, and what standards work for you.

Important questions to ask include:

• What are the deliverables? What are some tangible things I will bring to the table at the end of the summer? For me, these would include a written strategic and operational plan, research on potential grant makers, and a letter of inquiry for several local banks.
• What is expected of me? This includes expectations for how quickly you turn in assignments, how you should approach asking for more responsibilities, and the expectations for coming into the office. I had really flexible hours and would often show up pretty late. My boss didn't say anything about it until the very last week, but by then it was already too late to change. 
• What am I being measured against? How do I exceed the legacies of past interns? What do I need to do so that you consider me a successful intern at the end of the summer? 

2. Don't leave the office without asking your co-workers if there is anything you can help them out with. My boss actually praised me about on this during the mid-internship review. 

3. Ask to learn the skills you want to gain. If you don't know what skills you want to gain, ask to learn the most marketable skills. That ways, you at least leave with something desirable. If you're at a nonprofit and don't know what skill you want to gain, ask to learn about development. Development is generally the fundraising side. I've learned that I don't care for development. However, knowing how to write successful grant proposals is a highly desirable skill. The program side of a nonprofit is also a good place to start.

4. Ask for a mid-internship review and an exit interview.

5. Write a personal mission statement. This is a good exercise to figure out what you want to purpose of your internship to be. Also, it's a chance to ask yourself, what must be true in order for me to be happy at this internship? Then, make sure those factors which are critical to your happiness exist at your internship.

6. Make sure your organization is ready for your arrival. For example, I didn't get a key until the last two weeks of my internship, so I almost never knew when I was coming in; it always depended on who was in the office that day. They ordered a key two weeks after I arrived and the order was lost, so it took even longer than usual to get me the key. Some places really will forget to prepare certain things for the intern. I should have asked about the key situation in the email I sent them a week before the internship started.

What I learned:

I found that working at my particular nonprofit was a nice ease into the the working lifestyle because my hours were flexible and my deadlines were nebulous. However, I also didn't find the work particularly challenging. I was doing a lot of research that I felt like anyone could do. I also didn't feel like the work I did actually impacted the organization. I liked working on the strategic and operational plan because it would really shape the organization, but I couldn't see the impact as much when I researched potential funders. One thing my boss suggested I work on during the mid-internship review was seeing how the smaller projects I worked on fit in the 'big picture'. However, I often found that difficult to do, especially with the really small projects I was assigned. I suppose that's why I need to work on it more. I will not return to the nonprofit sector in the near future.

Three things you should do in LA

The first step to meeting a woman, reveals world famous pickup artist Mystery, is to get out of the house. "Getting out of your house is one of the most difficult things do to for a lot of men, and when they go out they go 'in field'," explains Mystery to an incredulous Conan O'Brien, who promptly lampoons him for the rather intuitive piece of advice. Despite the obviousness of this reasoning, we may often forget to leave the house once we settle into some sort of routine, and we may forget how well this advice applies to things outside of meeting new people. 
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After all, a night in is nice once in a while, but let's not forget that old song by Guy Lombardo in which he croons "enjoy yourself, it's later than you think!" in his song creatively titled Enjoy Yourself (It's Later than You Think). If you're in LA for only a summer, you better being making the most of your time here. In fact, no matter where you are or for amount of time you're there, you should be taking advantage. It's always later than you think.
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I say we take things a step back. If getting out of the house is the first step to meeting a woman, the first step to getting out of the house is to get off the couch. This is an excellent blog I wish I had discovered earlier, but which I am paying much more attention to now: http://offthecouchla.blogspot.com. It's a list of fun places to visit in LA.

Aside from that, here are three things you should do in LA:

1. Be an extra for a movie! Actually, you should get involved with the industry in any way you can. I'm just suggesting being an extra because that's one of the easiest ways to get involved. Insider tip: some companies post their extras work on Craigslist. I met one person who was an extra for the Dark Knight Rises but found the job posting on Craigslist under the code name Magnum Rex.

2. Go clubbing! See the quintessential LA scene as portrayed in every Bret Easton Ellis novel. Experience sex, drugs, and apathy while searching for some sort of meaning in it all.

3. Combine both! Be an extra in a clubbing scene for a movie written by Bret Easton Ellis such as The Canyons.

Avalon in Hollywood. I really want to be there right now.

How to avoid loneliness

1) Make new friends aggressively! 

Always be on the lookout for someone you'd like to see again. In a city like Los Angeles, if you don't reach out to someone you see once, you will probably never see them again. Don't be afraid to ask for their number or give them yours! After all, with all the ennui and decadence pervading Los Angeles, the person you want to befriend is probably as lonely as you are! There's nothing worse than getting someone stuck in your head and knowing that he'll be the one that got away. That guy you just met on the metro who lives in an art studio near where you live? Give him your number and trust that he'll use it wisely on account of his cool welsh accent and internship at a supposedly prestigious animation studio. The girl you just met at the gym? She has a cool voice. She's probably a cool person too. Be pleasantly surprised when these people actually seem excited to exchange digits. You are now on your path to overcoming shyness!

2) Go to the gym! 

When you exercise, your body produces endorphins. You know when else endorphins are produced? During excitement, pain, consumption of spicy food, love and orgasm. Yeah, it's a powerful thing. It also makes it very difficult to think about anything sad or depressing. Join a crossfit gym and work out in a group. Focus on making it to the next move without collapsing of exhaustion. Feel better as your mind becomes a calm blank. Be pleasantly surprised when someone finds you cute despite the fact that you're sweating like a pig and not wearing any makeup. Wonder if it's only because he saw you from afar. You are now on your path to accepting your body!

3) Do online dating! 

Receive messages from all sorts of guys, ranging from totally creepy 40-year-olds to playful exhibitionists to people who actually seem really cool. Convince yourself that you're not desperate and this online dating thing is just something fun to do over the summer in order to meet new people, visit new places, and possibly get a free meal if the guy really knows how to treat a lady.  Mask the encroaching loneliness you feel with multiple first dates. Search for some kind of connection to fill the void. Be disappointed when someone you exchange long, epic messages with turns out to be a total dud. Be pleasantly surprised when you actually want to see someone again. Realize that none of these relationships are going anywhere and feel lonely again. Avoid dealing with this feeling with more dates. You are now on your path to denial!

Life tip #3: undervalued necessities for the city

During the first week, I was woken up everyday by the sun streaming through, over and around the heavy brown curtains hanging over the many windows lining one of the walls in my room. That's when I congratulated myself on having the foresight to bring eye masks, if not the common sense to start wearing them until the fifth morning. 

If you live in a loft with tall windows, you should get an eye mask asap.

Another undervalued necessity for life in the city are earplugs. I have used them to avoid hearing honking cars outside, my libidinous loft mates, and the occasional crackhead commotion.

Nothing like highlighting problems with an alerting alliteration.

Life lesson #2: important things to know when moving in

Things to figure out first when moving into a new place:

1. Do you have all the keys you need?

For my loft, there were two keys I would need: one to get into the building and one to get into the loft. Even one day in I was going out and exploring the area. There's nothing worse than not having the freedom to come and go as you want.

2. How does the shower work?

This is something I didn't ask about until it was too late and my loft mates were already asleep. I couldn't figure out how to turn on the shower. I could turn on the water and get it going out of the shower faucet. But I couldn't find the switch that would get that running water to come out of the shower head. My first shower experience in my loft was pitiful. I ended up bending down and splashing small amount of water on myself. I definitely did not feel clean afterwards. Turns out there was a ring around the shower faucet that you had to pull down on in order to get the shower head working.

3. Where do you throw out the trash?

Okay, not an issue as pressing as the other two. But still an important thing to know. I hate having the trash pile up; it's disgusting. So it was important for me to know where to throw things out. For my loft, the community trash can was in a utility closet in the hallway.

4. Where do you do laundry?

This one I only found out two weeks after I moved in. I have a bad habit of not dealing with things until I have to or until some magical intervention happens where I find out things without having to first put in any effort. I find that such serendipity only makes me more sure my habits are for the best.

Life lesson #1 : all the [adjective] kids sit in the back

When you have open seating on an airplane, you should always sit as close as possible to the front of the airplane. You will not only be the first to get out but also avoid the surprisingly large concentration of kids in the back of the flight. I don't know if parents have this innate instinct to sit in the back, if they figure they will have more space in the back or if the sound of crying will annoy fewer people if their kids are in the back, but it all turns out the same.

At first, you will be tempted to wait to claim a seat because you think you see more window or aisle seats near the back. As you get closer, you will find what looked to be empty seats are actually filled by little kids, too small to have been seen from the front. By then, it is too late. Most likely at this point you have to sit between two people anyway. Even worse, you will be surrounded by babies and children. As the rule of planes goes, there will be that one child who screams intermittently, just as you are about to fall asleep.

I sat between two guys who looked to be a few years younger than me, and slept between bouts of screaming from the kid sitting directly behind me. It was annoying, but only in the way it's supposed to be.