Adult-ish | SCene Magazine Issue No. 5 (Sp24) by SCene Magazine

Issue No. 5 Spring 2024 Stumbling through the Best Years of Our Lives

Issue No. 5 | Spring 2024

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF | Julia Zara

CO-CREATIVE DIRECTOR | Kassydi Rone

CO-CREATIVE DIRECTOR + VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER | Asha Oommen

DIRECTOR OF FUNDRAISING, EVENTS AND PUBLIC RELATIONS | Kayla Rocha

DIRECTOR OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND PUBLIC RELATIONS | Jazmyne Aquino

DIRECTOR OF WRITING | Andrea Arcia

DIRECTOR OF COPY | Sullivan Barthel

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY | Pili Marco

DIRECTOR OF DESIGN | Kathryn Aurelio

DIRECTOR OF MULTIMEDIA | Kayla Li

WRITING

Mariam Bagdady

Kendall Bradwell

Laurie Carrillo

Alexis Lara

Maya Packer

Curran Rastogi

Izzy Ster

Benjamin Turnquest

Kylee Warden

PHOTOGRAPHY

Ethan Buriel

Megan Chan

Kayden-Harmony Greenstein

Rhian Jones

Lili Pape

Thomas Pham

Isabella Segalla

DESIGN

Solana Espino

Olivia Hau

Sam Natalya

Carlee Nixon

Lakshmi Sajith

GUEST CONTRIBUTORS

Anya Barrus

Maisy

MULTIMEDIA

Valerie Fang

Laura Furniss-Roe

Evan Rodrigues

Daishalyn Satcher

Smriti Marar

Hannah Wiser

FUNDRAISING + PR

Arianna Chan

TALENT + CREW

Antonio Acosta

Dami Adeyina

Luke Albert

Josh Ali

Gabriella Anifantis

Jonathan Antoon

Simi Awujo

Iris Bahn-Logan

Joanna Barry

Gaby Batista

Xuan-Anh Ly Biggs

Arianna Bollens

Matthew Calma

Ariel Cheng

Cole Chiles

Collin Colson

Kayla Cunningham

Auburn D’Artell

Evelyn Drews

Chris Ellis

Jess Ellis

Luc Eldridge

Sheila Falls

Kiara Geolina

Jean-Luc Hayes

Melissa Hayes

Shelby Heiman

Darin Jawahar

Kofo Jolaoso

Earicka Jones

Thomazin Jury

Ella Katz

Hannah Kuechler

Ajay Lalani

Marcelino Martinez Escoriza

Jazmin Mikhael

Alex Nimrod

Rena Pau

Tiana Perez

Sage Petrocelli

Sam Pozen

Leeann Ross

Bryton Snyder

Darrien Snyder

Justin Solomon

Kayla Suarez

Sophia Sullivan

Nicole Tisnes

Danica Terk

Phillip Tran

Zafina Virani

Courtney White

Justin White

4-5 | Letter from the Editor + Creative Directors

8 | Half Past Four

Kendall Bradwell

What happens to a dream deferred?

18 | Mature for Her Age

Izzy Ster Older, cooler.

28 | This Boss Baby Spills the Beans

Julia Zara Wake up and caffeinate?

42 | Inside the Gates of Troy

Maya Packer

What it takes college athletes to reach the highest pinnacle of the game.

54 | Five Times I Changed the Plot

Alexis Lara

Let’s do it.

66 | Father, Husband, Veteran, Sophomore

Sullivan Barthel

Nontraditional, but student all the same.

76 | 18 Going on 22

Daishalyn Satcher

Follow four people from dining halls to kitchens.

92 | 20 Under, 20 Underneath

Benjamin Turnquest

Big birthday. Big Ben. Big problems.

104 | Pass Me By

Andrea Arcia

We’re all waiting for our lives to start.

112 | We Just Want to have Fun! Or Do We?

Mariam Bagdady

Is now a bad time to mention that situationship?

126 | Gettin’ Thrifty

Laurie Carrillo

When items hold memories, we keep them close.

136 | The Girls in the Green House

Kylee Warden

Growing together, even when we thought we were already grown.

144 | Becoming “The Graduate”

Curran Rastogi Dread it. Run from it. Post-grad anxiety arrives all the same.

158 | Behind the SCenes

The SCene team members are kids at heart. Get an exclusive look into our creative process.

A Letter from the Editor

Imagine you’re doing laundry, casually using your roommates’ Tide Pods (sorry guys). First, you pull out a bright red sweater, shining and clean. Then, you fish out your beloved white t-shirt, and, gasp! You’ve done the unforgivable. Your favorite white shirt, the one with the perfect model-off-duty fit, is now dyed a hue of light pink. You drop to your knees, devastated that you forgot the number one rule of laundry: Separate your colors.

I tell this anecdote not only because it’s a true story, but also because it offers a metaphor for one’s identity during college. If childhood is the red sweater and adulthood is the white tee, then college is the frumpy pink mass, the one produced from silly mistakes, the one that doesn’t quite match anything else in your closet.

Like a laundry day mishap, college is where childhood and adulthood bleed into one another. As students, we’re expected to be responsible, have fun, secure a job (“Do you have anything lined up for the summer?”), get drunk, find a partner, do our homework, and much, much more.

These expectations make it easy to get burnt out, especially during a

global crisis. After the pandemic, and now this, this generation of students had to grow up very fast.

Specifically, the class of 2024 has yet to receive closure: The graduation that marked the end of high school and the beginning of college was canceled due to the pandemic. Now, the ceremony that officially closed college and opened adulthood is canceled, too. For these students, the events that bookend important periods of their lives have now become like dyed clothes: A mix of colors without a clear end or beginning. Tie-dye.

This, to me, is the heart of SCene’s fifth issue. “Adult-ish” captures what it means to teeter between colors. It’s energetically playful and fiercely young. It’s melancholically weary and timidly scared. It’s Gen Z, in the here and now, because as these past few weeks have shown students, we don’t know what’s going to happen next.

To our SCene members, I commend you for embracing every hue that pigments the student experience. It’s bittersweet knowing that SCene is all grown up. This semester, SCene took some of its first steps, throwing our first party and screening our

theme reveal at a film festival (Thank you 4085!). SCene has morphed into quite the young organization, and for the second year in a row, our magazine was recognized by the Society of Professional Journalists as a finalist for best ongoing student magazine.

Of course, we couldn’t have done it without our talent and contributors. To those who offered their time to us this semester, thank you for having some good fun with SCene. You turned our absurd ideas into playful realities. Thanks for encouraging us to pursue our wildest imaginations, whether that was donning clocks on your arms, stepping through ripped paper, sitting in Legos or talking to a pet fish.

Last but not least, thank you to our readers. I hope this issue reminds you of the precious creativity of young voices and experiences. There’s an entire world waiting for you on the other side of college. Like a piece of clothing in a machine, life will try to toss, tumble, wash and dry you out.

You might not know where your story fits. But for right now, it’s okay to sit in your colors.

4 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

A Letter from the Creative Directors

In full transparency, there are 23 sentence fragments about “Adult-ish” sitting in the Notes app next to this computer right now. Seriously. Not a single one of them is a complete thought. And under any other circumstance, that would be supremely frustrating. But, you know what? It actually encapsulates the essence of Issue No. 5 quite well.

Before college, in pure adolescence, the world is pretty black and white. Yes and no. Right and wrong. But it’s like the second you arrive onto campus, so sure of who you’ve been the past 18 years, so grown up — in come the greys. The maybes. The moral dilemmas. Oh, ish.

Because as it turns out, college isn’t the answer to all of our problems. In fact, for most of us, it’s the beginning to all of our biggest questions. And whether it’s “How do I know that chicken is fully cooked?” or “What am I going to do with the rest of my life?” you have to wear all of the

hats. You have to exist at the delicate intersection of childlike wonder and adult responsibility.

As many of our readers have come to find out, the two of us live with Julia, our editor-in-chief. But let us paint you a picture of what that looks like, a layer of our dynamic you may not have considered. Every Monday night after our weekly SCene team meeting, the kitchen island we dished our weekend debrief around quickly shape shifts into a conference style roundtable. We, the three twenty-somethings downing an amount of snacks so absurd they counted as dinner the night before, now mean strictly business.

That ritual was the origin of this theme. Turning our shared stories of everything from hospital visits to heartbreaks into a title and a tagline. Fit for an audience of peers and professionals alike. For a magazine created on a Pardee Tower dorm

room floor freshman year.

All that to say: This is the silliest, yet the most serious period of exploration we’ve endured thus far. When you’re at the cusp of everything you have been, everything you are and everything you could be — what will you do with that time? What versions of yourself will you shed? Cling to? As we stumble through young adulthood, what will catch us when we fall and ground us when we fly?

Gaining clarity on the answers to those questions often feels like hitting milestones on a timeline with no definitive end in sight. As our team so skillfully represents in the coming pages, no matter how many businesses you own, international trips you book, or children you bring into this world, little you is still questioning: “So, what are we?”

And that’s okay.

5 CO-CREATIVE DIRECTORS +

General Disclaimer

SCene Magazine believes in the principles of journalistic transparency, integrity and awareness.

Hence, in an attempt to minimize harm and increase transparency, SCene Magazine recognizes that all images in this magazine, unless otherwise stated, are staged photoshoots. Our team works tirelessly throughout the semester to pitch, storyboard, cast, shoot and edit these photoshoots. In-depth conversations have been shared about the content, stories and meanings captured in the following spreads.

All images, except for one scrapbook spread, were taken in the context of models posing in editorial photoshoots, complete with professional lighting, costume design, creative direction and modeling. Meanwhile, all people involved in the making of this magazine, from being photographed to being interviewed, were made aware of their participation. Unless otherwise stated, those pictured are not the same as those interviewed.

Please note all photo captions found in the corners of this issue, which help to further describe our images. Arming consumers with these tools, SCene Magazine believes in the responsibility of the press to increase media literacy in our readers.

SCene Magazine is a publication dedicated to telling stories about the student experience. With that, we invite you to join the fun of Issue No. 5.

U set the SCene. We tell your stories.

SCene Magazine Spring 2024

HALF

PAST

Days it takes for the Sun to rotate the Earth. It’s 366 days to start anew. Three hundred and sixty-six days to take a chance. Also, it’s the approximate amount of times my dad has retold the infamous Quiz Bowl Story.

Back in grade school, I was selected to compete in my school’s African American Quiz Bowl, where I could go toe-to-toe with students from kindergarten through 12th grade to show my knowledge of Black history. With $100 on the line, which for a 6-year-old felt like a fortune, I knew I had to give it my all to win. I vaguely remember the hours I spent reading the fact sheets each night, burning the names of Carter G. Woodson and Ernie Davis into my head. When the big day came around, as my dad tells it, I moved like lightning. There was almost no time between the end of the question and my hand on the buzzer. There was no time to squander, no time to think.

Although I lost by one point to a team of 12-year-olds, I didn’t lose the spirit that pushed me that far in the first place.

As I got older, I discovered the goals I wanted for myself — I wanted to attend college in California, pursue a career in entertainment and go to law school (in that order). I didn’t put much thought into what would happen if things didn’t work

out, if I didn’t get into the school of my dreams — I didn’t have to. The more time I spent thinking of failing, the less time I had to work to prevent such failures.

But, I didn’t care; I was raised under the principle that hard work always yielded successful results, and it was only a matter of time before my goals were in my reach. This time, my flawed logic proved to be correct: In the blink of an eye, I went from a tired, hungry high school senior to a jet-lagged freshman 2,500 miles from home. I was too proud to admit that the time I spent cranking out college applications while studying for five AP exams wore me out. The next great battle was before me, however, and I didn’t have time to waste. The exhaustion didn’t let up, and neither would I.

Kendall Bradwell ‘25 is a business of cinematic arts major, from Upper

MD. She is an avid Barbie doll collector, curating limited edition dolls from around the world.

Writer Marlboro,

HALF PAST FOUR| Kendall Bradwell

The temperature (by the hundred thousands) of the sun. Makes it pretty easy to get burned.

It didn’t take long for me to learn that succeeding in college was not a test that I could study for. My initial view of university life failed to include 12-hour schedules, piles of exams and the uneasy adjustment to such a drastic change in living. Before I ever got the chance to take a breath, the first year was already over.

I was hurtling towards my new life at a breakneck pace. In just a few short years, I’d be a fullfledged adult, having to fend for myself in the real world. As my time in college continued, the future I had planned for myself began to blur. I no longer desired the career I was deadset on pursuing, and for the first time I could remember, I did not know what direction I wanted to head in. I would soon be thrust into the cold and shadowy unknown, and I felt very unprepared to do so. As the days in college continued to fly by, I craved a chance to slow down.

I ended up getting that chance — just not in a way I expected.

Days added to my time at the University of Southern California.

One morning, about halfway into my junior year, I received an email stating that my expected graduation date moved from May to December of 2025. In that instant, my life finally stopped moving at rocket speed. I was close — almost too close — to the finish line, and before I could wipe the morning crust out of my eyes, the “real adulthood” I started to dread shot back over the horizon.

I took a long, steady breath. Isn’t this what I wanted? A chance to slow down? With this added time, I wondered, had I lost?

The email marked the official death of my original postcollege fantasy. The dreams I used to have were now either delayed indefinitely or stopped in their tracks. Now, instead of a black cap and gown with a big-girl career in reach, I was now relegated to being a super-senior.

My mind first turned to my friends. What am I going to do when everyone I know has graduated?

Then, finances. How will I possibly afford another semester?

What am I expected to do with seven months, anyway? There’s only two or three classes that I need to take.

Good things came to those who worked for it — or so I thought. Was I not working hard enough?

Was I wasting my time in college?

I gave my all, and what did I have to show for it?

And, the ever-burning question:

What am I going to do now?

Hours in a day. Whether I knew what I wanted to do with my time, or if I was as clueless as ever, these hours would still pass. Eventually, I found solace in knowing the day will always begin again.

After hours, days, and eventually weeks of reflection, I came to a sound, final conclusion about what I am going to do with my additional semester in college.

Model Luc Eldridge ‘27 is a composition major from Eastvale, CA. He loves NCT 127. HALF PAST FOUR| Kendall Bradwell

I’m sure that the younger, type-A version of me would freak out if she knew adult-me had no concrete plans. However, I’m starting to realize that the future is inevitable. Whether I were to finish college a semester late or a semester early, college is going to end. However, if we are so hyper-focused on that future, we forget to live in the present.

As children, we had a romanticized picture of what adult life was going to be like. We looked at the adults in our lives and idolized them. We watched romcoms and sitcoms, waiting for the day when we could live in a picturesque high-rise apartment building with all of our best friends, falling in love and pursuing our dream careers. After growing up, however, it became clear that no adult truly knows what they are doing — they just may be good at hiding it.

However, I’m learning to embrace the unknown, as anxiety-inducing as it may sound. I understand the pressure to have it all together as soon as possible, but we really have so much time to figure out what’s up next. Finding your dream job or discovering your passions is not the race against the clock that we are conditioned to think it is. Sure, it may be nice to have solid life plans by the time you’re 22, but there are plenty of people who are 25, 35, and even 45 who are still discovering who they are. The clock doesn’t run out when we graduate college; in truth, it’s just the beginning of our adult journey.

I realized that I wasn’t wasting time because I won’t finish college in the expected four years. Instead, I was wasting my time by looking at life years at a time, instead of taking everything day by day. By keeping my eyes focused on the future, I failed to take advantage of the present.

There were so many laughs I missed, mistakes I didn’t make, and opportunities I did not take advantage of. The sun has set on those days, but there are a lifetime of sunrises to make up for it.

Now, I view this extra semester as a chance to take a breath and enjoy what’s around me; instead of preparing for the hardships of adulthood, this is the time I can actually enjoy just being. Not a kid anymore, surely not a full fledged adult, and no longer a workhorse — just a person.

Words from my dad.

“Enjoy the journey.”

when I was little, an age where growth was only measured by notches carved into a wooden door frame and not as a self-care buzzword, I had this giant, pink plastic vanity. With a plastic eyeshadow holder. And plastic lipsticks and glosses. And, of course, a plastic stool for me to perch on and pretend to cover up pores that still existed and eye bags that drooped only from staying up late to finish “just one more chapter” of a “Percy Jackson,” “Magic Treehouse,” or “Harry Potter” book. I spent hours transfixed by my reflection at the mirror — which was actually a reflective sticker that was already peeling from the edges when it was purchased — and closely examining how I could make every inch of my blemish-free existence better.

It didn’t stop there. With my Barbies, and the narrative help of my sisters, I would quickly weave make-believe stories infused with cooler, “older” — whatever I thought that word meant at the mere age of seven or eight — plot lines. Barbie prom night, Barbie car crashes, Barbie murders (thanks to an early exposure to just about every CSI show that airs on television due to my mother’s love of them), Barbie infidelity, Barbies making out, Barbie’s first realization that she has a severe fear of emotional vulnerability. If it was melodramatic enough, my sisters and I fashioned new Dreamhouse tales rooted into reality, all from the safety of our pink and purple wallpaper laden bedroom.

There were tiptoes on the master bedroom tile to sneak into my parents’ closet and haphazardly throw together outfits of my mother’s long black dresses, which were three times longer than myself, and my father’s ties, which I threw around my neck like a scarf. There were red stiletto cat walks, but only on the carpet and with my sister in close sight. Wearing Oxford shirts — wrinkled from hugs upon arriving home — and examining myself in a long mirror, I wondered if I would ever have a job important enough to justify such an important-looking shirt.

Yet, when one does a quick scroll through social media, the plastic vanities are days of yore. Instead, young girls are finding joy in a different form of plastic: Drunk Elephant

Sunshine Drops, Dior Lip Oil or Sol de Janeiro Brazilian Body Mists. The act of playing dress up is now brought to life by accessing a family’s Amazon Prime account, begging for a Skims body suit for the holidays and lamenting poor weather because it means Uggs are out of the picture. The desire to be older and cooler has still remained prominent in feminine cultural consciousness, but it’s just shifted to adapt to what that looks like during the age of the internet. It’s because an adult calling you “mature for your age” after making a particularly snarky quip for a kid is no longer a badge of honor, it’s now an expectation. It’s the expectation to keep up with “cool kids,” even if it’s at the expense of one’s childhood.

But, somehow, magically between scrolls of 8-year-olds walking you through their “GRWM for the First Day of Third Grade” is a plethora of 20-something-year-olds putting bows on just about anything in sight, from hairstyling to martini glasses to birthday cakes to tights and everything in between. Apartment decor is various hues of pink, including couches and dinnerware. There’s a renewed interest in the media from our childhood, the most prominent and successful example being “Barbie.” The older generation, the one that used to crave being the age we are now, have found the older, cooler versions of themselves and are becoming completely disillusioned.

Why are 20-year-olds returning to our plastic pink vanities? Maybe it’s because the pandemic stole the end of our high school years, the final moments we were supposed to spend playing outside with our friends and instead were encouraged to stay inside to avoid detrimental effects. Our final venture at “dressing up” for prom turned into silent discos at an arm’s length. Maybe it was being thrown into reckoning with politics as elementary school students by performing monthly active shooter drills; silent reading time warped into silent hiding under your desk in case you and your peers risked becoming just another statistic. Maybe it’s the mental crises many of us grapple with on a daily basis; our coming-of-age lacked the charm it has in movies, but it did feature long periods of holing up in our childhood bedrooms, watching early daylight creep through our windows after yet another sleepless night.

Writer Izzy Ster ‘25 is a screenwriting major with a minor in comedy from San Diego, CA. She can bake awesome brown butter chocolate chip cookies.

MATURE FOR HER AGE| Izzy Ster

As each generation collects a more intense and expansive accessibility to the internet, keeping up with trends and global news at the swift swipe of our fingertips, we crave the childhood we lost. We crave that age where putting on lipstick was a luxury and a very grown-up way of trying to color inside the lines.

There’s a sense of intense FOMO, and not from some party we weren’t able to go to, but for an entire period of life that our generation skipped. For myself, after becoming used to Zoom introductions and facial coverings, this introvert now forces her limbs to adorn an extrovert persona. I often socially burn myself out at the opportunity to spend time with friends, since being in the presence of other humans still feels like a novelty. For my 21st birthday, I chose a prom theme as a way to recreate the memories that were lost. I suck on sour candy, one of my favorite snacks as a young girl, just to avoid panic attacks in campus bathrooms, hoping desperately that the tang shocks the fervor out of my bones.

There are times I think back on who I wanted to be as a kid, remembering the following anecdote my parents still laugh at: At a first grade class party with students and parents alike, I approached a father, and, in a feeble attempt to mock what I believed adult conversations to entail, asked him, “So, what do you do for a living?”

There are times I want to go back to every adult that told the younger version of myself, “You’re mature for your age,” and shake them, implore why they didn’t warn me to play outside more, cling on to my favorite American Girl Dolls and keep building whatever my heart contented with Legos and Tinker Toys. It’s so obvious to me now, but I know little Izzy wanted nothing more than the average Monday I have now: Putting on a plaid blazer (quickly smoothing out wrinkles with my hand from it being crumpled in the back of my closet), slipping on heeled loafers (while praying the whole day I won’t trip

on stairs), making a coffee (the caffeinated beverage I forced myself to like in high school to get through a particularly excruciating algebra midterm and now depend on), and beginning my morning commute (without my dad dropping me off this time).

It’s this dichotomy that demonstrates an inherent discontent between ages: The young want to be old, the old want to be young. In a sort of cruel irony, the childhood heirlooms we crave from our youth are being overlooked by children for internet trends. There’s the ache in the bottom of our hearts to be the child playing dress up, settling for putting bows at the ends of our braided pigtails to tie us to our past lives. It’s difficult to not look at young girls now, who praise Sephora as a god, shake our heads and wish they could realize what we know and force them to grab onto their childhood before it slips like sand through their fingers. We’ve known lost time. In a generation forced to grow up too fast, we now long to shrink back into the smaller notches on a wooden doorframe.

Model Thomazin Jury ‘25 is a theatre major from Iowa City, IA. She is an amateur chef who loves to cook and try out new recipes.

5

scene magazine Issue five

B SS THIS

WRITTEN BY PHOTOGRAPHED BY

DESIGNED BY

SPILLS THE BEANS

not JUST JUSTIN.

Interviewee Justin Solomon ‘25 is a business administration major from Penfield, NY. He loves Star Wars. THIS BOSS BABY SPILLS THE BEANS| Julia Zara

One hundred pounds of caramel, hazelnut and red velvet syrup sit in sock drawers. Milk crowds out the fridge. Beans bounce in bags atop a bookshelf. And a large coffee cart camps in the middle of an apartment room.

Justin Solomon literally lives in his business.

“I feel bad for my roommate. What used to be my display of trinkets has become my s—t show of coffee beans,” he says.

Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, one can find Solomon — a senior business administration major — perched on Trousdale Way, tamping coffee grounds at an espresso machine. Solomon is the founder and president of Eruta Nature, an eco-friendly coffee cart lined with green ivy vines, that had its start last August.

Since founding Eruta, Solomon has practically mastered the craft of making coffee; with 1,500 sold lattes behind him, he has the milk-to-coffee ratio just right. But, as a young entrepreneur, he tells me that finding the perfect work-life balance doesn’t come so easily.

We’re outside on the Annenberg patio meeting for — you guessed it — a cup of coffee. It’s a typical day in Los Angeles: Sunny and 70 degrees. He arrives late to our interview, but only because he couldn’t help but stop and pet a large fluffy Samoyed dog with a birthday crown in the USC Village. A true East Coaster, he dons a blue Vineyard Vines sweater as he places my kryptonite, an iced almond milk latte, before me.

free time is not going out, hanging out with friends. The majority of it is contacting people to get loans and investments. There’s a lot of rejection. I’ve had to get super comfortable with rejection,” he adds.

College is overwhelming enough as it is. One is not quite young enough to be considered a kid, yet not old enough to be an adult. So, at a time when no one takes 20-year-olds seriously enough to spare them an internship — but, yes, rent is still due on the first of the month and parking is an additional $500 — how does a young man reckon with the very adult world of business?

Well, for Solomon, ordering from the kid’s menu is off the table. In fact, sometimes he feels like he’s bitten off more than he can chew. The 22-year-old C.E.O. says that while being a young entrepreneur seems gilded from afar, he can’t help but acknowledge that chasing his adult dreams means sprinting past his youth.

“If I’m moving too fast, I don’t really have that college experience. ”

“If I’m moving too fast, I don’t really have that college experience. I get stuck. You know, waking up, doing my business or waking up, going straight to class, oftentimes I’m late because I’m doing something for this [Eruta] in the morning. Then, I run home in between to get shipments and run right back to class,” Solomon says.

“My walking space is smaller than this table,” he says, gesturing to the table that we’re seated at. He’s referencing his apartment room — a double in the Cowlings and Ilium Residential College. I tour the room in question the next time we meet, and as I scurry around biodegradable cups, syrup canisters, Star Wars memorabilia and clothes, I can’t help but wonder: If his apartment also serves as his office, business headquarters, stock warehouse, dining room and bedroom, how does he make room for himself?

“I barely do, to be honest,” Solomon says. “My

For most of his life, Solomon has known flexibility. While he says most Trojans know him as “the coffee guy,” Solomon wasn’t always the caffeine connoisseur. When he came to USC from his hometown in Penfield, New York, Eruta began as an ecological clothing business. So dedicated to his new company, Solomon even hopped on a plane to Europe to grow Eruta and expand his worldview. But when Russia waged war in Ukraine in early 2022, his gap year was cut short, and Eruta didn’t pick up as much traction as he had hoped.

While returning to USC for his education helped build his network, he says he felt like he was desperately trying to stay afloat.

“I wanted to build a business while I was in school. Financing stayed the issue, and I decided one day that I was going to try to find a different way to finance,” he says. He credits a car ride to Pittsburgh for changing the trajectory of his life.

With two hands on the wheel of his Toyota Camry, Solomon remembers driving to Pennsylvania for his cousin’s graduation. Listening to an episode of Guy Raz’s “How I Built This” podcast as he cruised, Solomon learned how Travis Boersma and his brother went from selling coffee in Walmart parking lots to building Dutch Bros., a West Coast coffee empire. Soon enough, Solomon could focus on nothing else. His sister and girlfriend were half asleep in the back seat. But up front, Solomon was dreaming.

“I was hyperfixated on the prospect of turning my business around,” he recalls.

Within weeks of his trip, Solomon had purchased a mobile cart and an espresso machine. Determined to transform his business from clothing to coffee, Solomon took what he learned from the podcast and a summer barista job to the streets of USC.

what happened next

“The coffee blew up instantly,” he says.

Joanna Barry, a special collections worker at the USC Doheny Library, attests to this. We stand in line together on Valentine’s Day as she tells me that her student assistant recently started picking up Eruta coffee every Friday for the office.

“Today, I wanted to come and pick up a drink for myself,” she says.

Solomon acknowledges that despite his start-up success, pursuing his bold ambitions couldn’t happen without his support system. The black cat to Solomon’s golden retriever, Marcelino Martinez Escoriza, an engineering major from Mexico City and Solomon’s best friend, never fails to wake up early on business days to help push Solomon’s 300 pound cart down Trousdale.

“I see how hard he works,” Martinez says. “I can’t imagine him doing it alone, and luckily for me, he makes it fun.”

Fun and finance are just two of the most used f-words on a college campus, and Solomon evidently knows them well. While he doesn’t have time to go bar-hopping with friends on the weekends like other college students do, manning his business is a sacrifice he’s willing to make.

“[Eruta] was another investment that I didn’t have money for. Everything I’ve built and done has been out of my own pocket. I didn’t make my first dollar until I was $35,000 in,” he says.

“But then you just got grit your teeth and say, I’m going to ”

Despite Solomon’s unassuming front — what, with his head of ringlet curls and golden boy smile — gritty he is. Martinez quips, “He would never let me touch his machine, so I leave the coffee to him.”

For Solomon, being a student business owner means understanding that just like coffee, life can be a little bitter. He advises students on the brink of starting long-term careers after college to be adaptable.

“I have his limit with myself, the rule of one day. If I am really pushing for something, and it’s going really well, and I’m excited, or it’s not going to go well, and things fall through, I give myself one day to be sad, and then I completely turn around. Then, I have to figure something out because there’s no way I’m just going to let it fall flat,” he says.

The safety net of college allowed Solomon to experience the world as a true adult, begin a new venture, go to Europe, return, make mistakes and get back on his feet. But, his youthful optimism and untethered imagination pushed him to try again. Despite the many hats he wears at Eruta — C.E.O., financial advisor, customer service representative, barista — his quirks and eccentric sense of self remind him that he’s not just an adult “businessman.” In his words, “Justin Solomon is just another guy.”

got to say,

In fact, “this guy” uses color theory to test the strength of his coffee. He wears an Ewok necklace from Star Wars around his neck. He loves Ed Sheeran. He lines his cart with dog statues. He loves it when cold foam blends with espresso into what he calls “cow’s print.” He stays late to help friends clean up after an event. He hates it when people say “era.”

Solomon is a kid with a dream, a nerve and a little caffeine. For this boss baby, he’s approaching life with the belief that:

THE COFFEE CUP IS HALF FULL.

is a journalism

from Sacramento, CA.

Writer Julia Zara ‘25 major She once kissed Troy Bolton’s locker from “High School Musical.”

THIS BOSS BABY

SPILLS THE BEANS

art by Hannah Wiser

fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm! fifth time’s a charm!

new

Original

can we like, do something

this issue?

new

INSIDE THE GATES OF TROY

What it means to be a college athlete pursuing professional athletics

WRITTEN

MAYA PACKER

PHOTOGRAPHED BY PILI

MARCO OLIVIA HAU

LITTLE BIT MORE. ALWAYS DO A IT WILL PAY OFF IN THE END.

Model Darin Jawahar ‘26 is a cognitive science and data science major from Dover, DE. He is a hip-hop/ Bollywood fusion dancer who is also a DIAA high school tennis state champ.

At* USC, athletics are godly. The Greek mythological aesthetic shrouding our athletes and their state-ofthe-art facilities, which are secured with fingerprint biometric technology, show the reverence the institution has for our athletes.

But those athletes, under the titles, championships, offers, NIL deals and acclaim, are students, and college is a completely different playing field for student athletes. While parties, friends, class and fun are part of their experience, their main focus is their sport — improving, playing, competing and executing at the highest level.

Being a collegiate athlete is great, but for some, their dreams don’t stop on campus. Hannah Kuechler is a sophomore on the women’s swimming and diving team at USC, but she’s already swam for Germany in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

When she qualified for the Olympics, she’d been having a rough year because of her mental health. Then COVID hit and things only got worse, so she considered quitting the sport altogether. But her childhood dream of being in the Olympics gave her the motivation to pull herself back and continue towards her goal. However, her qualifying trials were not for the faint of heart.

“I was super nervous. A lot of people were in really good shape, and I knew that I had a really tough year. It was a preliminary and a final, and that year they only took the fastest

*Writer’s Disclaimer: In this article I interviewed Josh Ali, who I have a familial relationship with.

INSIDE THE GATES OF TROY|

Maya Packer

Model Gaby Batista ‘25 is an architecture major from Atlanta, GA. She was a competitive cheerleader. INSIDE THE GATES OF TROY| Maya Packer

final time. If you ever watched swimming, you can tell that it’s a matter of like tenths of the second, hundredths of a second,” says Kuechler.

Kuechler ended up qualifying due to a 0.02 second difference. She plans to go back to the Olympics, which means a demanding preparation process.

Kuechler isn’t the only USC athlete with professional accolades on their resume and Olympic ambitions. Simi Awujo is a junior on the USC women’s soccer team, and she competed in the 2022 FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup championship, playing every minute of the game.

“I went to the World Cup last year, which is like the biggest tournament in soccer. But, then the Olympics are this year, and the roster is a lot smaller,” Awujo says. “So, there’s also that fear of like, ‘oh, I have to make this roster now.’”

She is also a member of Canada’s national women’s soccer team. Awujo splits her time between USC as a student athlete and with the Canadian team, missing class for a week at a time to play for Canada.

According to Josh Ali, a wide receiver for the Atlanta Falcons, she’s on the right track. When asked if he had any advice for college athletes wanting to play professionally, he said this:

“Put more hours in. Even if you think that you’ve done enough, do a little bit more. Always do a little bit more. It’ll pay off in the end.”

Extra time on the field or in the gym wasn’t the only sacrifice Ali made to reach the NFL. He had dreams of attending a historically Black college or university (HBCU) and joining a Black fraternity. However, he felt an HBCU wouldn’t afford him the athletic opportunities he was looking for. So, he ended up at the University of Kentucky, where his experience was dictated by his practice schedule.

PLAYING A SPORT IS REALLY

SCARY.

“It’s definitely all of those amazing things that I’ve dreamed of. I’m literally achieving all the goals that I’ve set out for myself since I started playing soccer at [a] more competitive level,” says Awujo. “I feel like sometimes I take it for granted. It’s like, I have this opportunity that some other people either would never get or people on my team don’t have right now.”

A day in Kuechler and Awuojo’s lives typically consists of early morning training starting as early as 5 a.m., morning practice, weight training, classes, and another practice. Even then, this rigorous schedule isn’t enough for Kuechler as she strives to qualify for the upcoming Olympics.

“My practice starts in the morning at six. It’s one and a half hours for practice, but usually I stay half an hour or longer because I just need to be great this year,” says Kuechler.

“[There’s] a lot of stuff that I couldn’t do because of football. I had to be at practice or games and stuff like that. So, I didn’t really get the college experience that everyone else gets. But, I was there on a mission to get my degree and make it to the league,” says Ali.

This constant dedication and commitment to excelling in their sports doesn’t come without pressure and anxiety about the future. For Awujo, the higher she climbs professionally, the more pressure she feels.

“Playing a sport is really scary. Especially just being younger, I feel like I put a lot of pressure to perform because it’s like this is a once in a lifetime sort of opportunity,” says Awujo. “What if I’m not good enough to go play pro with the other professional players that I play with on the national team? It is definitely scary. Athletics is uncertain. One day, you’re healthy and the next day you could be hurt, which has happened to people here at camp.”

Ali has experienced just that. His senior year, he tore his ACL just before the last game of his senior season. After everything he’d poured in, no more NFL draft, Pro Day or NFL Scouting Combine.

“I caught myself thinking, what am I going to do now? That’s a scary moment for somebody that has a plan, and you just know it’s not gonna happen. You got thousands of football players trying to do the same thing you’re doing, so it’s a little stressful. It’s a lot mentally,” says Ali.

With all of the fear and stress that accompanies being a high-performing athlete, Kuechler has decided not to continue her athletic career after she graduates.

“I’m just not willing to put that much work in anymore. I’m just happy to just enjoy my next two years of college swimming and with the team. Afterwards, I’m like, alright, life goes on. I just want to experience some normal life stuff as well. Because, since I’ve been young, swimming was always my priority number one,” says Kuechler.

Kuechler said the rate that she has been performing and expending herself is not sustainable. She compared it to a toxic relationship — she loves swimming, but it’s draining, especially at USC, which is much more rigorous than her experience at home in Germany.

“Why not do this if it’s something that I love and it challenges me? I think that’s something that goes overlooked with athletics — it actually challenges you a lot as a human being. In terms of being able to work with people, build chemistry with people, understand where others are coming from [and] deal with the pressures of the environment,” says Awujo.

While these two athletes’ paths will take very different routes after graduation, they both deeply understand the sacrifice it takes to play professionally. So does Ali, who met his goal of making it to the league and emphasizes the importance of sacrifice in the journey to the professional level.

“There’s a lot of stuff you can’t do because you have to work on your craft — if you love it that much,” he says. “You can’t go out some nights or you can’t go on this trip. If you want to make a bunch of money doing what you love to do, you’re gonna have to sacrifice.

I DON’T SEE A REASON TO PUT MYSELF THROUGH THIS MENTAL AND PHYSICAL STRESS EVERY SINGLE DAY.

When asked if he regretted any sacrifices he made or wished things could have been different, Ali’s response was simple: “I don’t regret anything. Nothing.”

“You might not have the greatest day, and you just don’t want to wake up, and you don’t want to go to practice and you still have to because if you’re not going, they’re gonna kick you out,” says Kuechler. “I don’t see a reason to put myself through this mental and physical stress every single day.”

But Awujo is steadfast in her commitment to soccer and is excited to see where her career takes her after college. After so many years of effort into it, she still loves playing the game and sees it as a benefit to her growth.

For all the glitz and glamour that surrounds these athletes, the reality of their college experience is grueling. The things we don’t see on Instagram or on game days, the sacrifices and tears and recoveries and hours of training on top of academics — that is what make up their experiences. It takes everything for these athletes to rise to the top of their game: Dedication, work, sacrifice and a willingness to make their sport the focal point of their college experience and beyond. This is what they live for.

INSIDE THE GATES OF TROY| Maya Packer

Writer

is a communication major with an entreprenuership minor from Atlanta, GA.

can make pasta from scratch.

Maya Packer ‘26 She

INSIDE THE GATES OF TROY

TIMES

FIVE TIMES

I changed the plot

written by photographed by designed by ALEXIS LARA KAYDEN-HARMONY GREENSTEIN + ANYA BARRUS OLIVIA HAU

FIVE TIMES I CHANGED THE PLOT| Alexis Lara

Model Kayla Cunningham ‘26 is a cinema and media studies major from Chino Hills, CA. She’s a snowboard instructor.

FIVE

Writer Alexis Lara ‘25 is a journalism major with a minor in sports business and management. She is from La Cañada, CA. TIMES I CHANGED THE PLOT| Alexis Lara

DEAR READERS,

I woke up this morning, drank my iced latte, walked to class and realized I live the same day over and over again. Routines are just another word for redundancy in my silly little world. If I’ve learned anything from the excessive amount of writing assignments I’ve completed in my life, repetitiveness is something to fear.

But why was I hit with this ennui?

Picture this: I could be riding trains through charming fields, smelling fresh rain saturating cobblestone streets and drinking Guinness beers at the local pub. Despite aching for a change of scenery for two years, my stomach sank when the email read, “Congratulations on your acceptance to the Spring 2024 Annenberg London Program!” The dreams that had always lived slightly out of reach became a stark reality. I had six days to decide if I would leave the country for five months. On the last day I had to sign the contract, I drove home to tell my parents I was going to London. By the

Clash at the Coliseum

The waving green flag at the Coliseum marked the start of both the NASCAR race and my social experiment. Because I, along with the rest of Southern California, don’t understand how to function when it rains, the race was moved up a day. The old me would have used this date change as the perfect excuse to bail. I had to actively go against my first instinct to stay in and make my way to the Coliseum.

time I parked my car in their driveway, I had settled on the decision to stay.

I don’t believe in regret, but sometimes I think of London as the one that got away.

I tend to trust my gut a little too much. Whenever there is the slightest sense of unease, I think it is a sign of temptation by the wrong path. The problem with blindly trusting my gut is that I never learned to distinguish between that bad stuff and the butterflies.

So, dear reader, I’ve decided to change my way of deciding. I refuse to be played by my own passivity. This semester, I turned left when my body wanted to lean right. Every word I spoke, I said it with my chest. I replaced the would’ve-beens with memories. I stopped torturing myself with the thought of what if. In this rejection of passivity, I may have lost the plot. Here are five times I stopped saying, “One day I will.”

The roar of the quieted the crowds of people that usually spiked my social anxiety (or maybe that was the Modelo). I felt comfort in not being able to hear. With the smell of gasoline in the air, I screamed for a driver whose name I didn’t know two hours ago. I felt grateful my homebody tendencies didn’t win.

Inspired by Suits

In February, assignments rolled in, the Southern California sun stepped away, and I caught a cold. Stuck in bed, I started going down the list of things I’ve always told myself I would do when I had more time but never got around to.

The first thing to do was fix my resume (which hadn’t been updated in years) and my LinkedIn account (which looked more like an abandoned Facebook profile). I looked for internships, applied to jobs and

wrote too many cover letters. Whether it be because I was passive, lazy, or all of the above, investing time in my future was not something I focused on outside the boundaries of school. I always focused too much on the result instead of the initial action. Maybe that’s why I have trouble starting new things and writing new chapters.

So I think I can dance…

Do I love music? Yes. Do I hate dancing? Yes.

Am I going to a hip-hop class today? Yes. Am I nervous? Absolutely. F–k it, here we go.

My friends and I conquered Friday afternoon traffic and parallel parking on Melrose driving to the Playground L.A.

You know the studio even if you aren’t a dancer. It is the pinnacle of all dance studios. The floors are stained with the sweat of anyone whose name means anything on casting sheets in Hollywood.

I was burning under the suffocating studio lights, and the floor creaked with my every step. I shrank before the giant red letters spelling PLAY. I waded through the dancers stretching on the floor and found

a spot so far in the back of class that I danced with the purses and water bottles against the wall. I couldn’t wait to leave.

Hip-hop is a style that requires quick movements and confidence. There was no time to hesitate and no room for selfdoubt. Sam Allen, the choreographer, matched each syllable in Saweetie and P-Lo’s “Do It For The Bay” with hardhitting steps. He chose movements that were not timid and apprehensive, but striking and forceful. It was fast-paced and bold. It was everything I am not. But by the end of the class, I couldn’t remember why I avoided dancing my entire life.

The Bachelorette

I’ll admit that I was supposed to lean into my fears, but there was one moment I chickened out. I fumbled the plot. I not only shot down my friend’s idea, but I didn’t even consider it.

So, what was so outrageous that I didn’t even give the suggestion a second thought?

Hinge.

I’ve witnessed people make their accounts, even helped them think of witty prompts and choose which pictures they should use — always a mix of funny and breathtaking, if you’re wondering. I have nothing against dating apps and fully support the chaos that

Londontown

It was the place I dreamt about, the place I mourned, the place that never was. The rarity of a second chance fell into my lap for spring break. It was a week abroad, not a semester like I intended, but it still had the ability to right the wrongs of my past decisions. Maybe it took a little longer than originally expected, but I booked my flight to London.

When I got there, I stopped and listened to every Ed Sheeran knockoff street performer. I walked beneath the charming string lights of Piccadilly. I got lost in Chinatown far too many times. I sat in the very last row of a West Ham game and bought a scarf from a man on the side of the street. I went to pubs every night and

comes from them.

Of course, I believe the next great love story could start on Hinge. But, I think the greatest stories are not the ones you seek but the ones you stumble upon. This is true outside of a romantic context too. I wholeheartedly believe that my greatest memories will be the unexpected, and I’m in no rush for the happy accidents to happen any quicker than they should.

I realized some of my waiting might not always be passivity, sometimes it is steady patience. Maybe I did fail the self-assigned challenge with my one utterance of “no.” Maybe I copped out. But on this day, I realized that in some cases I confuse patience with passivity. Now, I know I can conquer one while still trusting the other.

bought a pack of cigarettes (sorry mom and dad). I took the bus, the Tube and every cobblestone side street.

Leaving to come home, I rode the Piccadilly line to the airport. I passed Hyde Park, South Kensington, Boston Manor and 16 other stops before I reached Heathrow. I would’ve been happy if that underground line never ended. I fell in love with London, and I finally made peace with my decision to not study abroad. Because, when my time comes again, I will remember that stinging feeling of what if, then find it in myself to step off the train platform and take the Tube as far as I need to go.

Until next time.

Love,

written by SULLIVAN BARTHEL designed by KATHRYN AURELIO

photos courtesy of JEAN-LUC HAYES & family !!!

On the day of our second interview, Jean-Luc Hayes and I spent our mornings very differently. In all honesty, I overslept (don’t worry, I still made it to the interview on time). I did have to scramble to finish the reading for my law class, though, and my pace on the way to campus was somewhere between a speed walk and a light jog.

But even if I had woken up at 7:30 a.m. as I had planned, Hayes’ wake-up time would have beat mine by hours. As he does most mornings, he was splitting his time between his USC Marshall homework and making breakfast for his two sons.

In other ways, Hayes and I had very similar days. We’re both undergraduates at USC; I’m a junior and Hayes is a sophomore. We both went to class in the morning, had lunch at the Tutor Campus Center and then clocked into our jobs — mine at Annenberg’s newsroom and his at the Veterans Resource Center.

The Veterans Resource Center, where I visit Hayes for our interview, is an open floor plan room that shares an office partition with Fraternity & Sorority Leadership Development. It’s a pretty nondescript student lounge: A pyramid of Squishmallows occupies most of the couch space, and USC Viterbi internship flyers hang next to military branch flags. There’s not much décor that would set this lounge apart from other student areas, or many indications that the students who work here have combined decades of military experience.

Hayes and his coworkers at the Resource Center are people whom the National Center for Educational Statistics would classify as “nontraditional students.” The definition of who exactly is “nontraditional” is somewhat murky, but it’s usually applied to undergraduates who are older than 24 or who didn’t go to college directly after high school. Some sites estimate that almost threequarters of all American college students fit this label. At elite colleges, that number is likely much smaller, but nontraditional students are still a large and meaningful component of the undergraduate student body. And they’re rarely, if ever, represented in student media — including SCene.

Although I wonder if “nontraditional” is the best word to use to describe a group of people, it fits parts of Hayes’ undergraduate experience. Hayes joined USC after 10 years in the Navy and a year of community college in the Bay Area. Now, he balances group projects for his business classes with homeschooling his 5-year-old son and movie nights with his wife. We’re both considering our summer plans at the moment, but I don’t have to weigh relocating

my family for three months.

I was interested to know how Hayes felt about his “nontraditional”ness, whether his personal and academic lives seemed out of alignment. Or at least, what it was like to sit in lecture halls full of people who had 10 fewer years of life experience.

“At the end of the day, everybody’s an adult,” he says. “It’s just kind of [hard] figuring out how some people are shy and reserved. And that’s kind of new for me. We don’t really have that problem so much in the military.”

But other veteran students say their transitions to USC were

rockier. Antoino Acosta, a 29-year-old senior at USC Marshall who spent over ten years in the military, says that other nontraditional students are hard to find and harder to connect with.

“It’s definitely tough, right? … Most of the students in my classes are very traditional students and are very much younger than I am,” Antonio says. “But that’s the one thing that I like about USC Marshall is that it doesn’t matter what your situation is; we’re all goal-oriented and driven, and we get the job done.”

Part of Hayes’ time in the military eased his acclimation to undergraduate life. He worked as a technician for Raytheon’s weapon systems, but he credits his dexterity in college-age social dynamics to the time he spent with the Navy’s recruitment teams.

When he was in high school, military service was the only way Hayes saw to escape the poverty he faced for most of his childhood. He says that during his teenage years near Sacramento, heat, AC and food were always insecurities. College wasn’t an option that he considered. “There was no way to sustain myself,” he says. He’s not in contact with anyone from his home.

This same motivation to provide for himself and, later, for his two children pushed him to

apply to college. His coworkers in the Navy scoffed at the idea. While Hayes says that proving himself — or proving that he could overcome his background — got him through Navy training, it wasn’t his motivation to get an education. He was 11 years older, 28 now, and he realized that he could have a job he was passionate about.

That transition wasn’t easy, though. “My life was pretty much guaranteed to be stable when I was in the military,” Hayes says. “Coming here… nothing was guaranteed. I don’t have some sort of guaranteed income. I just have to hope for the best, and so it kind of feels like I’m spinning a bunch of plates at the same time.”

who graduated from community college and transferred to a four-year university. Although she didn’t finish her degree, her experience watching Hayes balance his undergraduate life with parenting has encouraged her to go back to college.

“The whole traditional thing — I guess I just don’t see it,” Melissa Hayes says. “We’re just trying to give our kids the best. So, for him to go back to school, it’s not really a shock.”

Hayes met his wife, Melissa, at a Bible study while he was stationed in San Diego. They’ve since moved three times: From Las Vegas to Santa Clara to Los Angeles. Melissa Hayes answered the call en route to Trader Joe’s with her sons. She’s quieter than her husband, but they’re both very grounded. She’s also a nontraditional student

You might be noticing a trend: Jean-Luc and Melissa Hayes and Acosta seem to be much less anxious about the undergraduateto-adult life split than our SCene writing team. Or at least, they’re more uncomfortable with the uncertainty than us “traditional” undergrads. I came into my interviews with Hayes prepared to ask about the huge anxieties he felt managing what I thought would be a double life. I expected him to tell me that he feels in limbo, stuck in some weird half-age between 20 and 30, but I wasn’t giving him nearly enough credit. It struck me that Hayes might see us more as adults than we see ourselves.

Interviewee Jean-Luc Hayes ‘26 is a business administration major from Sacramento, CA. He has traveled

to Ukraine, Oman, Dubai, Seychelles, Italy and Romania.

Maybe it’s because of his extra decade of life and work experience, but Hayes says he is very content with his decision to live the life of a college student and the life of a parent simultaneously. When I ask him about how college compared to his experience in the workforce, he only pauses for a moment: “Most nine-to-fives don’t have this much homework.”

Hopefully, this is some consolation to the SCene team, or at least to you, after we’ve spent this issue in a state of existentialism.

As we walk out of the newsroom after the interview, Hayes and I discuss our plans for the weekend.

I’m going to a café and he’s taking his sons to the Century City mall for a study break. But, we both have midterms due the next week.

Writer Sullivan Barthel ‘25 is a journalism major with minors in art history and legal studies from Boston, MA. His favorite pizza topping is broccoli.

Going on 22 18

Podcast by Daishalyn Satcher Photographed by Pili Marco Designed + Edited by Julia Zara

Growing up is hard. We jump from the past to the future to the present every five seconds. It’s inevitable. However, there’s beauty in the madness. Something that makes you feel okay on a bad day, that brings you comfort in isolation: Shared experiences.

With that I bring to you the 18 going on 22 series. I sit down with one student from each year, and they get the opportunity to share stories about their college experience.

Podcast host Daishalyn Satcher ‘25 is an architecture major from Atlanta, GA. 18 GOING ON 22| Daishalyn Satcher

18 GOING ON 22| Daishalyn Satcher

Interviewee Cole Chiles ‘27 a world bachelor in business major from Knoxville, TN. His grandmother was the model for the Land O’ Lakes butter.

Interviewee Zafina Virani ‘26 is an international relations major with a theatre minor from Houston, TX. She wants to be an actress.

How are you doing now compared to what you thought you were going to be doing four years ago? Did your dreams come true?

Cole Chiles (Freshman): Freshman year of high school was very ambitious, and was like, we’re going to Harvard. So, I guess I didn’t get that goal of mine. But, I’m very happy with where I am now. And I think [high school] freshman year Cole would also be very proud.

Zafina Virani (Sophomore): USC was my top choice, my big dream school. I look back four years ago, I was a sophomore in high school. I was a little baby, but it was just different. I think looking back four years, I think I’d be really proud of myself where I am now because I wanted to move to L.A., and I also really want to be an actress as well. I feel much happier here.

Earicka Jones (Junior):

I think years ago, I would have definitely told you I would be 100% pursuing acting. I still am pursuing acting. I did want something to fall back on, and I love communications ever since I found out about it. I love doing both essentially.

Matthew Calma (Senior):

I’m not going to lie, I am doing exactly what I thought I’d be doing at 18-yearsold. Like, weirdly.

What does a typical day in your life at USC consist of?

Chiles: Wake up at 4:30 in the morning — kidding. I have perfected my schedule this semester, and I set all my classes to start at 12. And so now I just do all of my homework from the hours of 7 to 11. Then the rest of the day, I’m pretty much free to do whatever. I picked up some new hobbies. I’m doing yoga now. I did some pilates. It is very hard. People make it look so easy.

Virani: Last year, I had 8 a.m.’s every single day between econ and acting. Let’s go through a Monday. So, I have business communications for about two hours. Right after, I got journalism for two hours. I usually have a little lunch break, go to the gym, and then we have Monday night dinner for my sorority. I also have Troy Labs, too, which is a Marshall affiliated club.

Jones: So [a] typical day is probably this semester, getting up at like 9 a.m. On a good day, I usually have three or four classes a day that I go to. I try to always make my schedule back to back. I work two jobs on campus. So, I usually will have a later shift. In between classes, I may try to get work done or work when I get off. I hang out with my roommate who’s also a transfer so I think we really bond on that as well. I unwind when I’m at home. I got some plants that I take care of. So, overall a pretty structured day.

Calma: I wake up and stay in bed for like an hour. An hour I usually listen to music, or I’ll read the news. I am the politics editor. But yeah, usually political YouTube videos about commentators. My favorite is The Majority Report by Sam Seder. I get a coffee, usually cappuccino, and then I sit in the Media Center for an obscene amount of hours. Then I go to class sometimes, go to my friend’s house, talk, go home, do some homework, and I go to bed.

Interviewee Earicka Jones ‘25 is a communication major from Atlanta, GA. She loves to act.

18 GOING ON 22| Daishalyn Satcher

Model Marcelino Martinez Escoriza ‘24 is an industrial engineering major from Mexico City. He hates pickles.

Where did you meet your best friend on campus/ how did your friend group form?

Chiles: Most of my friends have been from my floor and then also the people from my major. So, I found a lot of good friends that way. The people from my major, they’ll be in one of my classes. I’m like, ‘oh my gosh, we’re like in the same class.’ And then we become friends. My roommate’s also nice, so that worked out.

Virani: [I’m going to tell the story of] one of my best friends, Joe. When you’re a freshman, all of a sudden in L.A., every little party or little thing you hear about [you think is] going to be crazy. We [went to a party and] I kid you not, I have never been more scared in my life. I was terrified. We saw rats on the floor and stuff. [At] 4:30 in the morning, I went back to the village, so our friend was there, and she had a leftover Insomnia cookie. That’s what it was. We split a peanut butter cookie into fours, and we ate it. Then, we talked for hours after that. And we just became best friends.

Jones: My roommate is a pretty close friend of mine. That was just a shot in the dark. Then I met a lot of people through Helenes for sure and my time at Kó Society, too last semester, I met a lot of people that I loved. And it was great. I met other people in classes too. I’d say different avenues for sure.

Calma: Three of my friends that I’m very close with, I first met during the Welcome Back week. I went, and I didn’t want to go, but my mom was like, ‘Matt, just go. You never know.’ I saw these two girls at a table, and I walked by them, and for some reason, I just got very good vibes.

Do you feel like you receive more advice or give it out? What is the best piece of advice you have either given or received?

What are you looking forward to next year?

Chiles: I guess I’ll be in a different country. So, there’s all of that, and then, continuing to work on my relationships with my friends. I think that’s exciting to see the friendships that are going to come out of being in the smaller group of people. I’m just excited. I think for me, next year in Hong Kong, it’s going to be, you know, very far removed from my home. So, I guess self discovery.

Virani: Next year, I’m going to be a junior. I’m kind of scared. Time goes by really fast. I’m just excited to be an upperclassman. I’m excited to learn more about my field of work. I’m planning to go abroad my second semester, so I’m very excited for that.

Jones: Since I transferred, I have an extra semester to do. I want to try to study abroad — I think Hong Kong and London. I’ve started applying for internships. Definitely just auditioning more. I’ve started working my way back into looking at my acting stuff in classes.

Calma: I got my thesis. That’s going to be a lot of work. I’m very situated with the people I have now, so I’m going to make more friends. Next year is going to be very up in the air about what life looks like. Yesterday, I was like, I’m floating so much right now. I don’t know what to do. But, it’s working. I’m falling in the right direction. I don’t know what I’m looking forward to actually like, that’s a crazy question.

Chiles: I don’t know. One of the best pieces of advice came from my high school history teacher. She lived internationally, and I told her about my program. She said, ‘You cannot drop out. You cannot quit.’ So, next year if I want to quit? I’m just going to be thinking about those words. I can’t quit.

Virani: I always look at myself now, and I’m like, okay, 10-year-old Zafina wouldn’t want me to be upset about this thing. She wanted me to be happy. So, I always think of my younger self all the time, in any hardship that I go through, if it’s sad or upsetting or even if it’s happy, and it’s not what I had expected.

Jones: I’ve been giving out more advice. I mentioned before, me volunteering at the 32nd Street School. When I went to 32nd Street, I talked to predominantly seniors there because we’re asking them about their college life and stuff, I think it was basically just telling them to take a breather, and you don’t have to have everything figured out right now. That’s the whole point of living. You need to try different things, trial and error, right? I’m a junior, and I’m still figuring everything out.

Calma: I’ve been getting a lot of advice recently, because I’ve been going out of my way to ask for it. I’m also giving out more advice than I’ve ever given out before. So, I’ll tell you the best advice I ever gave: Every action that you take contributes to the person that you’re going to become. So, just keep that in mind.

In one word, how has your college experience been?

Chiles: Exceptional

Virani: Spontaneous Jones: Enlightening

Calma: Bye

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