Anthony Aceves, Cluster 7’s amazing teacher fellow, takes care of a lot of children. 10, to be exact.
Yup, he loves his pets. But why? I had to attend his coffee talk and find out.
It all started a little under a decade ago, when Mr. Aceves, then an undergraduate at UCSC, showed up fully dressed and prepared for Professor Barry Sinervo’s herpetology class.
Little did he know, he’d soon be brought to the woods near campus on a “field trip,” get lost, and have to dig himself out of the forest alone. Still, it was exciting to see many newts and salamanders in the wild, if it weren’t for the ripped clothes, poison oak, and possibility of death. (“What is liability in college?” Mr. Aceves quipped.)
Regardless, the late Prof. Sinervo’s unique teaching style had done its work, and today, Mr. Aceves is the proud owner of seven different amphibians and reptiles.
Maybe “owner” isn’t the right word. Because, as our coffee talk went on, I realized our four-footed friends have minds of their own, their quirks and unpredictable nature impossible to control.
Take Tuk, for instance, Mr. Aceves’s leopard gecko. Raised as a small but adorable runt, she has brilliant scale patterns and would have been his favorite pet — that is, if she didn’t escape her tank and go missing for three months, landing him $3,000 in surgery and veterinary bills as he tried his best to raise her back to a healthy weight.
The fact that pets are costly to maintain — both mentally and financially — was not lost on Mr. Aceves. But he continues to be the loving parent of all the creatures in his home, no matter what it takes.
“To me, my pets are just a part of my life,” he explained, “but to them, I’m all they have. It’s my duty to provide them with the best life they can possibly live.” - Kevin Li
One Direction
Millions of people. Five boys. Four judges. One Direction. In 2010, on The X Factor, a group of exceptionally good-looking 16 to 18 year olds were united to become one of the best (in accordance to my superior opinion) boy bands of the 21st century.
Flash forward 11 years, and UCSC’s 2021 COSMOS program has formed its unofficial 1D Fan Club. On a fine Thursday evening, during a discussion about music after the Escape Room Evening Event, our beloved Wattpad-fan-fic-inspiring y2k boys were brought into question. Suddenly, we were transported back in time by the sound of What Makes You Beautiful playing on the Zoom, with crowds of students flooding the chat, demanding the studio version to be played instead of the remix (like why would you choose the remix over the--).
Over the years, I have had my fair share of boy bands--from Big Time Rush (congratulations if you got tickets!!) and the Jonas Brothers to BTS and EXO. Especially in the 2010s, when countless male pop groups produced average songs and mediocre music videos, but 1D was more than [just] this boy band. They gave us the whole package. They were a way of life--another worldeven. Justice stores. Taylor Swift. Harry and Zayn feuds. Harry and Louis fanfics. Taylor Swift. iCarly cameos where Harry and Carly had more chemistry in 20 minutes than she had with Freddy for the whole first season. Did I mention Taylor Swift? Harry has had to watch guys steal his girl more times than we’ve listened to Katrina introduce our discovery lecture speakers. Nothing can change my mind on this fact. (If it wasn’t apparent by now, I am an absolute Harry stan.)
The night changes real quick. We went through fifteen different phases of Harry’s (amazing) haircuts and one certain *cough cough* member leaving. It would be an understatement to say that 1D has a lot of history, with Zayn leaving and all. And I wish One Direction was still together -- or even had a reunion for its decade anniversary. One way or another, although One Direction has split into New Directions (to all my Glee fans!), nobody -- not even the kpop groups on Kingdom--compares to the hole that One Direction has left in our hearts. Their six years together will last us fans an infinity.
With that said, Karaoke Night is coming soon (next week!) at the end of the day. Be there, especially to all other 1D fans!
When COSMOS 2020 was cancelled, hundreds of students from all over California (and, like, two from out of state) were left disappointed and summer-plan-less (f in chat for the rising seniors who couldn’t reapply next year). Hundreds of others who were waitlisted or rejected were secretly relieved that they weren’t going to be missing out. A COSMOS-less summer came and went, and as the rest of 2020 inched past and Americans began to realize the importance of wearing masks and social distancing (get vaccinated, everyone!), society began to crawl out of quarantine and COSMOS enthusiasts, academic tryhards, and parents with high expectations were all overjoyed to learn that COSMOS 2021 was going to happen, albeit online.
Now that we’re deep into COSMOS But Online™, let’s take a look at some pros and cons of being all virtual.
PRO: Discovery Lectures start at 9AM Huge W. 9AM Discovery Lectures mean that we can wake up 5 minutes before, login to Zoom in bed, then understand just enough of the lecture to ask a semi-coherent question to get entered into the raffle. Plus, they’re webinars, so we quite literally can’t turn our cameras on. We can hide behind our screen without feeling guilty about the Zoom gallery view being just the teacher’s face surrounded by 24 black boxes with names.
CON: We do not get to try Dr. Chen’s rice. When I heard that previous COSMOS students got to try Dr. Chen’s homemade rice and we wouldn’t be able to, my disappointment was immeasurable and my day was ruined.
PRO: Final presentations are online If in person presentations were a rock, online presentations would be the meteor that killed the dinosaurs because that’s how much bigger and cooler they are. Not only can you read off of a script (who will know?), but when you get asked hard questions afterward you can furiously Google them and pretend you spent the previous night preparing instead of procrastinating!
CON: Every lecture is online If anyone said they were 100% focused in online lectures, they would be 100% lying. Having lectures on Zoom means that we have thousands of distractions right at our fingertips, and as teenagers, most of us are not the best at self control. Labs are also online, meaning we can’t “accidentally” mix random chemicals together to make explosions. #itsahardknocklife
PRO: Social interactions are limited to texting, and calls where at least one person is frozen Let’s be real. Many of us are socially awkward nerds who would’ve taken some time to warm up to each other in person. Texting instead of talking sped up that process, and soon we were overthrowing oppressive Discord governments, vibing to music together in voice channels, and anonymously confessing our darkest secrets and trauma as if we had known each other forever. Also, being online means less chance of any romantic interactions because NO COSMOS COUPLES!!
CON: Social interactions are limited to texting, and calls where at least one person is frozen I think all of us COSMOS 2021 attendees have scrolled through the @cosmosucsc Instagram at least once and gone through all 5 stages of grief thinking about the missed opportunities from not being in person. Just imagine chatting on the way to class, visiting the boardwalk on weekends, and doing labs in person….Stop I’m not crying it’s just Zoom’s terrible camera quality.
CONCLUSION: COSMOS is great. We spent time applying and spent money to attend. We love COSMOS. But we would love COSMOS even more if it was in person. Therefore, the only course of action is to convince everyone to get vaccinated so future COSMOS attendees can enjoy the full, in-person COSMOS experience that we were forced out of. President Biden please invite me to the White House so I can convince people to get vaccinated. Thank you, and GO (online) COSMOS! - Audrey Zeng
Cluster 8: Pacific White Side Dolphin Necropsy
There are three things you need to know. One, a rescue worker’s job isn’t all fun and games. Sure, rescuers save hundreds of animals, they get to watch the ones they save heal, grow up, and return back into the arms of the ocean. But there are equally as many critters who don’t make it out of the hospital, or have already passed on when they were found. On these animals, trained personnel would then perform a necropsy, or an autopsy for animals, in order to figure out the cause of death.
Two, when your dream is to become a forensic pathologist and your hobbies include watching true crime documentaries, blood and dissection does not faze you. In fact, they even fascinate you to a degree.
Three, different people have very different coping mechanisms. Put these three things together, and what do you get? Pure, unbridled chaos.
There are those of us who became nervous the moment the baby dolphin was laid out before us on the table. Those of us who watched with wary interest tinged with wonder. Those of us who found ourselves fascinated since the very beginning.
Somebody held out hope that there wouldn’t be any blood.
I hated to do it, but someone had to break it to her that if an animal was about to be cut open, there was approximately a 100% chance of there being blood.
Then the necropsy started, and Discord, ironically named after chaos, became a safe haven. Or, as safe as you can get with a lot of screams and all caps and never-before-seen coping mechanisms and cries of “why did no one warn us about this” with just a sprinkle of “what about this freaks you guys out?”
By the time the dolphin ceased to look like a dolphin, at least half of the class had hidden in the Discord chat, at least three people had been called out by Prof. Noren for their various facial expressions, and someone was trying to organize a Bay Area meetup. Did she make the Google form to destress when faced with a real-life rendition of the dolphin anatomy model we’d been gifted? I have no idea, but I wouldn’t put it past her.
Which left me, the salty SoCal kid, to rub in the fact that I seemed to be the only one actively enjoying the process, a valiant attempt at establishing dominance. Did it work? I still have no idea, you’d have to ask my clustermates.
On the flip side of that coin, being so fascinated by this baby dolphin being sliced apart also meant that Prof. Noren was getting an absolute kick out of it. If I had a penny for every time Prof. Noren laughed after seeing me grinning about something that would get me dubbed a psychopath in any other context, I’d have two pennies. Not that I mind — in fact I also found my complete lack of facial expression control entertaining — and you bet I wouldn’t say no to two extra pennies, but it’s still weird that it happened twice.
Eventually, things slowed down — and I mean very eventually, given the necropsy took up the entire two hours of class, and it took another hour after that for the traumatized children in the Discord chat to calm down.
I think most people managed to reclaim their sanity.
So, at the end of the day, people were terrified, I was fascinated and laughing at the people being terrified, the Bay Area meetup still wasn’t planned, and the SoCal kid was still salty. - April Zuo