Journal 4-26

Today was a great day but my morning started off pretty rough. I woke up around 3am to make sure I packed all my things to leave for UCLA. I went to get my mom to get ready as well, but she sent me back to sleep for 30 minutes. So I went back to sleep for another 30 minutes and woke up at 3:34. Once I got up for the second time, got all of my clothes together and put them in the suitcase. Then I got all of my business suits together and put them in my carry on so that it would be easier to travel with them. As I was bringing my things downstairs, my mom helped me load everything into the car. We came back in and grabbed a breakfast bar for the drive to school. My mom drove me to the pick spot for the vanpool and said our goodbyes before I got into the van. This morning there were less passengers, making it easier for me to go sleep on the ride to UCLA. Once I got to Westwood, I got out of the van, retrieved my belongings and headed up the hill to my dorm, Rieber Hall. During my walk I noticed a lot of athletes waking down the hill; I assumed they were use to training/practicing early before their classes. It was a difficult task trying to get up the hill; with all the things I was carrying, I had to take a break in between time to regain some strength. Once I finally got to Rieber, I made sure to hang up my professional clothes in my closet so they wouldn’t get wrinkled. After I went stragith to sleep again for about 30 minutes so that I would have enough time to get to my class at 8am in Haines 39. When returning to my room, I went back to sleep and awoke again at 10:24am. I woke to my roommate getting ready for class as I went to Rendezvous. Once I got my food, I went back to my room and finished emailing some actives that I wanted to interview. As I was handling business I was deciding on reading a good book in which I ultimately chose to reread The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore. This has been one of my recent favorite books I’ve read. Two kids with the same name, living in the same city. One grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar and busi­ness leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison for felony murder. The Baltimore Sun ran a small piece about Wes Moore, a local student who had just received a Rhodes Scholarship. The same paper also ran a series of articles about four young men who had allegedly killed a police officer in a spectacularly botched armed robbery. The police were still hunting for two of the suspects who had gone on the lam, a pair of brothers. One was named Wes Moore. Wes just couldn’t shake off the unsettling coincidence, or the inkling that the two shared much more than space in the same newspaper. After following the story of the robbery, the manhunt, and the trial to its conclusion, he wrote a letter to the other Wes, now a convicted murderer serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. His letter tentatively asked the questions that had been haunting him: Who are you? How did this happen? Wes discovered that the other Wes had a life not unlike his own: Both had grown up in similar neighborhoods and had difficult childhoods, both were fatherless; they’d hung out on similar corners with similar crews, and both had run into trouble with the police. At each stage of their young lives they had come across similar moments of decision, yet their choices and the peo­ple in their lives would lead them to astonishingly different destinies. I think this book was one of my favorites because it was so relatable to me and many people I knew in my life that have the same struggles as both Wes Moores.