Curing that Thanksgiving Food Coma

 

History of Thanksgiving

With Thanksgiving fast approaching, we decided to compile a history of the season that not many hear. We hear about turkey. We hear about thanks. But do we ever hear about the people who suffered so that we could give thanks to begin with? So here ya go!

Thanksgiving and Hanukkah Coincide!

This year Thanksgiving will overlap with the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah for the first and last time this year! Turkey and Latkes? I’m down.

• Thanksgiving has always been the 4th Thursday in every November
• The latest it can be is the 28th, which just so happens to be the the earliest Hanukkah can be
• And this year, they coincide!!! Amazing, I know.

So even if you do not celebrate Hanukkah, or maybe you do, take a moment to realize how amazing this fact is. Take this day to give thanks to the world of diverse religious practice and heritage we have to share!

Spending Thanksgiving… Alone…On Campus

Now, you’re going to be alone on campus this Thanksgiving. Don’t dread it. Don’t panic. Don’t get envious. Those other kids are going home to roasted turkeys and hot mashed potatoes while you slurp away at your 3 minute ramen. This is, at least, what you expected right? We’ve got you though. We’ve gone ahead and found the list (https://www.orl.ucla.edu/file/1528a976e198be.pdf) ORL has compiled that contains information about restaurants in Westwood that are open during the holidays. Check it out to find out where you can dine this break. Who knows, you might meet another fellow Bruin spending Thanksgiving on campus.

If you are not up for Westwood, there is going to be one event hosted by ORL:

Dashew’s Thanksgiving Dinner, Wednesday, November 27, 6-8pm, Bradley 300 – please RSVP

If you would not like to go to this, here are some things you can do:

1. Work on that resume. You might as well be going on your way to making dough while others sit around eating turkey. Those long hours spent alone could become really productive.

2. Get started on that one TV show all of your friends have been telling you to get started on. Thanksgiving break can be passed with just five seasons of Breaking Bad!

3. Catch up on sleep. Finals week is soon; and deity knows you won’t be studying for them during the break.

4. Just kidding. Please study. Humans function on sleep.

So there you go, choose two and enjoy yourself!

10 Ways to Show Your Family YOU Care This Holiday Season

Club Highlight: Innergy

On The Hill is on the lookout for interesting and cool clubs around campus!  This week’s feature is Innergy, a relatively new club on campus which was established in Winter 2012. Innergy seeks to enhance daily living by practicing mindfulness, cultivating compassion, and connecting with our inner selves and others around us. We talked with Ryan and Danielle about Innergy  and how YOU can get involved! Ryan is an Ethnomusicology major and Danielle is an Environmental Sciences major with a minor in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences; both of them are leaders at Innergy.

On The Hill: What is Innergy and why did it start?
Ryan & Danielle: Innergy is a student group that intends to enhance daily living by practicing mindfulness, cultivating compassion, and connecting with our inner selves and with others around us. We engage in various forms of meditation, discussions and experiential workshops, as well as education and service, in order to free mind, body, and heart. With our collective innergy, we create a comfortable and inspiring space where a community comes together to explore, embrace, and enjoy life’s experiences with infinite curiosity, love, and joy.

Innergy was started in Winter quarter of 2012 by two lovely alumni, Sara Wing and Asya Tabdili-Azar. They met during their freshman year in a course on mindfulness. After the class ended, they were both left wondering how to incorporate what they had learned into their daily lives. Together they searched for an outlet for this passion on campus and began volunteering at MARC (Mindfulness Awareness Research Center) at UCLA. After a particularly inspiring event there, the two decided to “start an inner-getic movement at UCLA.”

OTH: Why healthy, conscious living?
R & D: Why not? If you are alive, why not be healthy and conscious of what is happening to your body and mind?

OTH: What is the name’s significance to the club?
R & D: Originally it was going to be named “Energy,” but because the intent of the community is to cultivate inner peace and inner chi, “Innergy” seemed much more fitting.

OTH: What is the benefit of joining a club like Innergy to those who are students? Does it help with stress and academics?
R & D: We can only speak from personal experience about the benefits of joining. For us, joining has provided us with a sacred, non-judgemental space in which we can appreciate ourselves, appreciate our community, and be appreciated in return. While we do feel that this positive space reduces stress and that one can learn techniques for focus in school, the majority of the experience comes from the shared experience.

Innergy with Harry Paul

OTH: What are some of the speakers/teachers/shaman that you’ve had come hold sessions? I hear you got Rob Dyrdek’s shaman, Harry? Could you tell us about that?
R & D: Where do we start? We are going to list some of our favorites here, which is hard because we love every guest so much! Innergy also functions as a sampler of many different wellness practices and traditions because of the variety of guests that we host. Shaman Harry Paul has hosted two gatherings with Innergy and leads shamanic breathwork with the group, along with inspiring discussion after the session. We could try to explain “shamanic breathwork,” but it is hard to articulate in words the physical and emotional sensations that are felt in this transformative process.

Marvin Belzer, our faculty advisor and the associate director of MARC, has guided us in mindfulness meditations. Nikita Gupta, the Student Health and Wellness Coordinator at the Bruin Resource Center, has led inspiring discussion-based workshops and yoga practices. J.D. Wolfrobe is a multi-instrumentalist sound healer who activates a unique atonement of spirit through live instrumental and vocal sounds. Eva Clay is a licensed psychotherapist and has been teaching stress management and meditation for over 15 years. She is the producer and facilitator of “Sacred Dance Live,” a popular ecstatic dance event in Los Angeles, and has brought the event to Ackerman Union.

OTH: What’s your favorite Hill memory?
Danielle: In my first and second years I lived in De Neve and Saxon, respectively. My favorite dining hall was Hedrick Test-Kitchen. My favorite memory was sometime during my first year, and I was having lunch with a friend in De Neve. I was about to get up for a second helping of food, and had a strong urge to burp. To my surprise, it was one of the loudest burps I had produced to-date. My friend and I started giggling and a dude a few tables away from us actually stood up and started applauding me. Instinctively, I rose from my seat and took a bow. This will definitely go down as one of my proudest memories.

Ryan: I lived in Dykstra before it was remodeled and Gardenia during my first year, and I lived in Rieber Hall as a sophomore. My favorite dining hall is Bruin Plate, or the food formerly experienced at Hedrick Test Kitchen.

R & D: We both agree that, as a freshman, the most important steps are to take is finding an inspiring, open community of friends and following your passions. Remember that there is a balance between schoolwork and fun, and that this balance is not the same for everyone – make time for what is most meaningful to you.

OTH: Why are you guys so awesome? Because really…you are.
R & D: ❤

OTH: What and where is your next meeting?
Our next meeting is this coming Wednesday of week 8, Marvin Belzer will be leading mindfulness meditation in a joint gathering with SIM, another student wellness group. Week 10 will be a massage workshop led by Steve Stone.

OTH: How can someone get involved? Is anyone welcome? How do we reach you: Twitter? Facebook?
R & D: We have weekly gatherings to which everyone is welcome to attend. For these gatherings, we invite a professional guest that can contribute their passion, knowledge, and experience to our community. We publicize all of our events as well as other clubs’, UCLA organizations, and outside events on our weekly newsletter, Facebook, and our website.

Want to learn more about Innergy? Connect with them here:

• Facebook: www.facebook.com/innergyatUCLA

• Website: www.innergyatucla.com

Interview by Beverly Okhio

Interview: Matt Long

If you have ventured out of the residential halls beyond 9pm, you would have noticed Access Control manning the entrances. We sat down and spoke with Matt Long, an Access Control staff member about his work, school and The Hill. The 4th year majors in Classics and minors in Digital Humanities gives us an insight to the world of access control and what goes on behind the access control desks.

What’s the work like?
Access control is one of my favorite jobs. There’s a nice balance where there’s a lot of down time where you stay in the building making sure nothing goes on – so just the fact that we prevent 95% of all crimes that could be possibly committed. You can also study on the job, as long as you’re attentive.

Is it true that drunk people try to run past access control?
Yeah, we get the occasional runner. We actually take this really seriously… If someone goes up without swiping then we have no way knowing who they are. There have been issues in the past where access control has prevented people from going up who then caused issues later on, so if they had gone up to the dorms who knows what kind of problems they would have caused.

What if someone incredibly strong tried to get into the building?
The first thing is I’ll be nice. I never want to make a situation hostile and a lot of times people just don’t know the policy. However, if they ignore me and keep running, general protocol is that if they go for the stairs, there’s not much we can do since we can’t leave the post, so what we do is notify the manager and give them a description of the person and then notify dispatch and also notify UCPD of the situation. But there’s no one set of what happens where we’ll do X, Y, and Z.

What are some interesting access monitor stories?
One of my first nights of work I had just gotten off at the time. A very large gentleman walks into the dorm carrying this girl who was obviously extremely inebriated to the point where she was completely unresponsive. So he walks up to us with her on his shoulder, and the guy says to the access monitor, “We’re good” and he walks past. And the access monitor is like, “No, excuse me sir we’re not good” and makes him set her down to see what kind of state she’s in. The monitor notifies his supervisor and EMS, so the man decides the best way to do is just to leave. He drags her out of Sproul, and only makes it as far as the tables outside of Bcafe and ends up propping her on top of a table, where EMS eventually came and treated her.

What’s your favorite part of living on the hill?
My favorite part of living on the hill was my freshman year in Dykstra. D8 was probably one of the funnest experiences. Everyone was so social and so nice – I think ti was because everyone says living in the dorms is one of the most social situations ever. And so everyone went out of their way – because of the hype — to make it like that.

Favorite dining hall?
Hedrick

Is there something you want to see on the hill?
I wish there was a gym on the hill for students so students didn’t have to walk all the way to Wooden. I also think there needs to be better alcohol education. There’s been so many freshman who have come in way too intoxicated who don’t understand how to drink responsibly. It would just be solved if everyone knew when to stop drinking.

Interview by Jerry Cheung

Style Feature of the Week: Mukhtar

Check out this week’s style feature, Mukhtar!

Fun Facts:

Student involvement: Cultural Affairs Commission

Special traits: those pearly whites

Our favorite piece: that plaid button-up of course!

Honoring Veteran’s Day

Veteran’s Day is coming up! And in honor of those who died fighting for this country, we have decided to give you a little history on the topic. Yes…it is more than a day off of school!

World War I ended when the fighting was ceased with an armistice, or “temporary cessation of hostilities”, between the Allied nations and Germany in 1918. Veterans Day serves as the day for us, as Americans, to reflect on Armistice Day, expressing our appreciation for those heroes who died in our defense.

So while you get a couple extra hours of sleep or catch up on the new season of “NewGirl”, don’t forget to take a few moments to think about those who made those privileges possible.

Quick Hot Meals for the Residence Halls

So we know that finals week is coming up and that you may not have time to spend eating in the dining halls, so we’ve compiled a list of easy meals to cook right in your room! If that wasn’t enough, check out this link to more easy snakcs and meals. We gotchu. http://collegelife.about.com/od/fooddining/a/25ThingsYouCanCookinYourDormMicrowave.htm