Maria Abreu: My Full College Experience

“Dear Maria Abreu, It’s official. You are in.” On May 21, 2013 I received an email that I had been accepted to the Fourth Estate Leadership Summit in Los Angeles, California. I was so excited! I felt seen and felt like I was going to be a part of something big! I was going to do some good in the world!

I’ve been obsessed with LA since I was a kid but more importantly I was obsessed with UCLA. I wanted to go to UCLA and graduate with a bachelor’s degree in Broadcast Journalism and then be offered a job to work at E! I had everything planned out but things never really go as you plan. I was given the option by my parents to stay in Miami for school where I would have everything paid for or go out of state and be in debt for my undergraduate years. I chose to stay home. I always felt a little trapped with the options given to me for higher education and now UCLA was never going to be an option.

The Fourth Estate Leadership Summit was a conference for young adults to be involved and to learn more about the charity, Invisible Children. I came to learn about Invisible Children my senior year of high school. My geography professor, Mr. Barnett, showed us a documentary of three film students from California traveling to Africa without any plans about what they were going to film. They went to Uganda and saw the impact of the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) in this area. Three film students not knowing what they were in for when they traveled to Uganda made it their mission to want to end this crisis. I remember being so touched and outraged by this war going on in Africa. It opened my eyes and my tiny little world to the rest of the world. Child soldiers being trained and utilized to kill their parents, brothers, sisters, etc. It’s devastating! I was so quickly in love with the charity and everything they stood for.

I was 21 years old when I received this email and was studying Journalism at FIU in Miami, Fl. Scrolling down on the email and it read that the summit would be held in California at UCLA. I freaked out! I was so excited because technically I was finally going to go to my dream college for a charity I really cared about! I mean the stars aligned for me on this one! Once I got in, I had to raise $500 in order to go on the trip. At this point in my life I was 21 and working at Publix, a grocery store very famous in the south eastern area of the United States, so that’s when I decided to set up a Go Fund Me account. This was the time when Go Fund Me was starting to become popular so people were very kind in giving their money away because it was something new no one had quite processed how it worked. I was very hopeful that people would want to contribute to my little dream and so I always checked my page to see if the amount had gotten any higher.

A week went by and I saw that I was completely sponsored in paying for the summit! It was a full solid green line that reached the amount of $500. It was the most satisfying and humble feeling. I was just so excited! I couldn’t believe I was going to go to UCLA! My sister had just come back from a mission’s trip to Haiti and was so moved with what she experienced there that she decided to come with me. She too had known about the charity because she saw the same documentary in high school for her world history class. She was 19 years old at the time she applied for the summit and like me didn’t have the funds to go on this trip. She set up her own Go Fund Me page and ended up getting fully sponsored for her trip as well!

The summit was happening over the summer in August. We booked our tickets and on August 13, 2013 my sister and I land at LAX! As soon as I got out of the plane the amount of beautifully tanned, blonde, tall model looking figures were just everywhere. Everyone was pretty! My sister and I just looked at each other and knew with the smell of sunscreen, coffee brewing and green juices being pressed at the airport that we were in LA. When we got out of the airport summit greeters greeted my sister and me and we were escorted to a double decker bus that was going to take us to UCLA! That’s right, I was going to stay in the dorms of my dream university. Talk about life coming full circle for me at this point in time.

Walking up the stairs of the bus and I remember seeing so many students around our age with the same passion for this charity. I felt so empowered and felt like I was doing something good. It was a bus full of colorful people coming from all walks of life. There were a lot of students but there were also a lot of people who decided not to go to school and just live life. There were also people coming from different areas of the world: South America, Central America, Europe, Australia, and Africa. There were people who had every type of piercing you could imagine, to people who just didn’t believe in showers. It was great! I was having a blast and just couldn’t believe that I was there. I couldn’t believe that this was my life. I had a window seat in the bus and just remember looking out of the bus and passing by Beverly Hills. Seeing all of the mansions and imagining of who lived in them. The long palm trees that just seem never ending guiding our bus through Rodeo Drive. Seeing the Hollywood sign so close and yet so far. Just little old me becoming star struck with Los Angeles and heading to the school of my dreams!

The bus finally arrived to UCLA and I walked out of the bus and took a deep breath. There were so many trees in between the different buildings that it gave a very romantic feeling to the school. It was a very antiquated look almost like the Harvard campus with the red brick buildings but also had newly renovated dorms with a modern gray aesthetic on the outside, Dykstra Hall, which were the dorms we were going to be staying at. My sister and I roomed together. We got our room key from one of the summit greeters. They pointed to our building and we headed that way with our luggage.

When we opened the door to our dorm we saw how small it was. My sister was not impressed but I was so happy. All of my college dreams were coming true. There was vinyl wall covering, new carpets, new wood-stained doors and wall sconce lighting. There were two small twin beds on each side of the room. The one side table on the side of the bed and then two separate desks with wooden chairs at the end of the bed. It was great! My closet was so small that it basically fit the clothes I brought for the three days I was going to spend there. There was a huge window behind our beds that took up the entire wall. I remember asking my sister where the bathroom was and she was wondering the same thing. We couldn’t find it. We thought there was going to be a bathroom that would connect to at least one other room but nope that wasn’t the case.

As we unpacked our luggage we were told that night one of the summit would start in the next 30 minutes and we would have to meet in the auditorium. My sister and I walked out of our dorm and saw a girl coming down the hallway with a towel wrapped around her and all of her personal toiletries. We looked at each other and realized that these dorms had communal bathrooms for everyone staying on that floor. My sister freaked out but not in a good way. I remember her saying, “Thank God I brought sandals to go into the shower!” I was just so in awe of everything dorm life that communal bathrooms was the cherry on top for me! I couldn’t wait to meet people in the bathroom that lived on our same floor.

We headed to the historic Royce Hall auditorium. Its architecture is what is described as Romanesque revival. It is an 1800-seat auditorium that was completed in 1929. There were over 1500 people at the summit and so there was always a line to go anywhere on campus. The auditorium is mostly used for the performing arts and walking inside and actually seeing the place filled up was so wild. Speakers included U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, former anti-apartheid activist Jay Naidoo, former head prosecutor of the ICC Luis Moreno-Ocampo, and many more.

It was night one and Jamie Tworkowski of To Write Love On Her Arms spoke about the importance of mental illness and speaking up when you need help before its too late. Then the Buried Life was introduced. They were so popular at the time because they were the four guys on MTV that for everything they accomplished on their bucket list they would make it their mission to make something on a stranger’s bucket list come true. It was a surreal experience. It was like going to the biggest lecture class with the most intelligent speakers giving advice on all things from starting your own non-profit to inspirational talk of following your dreams.

Every night ended with a dance party by The Jane Doze. They were two former female co-workers who decided to leave their desk jobs in pursuit of careers as Dj’s. Every night we met new people and just danced with strangers. Took pictures with strangers and uploaded them to what was being used as the new form of “text” through pictures but what would later become the main source of income for many people, Instagram. These parties had glow sticks, celebrities (Sophia Bush, Kristen Bell, Jedidiah Jenkins, ect.) Partying with celebrities while in college, it doesn’t get any more LA than this. I mean I was truly living all of my college dreams minus the booze!

I think what completed the full college experience for me was lunch. My sister and I were given lunch cards and we would have to swipe it every time we would get something to eat. A lunch card! I know it sounds ridiculous but I so desperately wanted to go away for school and never had the chance. Now I am in the first floor of our dorms and eating breakfast, lunch and dinner with a lunch card. The lunchroom had colorful red, blue, green rugs and long wooden tables with white chairs. There were five different stations where you could choose whatever you would want to eat. From burgers to Chinese food to ice cream for dessert!

My favorite night was the third night when I got to hear one of my favorite activists and actresses, Sophia Bush speak about being a girl and how empowering that is. I remember her saying, “Sometimes we just want to eat whatever we want and hang out with our girlfriends and that’s ok.” She was so inspirational and so down to earth. She made everything so clear in how women must stick together and must always root for each other. Another one of my favorite speakers from this night was actress Kristen Bell. She was so cool and spoke about how one of the co-founders, Jedidiah Jenkins was her roommate when she first moved to LA and how far they have come. Fast forward five years later and now she is an established actress and he’s a NY Times Best Selling Author.

Every night was magical! Everyone was being inspired and determined to make the world a better place. It was such an amazing environment to be a part of. I learned so much about the power of unity, the power of charity and the power of giving those three days at UCLA. I lived a full college experience at my ultimate dream school in three days than what I had done back home in three years.