<p>As ?super seniors? look forward to graduating next week, we?re forced to look back at the last four years and take stock of what happened.
<br/>Did we choose the right school? Did we take the right classes?
<br/>Did we really need to stay an extra quarter? (I prefer to think of it as a victory lap).
<br/>For those of us looking for some meaning from our UCLA careers I have only one word: guacamole.
<br/>It?s amazing that so much can be summed up in a deliciously hearty dip, even though its perfection is in its simplicity.
<br/>This secret was bestowed upon me by a very wise professor of mine in Kenya.
<br/>For the last 40 years that she?s been living in Africa, she?s been exposed to a veritable blitzkrieg of agents of virtue: development workers building new schools for Kenyan orphans or U.N. officials organizing refugee camps.
<br/>Each time she meets one, she faces the inevitable question ? what do you do for a living?
<br/>The question is biting, because in Africa, every ex-pat is eagerly trying to one-up the next in their ceaseless barrage of good deeds.
<br/>?I?m a professor,? she replies proudly.
<br/>Then come the looks: The aid workers think they?ve won. Teaching? Research?
<br/>She?s lived in Kenya for the better part of her life and her contributions don?t even come close to their grandiose efforts to save humanity.
<br/>?Well that?s not all,? she squeezes in slyly. ?I introduced guacamole to a village of Luo people of Western Kenya.?
<br/>The Luos had avocados, limes, tomatoes and onions before my professor came along, but she was the one to impart the gift of the miraculously tasty mixture.
<br/>The village has been hooked ever since, and my professor can go to sleep at night knowing she?s made the world a better, more dippable place.
<br/>This story illustrates one fundamental truth about life: It?s all about the little things.
<br/>It would be easy to look back at our careers here at UCLA and feel disappointed at how little we?ve actually achieved.
<br/>We still haven?t gotten rid of world hunger, the war in the Middle East or the overly zealous, combative religious guy on Bruin Walk.
<br/>Heck, we couldn?t even get an on-campus bar.
<br/>Clearly the world has a ways to go before it?s anything like the place we always hoped it would be back in elementary school or even freshman year.
<br/>But just because we haven?t cured AIDS or taken our tops off for Playboy doesn?t mean we haven?t done some amazing things.
<br/>It?s a hard pill to swallow at first, but it doesn?t need to be bad.
<br/>When you?re a kid, you think the greatest thing in the world would be to be president, or an astronaut or a movie star.
<br/>After watching ?Indiana Jones? I wanted to be an archaeologist until I found out that few of them actually fight Nazis in the Jordanian desert, despite what the movie might suggest.
<br/>So we grow up and realize that being the president is the craziest job in the world, movie stars are too coked-out to have real emotions and nobody gives a hoot about astronauts anymore.
<br/>We come to realize that it?s not about the supposedly big things like where you?ll go or what you?ll do, but rather how you?ll get there.
<br/>Our experiences here at UCLA and beyond will be defined by the little things: the ?hows,? not the ?whats.?
<br/>In the end, it will be the relationships we have with each other, not with Murphy Hall, that will define our post-Bruin lives.
<br/>It will be the things we learn while managing our time and paying the bills, not while being in lecture, that make us into veritable mensches.
<br/>UCLA is more than just a means to an end; enjoy the journey and take pride in the little things, because I can tell you the end isn?t looking all that peachy anyway.
<br/>The degrees we earn will just be pieces of paper and the grades we get will never be anything but letters.
<br/>My advice to all us graduating seniors, and even those of you sticking around is: Don?t fret about the big things.
<br/>Sometimes in life we have to slow down, take a breath, look around and hope for guacamole.
<br/><hr><i>Hungry? Why wait? Grab some guac and e-mail Levine at jlevine@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.</i></p><br><br><a href='http://www.dailybruin.com/news/articles.asp?id=39284&#039; target='_blank'>http://www.dailybruin.com/news/articles.asp?id=39284&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br>