<aside> ✍🏽 We get a lot of questions about what being in Spark is actually like, so we thought we'd have some of our members tell you themselves. Tiki and Menna were Sparklets in Fall 2019 and Spring 2020, respectively. Their time in Spark in-person may have been brief, but it has also been jam-packed with meaningful experiences across our initiatives and time spent hanging out.
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Menna, Dan, Tiki, and Ivy (at the very bottom) painting the 1000 Pitches pitch booth as Sparklets
My name is Tiki. I'm a Computer Science/Business Administration major with a Cognitive Science minor, but that could change – I'm still figuring it out!
My interests include literally everything, but my latest crazes have been neurotechnology, robots and 90s TV. But at my core, I'm interested in people. I will never stop being amazed and inspired by both the people around me and ones I’ve never met. I like to break things and build them back up, learning everything to do with them along the way. I dream of the upheaval of social norms and plan for my next invention after conferring with Phineas and Ferb. My imagination for what the world could be with my doing blurs the lines between reality and REM, keeping me up at night!
Aside from Spark, I'm also involved with Los Angeles Community Impact and Sigma Eta Pi Entrepreneurial Society. I also spend a lot of time hooping at Lyon with my homies.
My Sparklet semester was FANTASTIC! After being welcomed into the family from every single person in the room, I knew that Spark was built on genuine community. Everyone wanted to get to know one another and learn all about them.
The experiences I had working on committees and our wild, tradition-filled retreat will surely be memories I look back on fondly in a couple of years. Scrolling through my Snapchat memories always leaves me smiling and reminiscing about some inside joke or funny moment that happened with Spark. From Steak 'n Fam (our semesterly dinner party) to Bay Trip and more, Spark played a defining role in my first semester of college.
Little did I know that the people I met in Spark would change my entire outlook on life. I can say with certainty that any conversation I have with another member will teach me something new. As a new member fresh out of highschool, I was imagining a somewhat structured club with a couple of meetings here and there dedicated to working on "entrepreneurial things." I could never have imagined the level of bond I would later achieve with fellow members, nor the real impact I could partake in having on campus.
SparkLabs was a training ground for Sparklets to gain experience with committee ideation and execution. My Sparklet semester, it took the form of a mini Spark initiative with the mentorship and guidance of older spark members. There were two teams with five members each.
We had consistent group meetings and check-ins with Core Team after Board on Mondays. We started off with an ideation and brainstorming phase and we honed in on one idea that we planned over a couple of weeks. It took lots of logistical work to find a venue, but we ended up hosting our event at a house off-campus. We learned to work with different communication styles and navigate different personalities. We dealt with some stress along the way, but it was an enriching experience once we finished!