From the age of 6, my brother was able to navigate the busy streets of Sacramento. I remember one incident when my mom and brother got lost downtown. Neither my mom or I had a clue about how to reach our destination. But in a few short minutes, my younger brother figured out where we should turn around and what street we should get on. Some people are simply born with a great sense of direction.
And, unfortunately, I am not one of them.
I used to get lost driving on a daily basis. I constantly missed exits and street signs. Despite many years of driving around Sacramento, to this day there are times I forget my highway exit is coming up or have to pull over and look up new directions. The worst is when another driver doesn’t let me into his or her lane and I have to rework my route on new streets.
And that’s just when driving around my hometown. When I transferred to Cal last year, my lack of sense of direction took an even deeper plunge. It took me months to remember the names of streets.
To this day, I hesitate to give people directions because I might send them down the wrong street. I know the names around Southside: College, Dwight, Haste, Channing and Bancroft. But I don’t remember where they intersect with one another or what shops are on which street. Around Northside, it’s even worse. At Calapalooza, one freshman asked me where The Daily Californian’s office is. “On Hearst, of course!” I replied. Then she asked the name of the cross-street, which (of course) I had not an inkling of an idea of.
Even in my second semester, as I was reading an article about Telegraph, I really had to think about what “north of Dwight Way” meant, even though I walk around Dwight all the time. It wasn’t until a few very long and extremely stressful minutes that I was able to figure out that north of Dwight was between Dwight and campus. To put it simply, I’m terrible at finding my way from point A to point B.
That brings me to point A: Sometimes, one must simply accept one’s weaknesses and move on.
I’m never going to be one of those people who can rattle off directions to any store in the city on the spot. That’s not the way my brain works.
My theory is that my poor navigation skills have to do with my way of thinking. I don’t work systematically or think in a linear manner. Usually, when I start writing something — a paper, a poem, this article _ I start at the end. Sometimes, just to switch it up a little, I’ll start at the middle. And on those rare moments when I decide to at least try to work linearly, I’ll start at least near the beginning.
Eventually, by the end of last year, I was able to get the gist of the map of Berkeley and the campus. But then I confronted a new problem — which brings me to point B.
After I learned how to get around the area, I began to take the same route every single day — and fast. I probably could have beat the best of speed-walkers on my routes to class. But I missed a lot of what Cal has to offer along the way.
During my first semester at Berkeley, I walked faster than usual because I knew that my lack of directional awareness would lengthen my trips to class. If I didn’t prepare in advance and leave early, I would absolutely be past “Berkeley time” and miss the first few minutes of class. Thus, speed-walking quickly became one of my most important skills. The more I got to know the area around campus, the more quickly and efficiently I walked. I learned to avoid Sproul as much as I could, because fliers got in my way.
By midsemester, I was stuck in a rut. It started to feel like my community college days again, when I drove 45 minutes down the same highway every single morning.
Getting lost can cause panic and frustration. It’s not necessarily fun. But getting lost also affords you the opportunity to discover new places. Oftentimes when we think we know where we’re going, we lose that desire or freedom to travel down new paths. And these other trails may distract us, but they also make life all the more exciting.
Near the end of last semester, I started wandering around campus again. I found myself in buildings I had never set foot in, such as the East Asian Library. I walked through the music department’s part of campus to get back to my apartment. I didn’t speed-walk — I strolled aimlessly.
And you know what? I didn’t get lost.