But this column is not about the pros and cons of infrastructural projects. It’s about personal construction — self-improvement. In the tradition of German philosophy, there is an idea of soul-searching and maturation that is referred to as Bildung. Inherent to Bildung is personal transformation. On an abstract level, this means cultivating selfhood — unfolding the manifold possibilities of identity.

You see, there is no better time than summertime to revamp your personality, mental outlook and skills. Forget spring. Renewal and growth are best suited for the long days of summer. The months between May and August are always slightly off-kilter from the rest of the year. Friends you might normally see every day are absent. Maybe living back at home feels strange. Maybe staying on campus feels even stranger. The heat in the air slows every moment, making you move sluggishly throughout the day. There are fewer obligations, fewer stresses, more tan lines. These mellow few months are thus the perfect time for some metaphoric construction.

Self-development is a never-ending process because no one is ever completely happy with who they are. The school year inhibits this process, sometimes delaying it for months. Academics hinder self-cultivation with projects and assignments and midterms, which force the process to go in a specific, predetermined direction.

Here is where self-construction comes into play. Those aspects of your personality that you find distasteful? Bulldoze them. Schedule the demolition for today. The passions that lie deep inside you? Lift them to the surface with a crane. Add layers. Add levels. Strip away the parts that no longer serve you. Become the edifice you have always wanted to be. And because this is a personal project, obviously, no trespassers are allowed. Spend some time alone each day to analyze what requires development. Work sites are never pretty, but the displeasing sight will be worth it in the end.

Construction must be done authentically. It is not enough to simply give the illusion of renovation for others to see. Poor workmanship will inevitably crumble as soon as you are shaken. And just as upgrading a building requires digging deep into its electric circuitry, delving into yourself requires a careful examination of your own mental wiring.

This self-examination process was one that I experienced myself a few summers ago as a high school student taking classes at UC Berkeley. It was a weird summer. Between not knowing anyone and being in strange Berkeleyland, I had a lot of time on my hands to explore the area and explore myself. At some point during those few months, I started understanding more about my identity. There is almost nothing more confusing than figuring out you are not the person you think you are. For the longest time, I had identified as straight. With a bit of introspection, I realized that my sexuality was far from hetero. This conclusion was not a result of me staring up at a majestic construction site. Neither was it one realized without denial, sadness and frustration. I didn’t figure out my whole identity that summer. I didn’t come close and probably never will. What I did gain, however, was the smallest semblance of self-awareness.

German philosophers thought that Bildung was all about self-education — reading books and engaging in intellectual conversations. I love those things. But cultivating selfhood contains another angle altogether: removal, relaxation and reflection. Discoveries about yourself are not usually made in the midst of activities or socializing but on a tranquil summer walk or just as you fall asleep for a midday nap. There’s no guarantee that you will realize your true sexuality like I did, but there’s a good chance you might learn more about yourself along the way.

Forgive my countless construction metaphors, but the parallels between humans and buildings are too great to ignore. Take façades, for example. A building’s pretty exterior indicates nothing about its interior strength, just as a person’s façade is irrelevant to her character. Like buildings, we require periodic reconstruction and re-examination. In the same way that a building quivers during an earthquake, we are prone to tremble under life-shaking circumstances. The key to not collapsing from it all is by building up your Bildung. With a steady internal structure, you can withstand anything.

Contact Kimberly Veklerov at kveklerov@dailycal.org.

The post Off the beat: Under construction appeared first on The Daily Californian.

I am probably wrong on both counts.

To start with the latter, not every student in 1964 was actively campaigning for free speech. While it is true that as many as 3,000 students protested together in October and November, many of them were likely fighting for different causes and many more were not involved whatsoever. Nonetheless, the idea that there could be one unified, collaborative movement is uplifting when surveying the current state of student activism, which is easily more diverse.

In regard to the first point about graffiti, I am wrong without a doubt. As much as I like to picture a student’s outstretched Sharpie as one of the microphones in front of Savio, most restroom graffitists are probably not seeking broader political freedoms. Instead, they write out confessions, pleas for advice, deeply held religious views or philosophical musings. Mirroring the activism of today, these sentiments are diverse.

But when I see a paraphrased Randy Pausch quote in the women’s restroom of Pimentel, “Brick walls aren’t there to keep you out. They’re there to give you a chance to show how much you want something” or the Doctor Who-inspired “Allons-y Allonso — We have a bathroom stall to take back!” in a recently cleaned Dwinelle restroom, I cannot help but think that Savio’s fire still burns inside students.

Herein lies the parallel. The graffiti of today and the protests of the past each represent the struggle to disseminate speech against those who wish to silence it. No matter how many arrests were made during the 60s sit-ins and protests, the voices never stopped. Likewise, no matter how many times bathroom partitions are scrubbed down, graffiti always resurfaces. In the case of the Evans Hall women’s bathroom, it’s even a competition, with some declaring, “First!” to show that they reached the blank stalls before anyone else.

Without diminishing the significance of the Free Speech Movement, graffiti has a uniqueness unto its own. It is inherently a dialogue among individuals, even those who do not actively write back responses. Simply reading a text already makes someone engaged in the conversation. Like all forms of communication, graffiti attempts to fish out an innermost thought and transform it into words or pictures. Sometimes, the words don’t come out quite right or the drawing is not how it was pictured in someone’s mind. Beneath a whale cartoon in the same Evans restroom, an artist wrote, “This came out slightly creepier than intended.”

As powerful as Savio’s words were, they might not have embodied the true essence of what he felt. As majestic as a whale might be in someone’s imagination, it inevitably loses its essence when given concrete form. The transformation of an idea into a verbalization is a challenge for everyone — from political activist to whale cartoonist. Although we might never understand what a person truly means in his mind pre-language or pre-art, we are united in the shared struggle to communicate such feelings. Speech has power not because it is perfect, but because it is the imperfect product of a common endeavor to make our thoughts known.

Contact Kimberly Veklerov at kveklerov@dailycal.org or follow her on Twitter: @kveklerov.

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We allow ourselves to live in a world of poisons because, frankly, there is not much we can do about it. Case in point: My Unit 1 dorm, the building in which I write this article, is in “the presence of numerous substances known to the state to cause cancer,” according to the cheery Proposition 65 warning on the door. But I’m not planning on leaving the building’s shelter in protest or fear. To be constantly wary of disease-causing materials would mean dashing from place to place in a foolish attempt to outrun the inevitable. Soaking up the asbestos seems to be the less exhausting option here.

These days, everything seems to be a carcinogen — dormitories, cooked meat, cellphones, soy, even alcohol. The list is endless. No matter how ostensibly “good” or “natural” or “healthy” something is, it will probably kill you if used or ingested it in excess. Moderation is the purported hero of these battles, but how can a person balance his whole life when balancing a fall semester schedule is challenging enough?

The idea of simply succumbing to toxicity is tempting when facing the “world of poisons.” In Heideggerian philosophy, there is this notion that each second of our lives, we are coping with — dealing with — our state of being in the world. As we cope, says philosopher Martin Heidegger, we are “running ahead” toward our ultimate possibility: death. In other words, every moment is a struggle to be in tandem with the flow of people and events around us. Each of these moments brings us one step closer to the end.

Accepting that the world is slowly poisoning us, fatally or otherwise, is dismal. Here is an even drearier thought: What if the most pernicious of all these toxins were self-inflicted? What if, instead of the world poisoning us, we were the ones imposing such harm on ourselves?

In college, there is an underlying feeling that destructive habits are OK because they are temporary. Pulling a few consecutive all-nighters is innocuous enough because we can make up for the lack of sleep once the weekend rolls around. An hour at the gym can be sacrificed when the workload becomes too heavy. Ramen wins over home-cooked meals because it can save you a few extra minutes. Or maybe you’re the guy who sleeps enough, exercises daily and eats right, but as soon as Friday night hits, you drink so much you forget which way is home.

Everyone is guilty of self-destruction to some degree. A good friend of mine — a smoker — once bought this huge box of cigarettes in bulk. On each face of the boxes were warnings in bold, black ink. One read, “Smoking reduces blood flow and causes impotence.” None of the warnings bothered him. A cig was just a temporary stress relief. Quitting is always possible down the road.

We have no control over most of the toxic crap the world flings at us. The few lifestyle choices that we actually have a say in should give us the chance to enrich our health, to enrich every second of our lives. Sure, the little decisions might not amount to much. Extending your life just a few years longer doesn’t seem to be a grand award. And as for the present moment, it is also true that spending an hour at the gym will likely take away from time that could have otherwise been spent studying for that upcoming midterm. But living a healthy, wholesome life is not about the end result or the present need. It’s about making the slow march to death as enjoyable as it can possibly be.

Contact Kimberly Veklerov at kveklerov@dailycal.org or follow her on Twitter: @kveklerov.

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In addition to the Memorial Glade scene for cannabis enthusiasts, the Bay Area will also play host to Hempcon 2013 in San Jose — a medical marijuana convention that I was initially made aware of via, you guessed it, a bathroom wall graffito. On the third floor women’s restroom of Wheeler Hall, in a stall closest to the entrance, “HEMPCON” is written in all caps. Probably just another doped up student promoting a little gathering, I assumed. How very wrong I was.

Just a few days after seeing the bathroom wall endorsement, I noticed hundreds of bright pink Hempcon advertisements posted on telephone polls throughout South Berkeley and Oakland as I drove to Santa Barbara. Later came the billboards. When driving back home through San Francisco, I saw the most costly and conspicuous one yet: a giant Hempcon billboard along highway 101, a prime location. Keep in mind these types of advertisement campaigns likely cost thousands of dollars, at the very least, even without televised or radio-broadcasted commercials.

So what exactly is Hempcon and where is all the money coming from?

The idea that there could be so much financial and professional event planning put into a weed convention clashes with the way many Berkeley students probably view marijuana. Smokers here might like to think that each leaf they buy is homegrown by a guy named Sunshine who talks to his plants every night and only uses organic, sustainable growing practices.

Hempcon, on the other hand, seems to be a slightly different narrative. Mega Productions is the corporate entity that is responsible for planning the event. According to Mega Productions’ website, its clients have included AT&T, Pepsi, State Farm Insurance, Microsoft and Ebay. The convention itself, which is touted as America’s largest medical marijuana exposition, will showcase exhibitors, a keynote speech and even musical entertainment. Legal advocates, medical practitioners and dispensary representatives should also be present.

There is this sentiment among many pot smokers that weed is one homogenous, counter-culture movement that champions camaraderie, peace and relaxation. Wherever you are, whatever strain of grass you’re smoking — it’s all one love connected by the beauty of getting baked.

Sure, marijuana might have some of those qualities. It certainly promotes love more than a plastic appliance from Walmart would. But just as it is important to know where your fruits and vegetables are coming from, it is also prudent to understand where your weed originates. Was it delivered from outside the U.S. in a giant illegal transport? Through which hands has it passed? If there are any negative externalities associated with the production or transportation of the good, then it is the responsibility of the consumer to make a sound decision based on such information. In the same way that a bathroom wall scribble can turn out to be part of a larger corporate event, what lies behind bud can be more than meets the bloodshot eye.

Contact Kimberly Veklerov at kveklerov@dailycal.org or follow her on Twitter: @kveklerov.

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These block figures — the square-shouldered man and the triangle dress-wearing woman — have been present in our minds since the earliest days of childhood. We were taught somewhere along the line that there exists a binary in the world and that it is used to separate people when using the restroom.

Fortunately, at UC Berkeley, male and female demarcations are constantly met with opposition. Others have written in the past about the need for greater gender-neutral and gender non-conforming spaces on campus, so it is a topic that will not be tackled here. At this point, such a need is not even an argument. The only question that remains is “when?”

What is equally important, I think, is casting away the notion that gender should be the main aspect of identity. Like the anarchist woman bathroom sign, your identity is so much more than your sex or gender. You might relate to the stereotypes of tomboy, effeminate guy, girly girl or butch male, but those designations signify nothing about who you are as a person. These labels mean less and less as time passes. Further, the sex a person is born with or without no longer impacts potential careers or positions in society to the same degree as it once did, at least in this country. All of this is good news.

But as gender loses its fundamental role in how we identify and how others see us, what do we have left to understand ourselves?

Simply put, our identity should be regarded as the sum of our actions. You aren’t the set of traits that you were born with. You are not a list of potentials or probabilities. You are whatever you choose to become — a notion that extends far past gender into the realms of ethnicity and class too. I’m not trying to take on the world with this idea. Heck, I’m sure millions before me have thought it. But regardless of its originality, the concept that we should consider ourselves born with a tabula rasa is key to progressive thinking. Identity that is nurtured, not inherent to our nature, is the identity of the future.

Some have trouble accepting this, usually in minor ways. This past weekend, during an apartment viewing that my two roommates and I attended, we had asked the landlord if parking were available. “Why do you have cars?” he asked, “It’s the boys who need the cars. Girls don’t drive cars.” He then went on to say that we must come from very spoiled families. I kid you not — this actually happened.

Such comments can easily be dismissed because he was an older man and maybe only half-serious. Annoying as it was, small battles are not the ones to be fought at a time like this. While this country might see him as being behind the times, the problems other nations face in terms of societal gender roles are much more pressing.

These days, at least in Berkeley, no one wears triangle dresses like the one worn by every women-designated bathroom sign. A shift in identifying ourselves by our actions and accomplishments — not the qualities we’re born with — is something to be celebrated where it exists and encouraged where it is nascent.

Contact Kimberly Veklerov at kveklerov@dailycal.org or follow her on Twitter: @kveklerov.

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So, for the first and last time ever, I’m turning this blog into an advice column, written from the perspective of a wall. The following two pieces of graffiti were found in the women’s restroom of Hildebrand library.

“Do all long-distance relationships have to have a dead line? Being close soon is not an option but I’m in love and I never want to let go.”

Dear Distanced,

No, they do not all have a deadline. As painful as it is to be geographically separated from someone you care about, you can use this time apart to make your relationship even more healthy and dynamic. Make your communication personal by writing each other letters and speaking on the phone because instant messaging and texting lack the human touch after overuse. Keep yourself busy with activities you enjoy. Surround yourself with friends to keep you company. Remember, too, that although you might never see yourself letting go, time has the funny habit of changing hearts and minds. In my four walls, I’ve seen people let go of many things. For now, check out this inspirational list of famous long-distance relationships. Stay strong, stay sturdy.

-Wall

“In my 20 years life I have had a crush on 3 people. But I didn’t show it. Why? Because they’re all girl/woman….. or it’s only friendship?”

Dear Crusher,

It is perfectly natural to admire someone without acting on it. As long as a crush does not become a limerent obsession that eats away at you, it is completely healthy to like someone and not make a move. It is also perfectly natural to have relatively few romantic interests in life.

But let’s get something straight: It is not natural or healthy to repress your emotions based on sexual orientation. It sounds from your graffitied blurb that you might be questioning your sexuality, which almost everyone does at some point. While there is the slight chance you could be mistaking feelings of friendship or admiration as attraction, never doubt your feelings. If it feels like a crush, walks like a crush and talks like a crush, it’s probably a crush. And that is awesome. Go you! Head over to the Gender Equity Resource Center if you ever need counseling services or just want to learn about the LGBT community.

But liking another woman is not grounds to not “show it.” Sure, flirting with someone of the same sex and assessing reciprocation can be awkward at times, but the worst that could happen is that she is not interested. And rejection by someone of the same sex is no different than rejection by someone of the opposite sex. If the person you’re into is uncomfortable that you like her because you are a woman, then she does not deserve your time in the first place.

-Wall

Contact Kimberly Veklerov at kveklerov@dailycal.org or follow her on Twitter: @kveklerov.

The post When walls write back appeared first on The Daily Californian.

That list got me thinking: If I could snap my fingers and some cosmic force would take away all my fears, there are four things I would do immediately. First, I would eat a Trinidad Moruga Scorpion, the world’s hottest pepper, just to feel the burn. With my mouth ablaze, I would then smash my computer into a million little pieces because I think it has too much control over my life. Without technology plugging me in, I would explore the supernatural and spend one night in a graveyard. If I survived until the following morning, I would walk to the Office of the Registrar and drop out of UC Berkeley.

I won’t do any of those things because I am afraid. I fear extra-spicy food and disconnection and zombies and failure. The point of hypotheticals, though, is not to fantasize over an alternative reality, but to better understand the reality in which one finds oneself.

In my reality, I always order “mild” for fear that too many capsaicinoids will ruin the curry. So I’ll never eat the world’s hottest pepper. I refresh my email every few minutes and mindlessly frequent the same dozen websites in an attempt to distract myself from the world outside my Windows. I doubt I’ll ever smash my computer into a million pieces. If I were to sleep in a cemetery overnight, I would fear what the ground beneath me holds, for which I have Buffy the Vampire Slayer to blame. I’ll probably never sleep in a graveyard. It’s ingrained in my mind that success is impossible without a completed college education, so I know that I won’t actually drop out of school.

There are legitimate reasons not to undertake my four theoretical bucket list items, but I can’t deny that some days such ideas are tempting. Maybe setting my mouth on fire and losing hundreds of dollars and breaking and entering are not the most enticing, but ending my academic career certainly is. Even though I love Cal and my friends to no end, I cannot help but feel that cramming for exams and selfishly building up my own knowledge base does nothing to experience or mend the world.

I know that the point of higher education is to give us skills to unselfishly make our communities better places after we leave. Before graduation, all these idealistic notions are fine and dandy, but I worry that with diploma in hand, I will become a sell-out who is more concerned with making a livable wage than with devoting myself to repairing the world.

I also know that many students here are already well on their way to positively impacting society and the planet. We have tutors for elementary school children, advocates for green practices and peer educators bringing healthy practices to the community. It’s difficult, however, to fully accomplish all these wonderful goals with the weight of school pressing on your shoulders.

But society tells me that attaining a bachelor’s degree will ultimately allow me to achieve more, so the fear of dropping out is probably a good fear to have. In my view, there are two types of fears: those that keep our dumb ideas (like leaving Berkeley) in check and those that hinder possible accomplishments — which brings me back to the bathroom wall.

To whoever wanted to jump off a bridge: I’m glad you’re afraid of doing so. To the person who wanted to ask her crush on a date: You should definitely do it. To the individual who wanted to live alone on a mountain: Just make sure there is plenty of potable water. And to the woman who wanted to kiss her best friend and fall in love: Maybe ask permission first.

Contact Kimberly Veklerov at kveklerov@dailycal.org or follow her on Twitter: @kveklerov.

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If the quote in question is not well known — an obscure indie song lyric, for instance — then the singer is forever denied recognition for her work unless a curious student happens to Google search it. In a stall of VLSB, for example, is a fantastic paragraph on perseverance without any name ascribed to it. Turns out, it’s the first part of Eminem’s “’Till I Collapse.” Eminem might not exactly fall under the indie category, but his music is just as unfamiliar to me. There is something so unbearably grating about his voice, coupled with his general promotion of violence against women, which makes his music too much for me. But I digress. Each time a Google search reveals a lack of originality, I wonder why it is so difficult to properly attribute another’s ideas.

At first the answer seems to be selfish egoism. Words without citations benefit the pen-holder, not the idea-maker. This reasoning might make sense on Facebook, whenever a citationless quote is posted as if it were the original work of the creator of the status. In the case of Facebook, because the status-poster-pen-holders are known people, I always tend to believe the worst in them — that they are blatantly attempting to pass off another’s idea as their own.

But on an anonymous bathroom wall, selfish egoism does not seem to be the neat and tidy reason why attribution is so rare. After all, the graffitists are just as nameless as the quotes they are writing, so there is no personal gain that comes from plagiarizing. Whoever anonymously Sharpied the Eminem quote obviously cannot take credit for his words. The answer is not pure laziness, either. Spending an extra three seconds to write down the singer’s name is no daunting task.

I think the reason why it is uncommon to acknowledge the writer is because words are more powerful when their source is unknown. Every author connotes certain feelings or previously held notions that are irrelevant to the quote at hand. If Einstein says that imagination is more important than knowledge, it is impossible to understand the quote by itself. Immediately we think of Einstein’s own knowledge, how he was the most brilliant thinker of the twentieth century, which makes his claim of imagination’s importance that much more significant. If Eminem says this whole inspirational piece on finding your inner strength, then readers such as myself might brush it off without considering the worth of his words.

At the end of the day, there is no real reason to attribute every idea to a particular source. Admittedly, this becomes problematic in academia, but it is important to keep in mind what Carl Sagan has to say on making apple pie from scratch: Nothing can be 100 percent original. The words Einstein says, the lyrics of Eminem’s raps — they’re all just influenced by those who came before. Every word in every language has already been spoken, so all we can do to be unique is make our own combinations and permutations of them.

After exploring wall after wall of bathroom graffiti, I have to believe that there is some value to be gained from ideas being faceless. It’s one of the reasons why some authors choose to write anonymously or under a pseudonym. Words have more meaning if we are not concerned with who said them. If we lived in a hodgepodge of thoughts, some coming from Average Joes and others from Einsteins and Eminems, then all we have to stand on is the merit of the thoughts and not the merit of the thinkers.

Contact Kimberly Veklerov at kveklerov@dailycal.org or follow her on Twitter: @kveklerov.

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The removal of so many conversations and quotes, however, is nothing to be mourned; a custodian was probably just doing his or her job. New words will eventually stain the now-white walls. When those wash away, others will take their place. Herein lies the beauty of graffiti: It is constantly evolving to reflect the outside world, whether by janitorial force or not.

There was one unfortunate piece of graffiti, however, that could not be obliterated. As evidenced by smudge marks all around it, someone must have rubbed very hard to try get rid of it, but to no avail.

With testicles for eyes, the giant turquoise penis stares mockingly at the bathroom patron, as if daring whoever is sitting on the toilet to question the legitimacy of its existence. Before being joined by new graffiti, it was the sole survivor of the restroom’s cleansing. If the phallus drawing were a human, I suspect it would take a great deal of pride in that fact, inflating what I imagine to be an already bloated, pent-up ego.

The most shocking characteristic of the giant turquoise penis, however, is not its shape, color, or size — which, as we all know, don’t matter — but the fact that it is located in the women’s restroom of a mathematics building at UC Berkeley and not etched onto the desk of a prepubescent middle-schooler.

The placement of the penis makes it charming. In such a serious academic environment, a splash of immaturity is to be applauded. Just when you think you have grown into a responsible young adult, the phallus takes all those sensible notions and slaps you in the face with them. Its message is this: If someone can pen a penis on the wall of a bathroom within a university building devoted to teaching mathematics, why can’t we lighten up a bit? The juvenile days of our youth are not so far behind us, which is something to be savored.

The type of immaturity that the penis represents is not a mindless disregard for others. Hopefully, we have outgrown the bulk of those childhood tendencies by now. Rather, it represents the immaturity that relishes in spontaneity, delights in whimsy.

The penis drawing stands for the youthful notion of wasting time for no good reason. After all, taking time out of one’s day to draw a sex organ on the wall accomplishes no larger scheme or purpose. It is there only because someone had an idea and a marker. It certainly isn’t pleasing to the eye and lacks artistic merit by most measures. Nonetheless, the drawing has stood the test of time and bleach. Just as some childish inclinations never leave us, some bathroom wall graffiti is here to stay.

Contact Kimberly Veklerov at kveklerov@dailycal.org or follow her on Twitter: @kveklerov.

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Like the climber, each one of us is stuck in a labyrinth of obligations, schedules and chores. Even worse, the reason our mental trappings are so deeply ingrained and so desperately inescapable is because they are familiar. Familiarity breeds routine and routine breeds comfort. Pretty soon we become our own daily routine — slaves to an unrelenting to-do list. All of these stresses create walls in our minds, forming an impossibly intricate maze.

In John Green’s young adult novel, Looking for Alaska, the title character deals with this exact issue. She is obsessed with finding a way to escape “the labyrinth of suffering.” Alaska’s labyrinth is a reference to one in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, The General and His Labyrinth, which draws on images from the myth of Daedalus and Icarus. So really, it’s just one universal labyrinth felt across genres and generations and geography.

Personally, I’ve always been a fan of quitting. Ever since I decided halfway through my Bat Mitzvah training that the Hebrew prayers were too stressful and gave up, I’ve been addicted to resignation. Looking back, making the decision to quit was more of a blessing than any of the ones I failed to say over wine or bread. When the stress was gone after I quit, I breathed a deep l’chaim of relief. The weight of the Torah was lifted from my preteen shoulders. Amen.

I’m a pro-quitter because I’m a pro-escapist. Like Daedalus, every time I feel myself becoming trapped in a labyrinth, rather than scurrying about trying to find the exit, I fashion myself a pair of wings and fly away.

What our technological generation fails to understand, however, is how to best fly away. The internet makes us think that we have found an escape from our problems—that when we’re online, we’re somehow offline from reality. The truth is that social media and the like are not escapes but just further trappings. After scrolling through fifty pages of memes, Facebook stories, news articles and YouTube videos, not only is there no sense of accomplishment, but you feel as if you haven’t even properly procrastinated.

True escape is physical escape. It’s done in solitude. It’s being in an unfamiliar place surrounded by unfamiliar people. Sometimes it’s the abandonment of an obligation. Sometimes it’s recognizing the importance of a task, followed by not caring.

I imagine that many people living in Berkeley never want to leave. But for all its concentrated intellect, sunshine and quirkiness, the city can be horribly suffocating. There’s nothing particularly wrong with the town or campus, but even the sweetest of perfumes can choke you and make you crazy if that’s all you ever breathe. For myself, I’ve found that if I spend three consecutive weeks in Berkeley without leaving, a time bomb inside me goes off. The claustrophobia of Cal becomes too much. I become restless. I itch to escape. Every bus that passes by is a temptation: hop on, get away, go anywhere. While most pedestrians here wage a silent war against city drivers for territory, I envy anyone behind the wheel.

To me, freedom is the on-ramp to I-580. Freedom is the sound of a terrible Top 20 Hit blasting from the radio. And I hate the music, I really do. My better half wants to scream at T-Swift to choose a better guy next time, to tell Ms. Minaj straight-up that there are a full eight months before Halloween so please stop scaring small children. But I sing along with them anyway. Their auto-tuned voices cue my liberation. The freeway is my freedom. Moments like these are the only time when I wish I had continued my Bat Mitzvah preparations so that I could properly say a prayer of gratitude to highways.

Contact Kimberly Veklerov at kveklerov@dailycal.org or follow her on Twitter: @kveklerov.

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