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During the second half of my sophomore year, I began to think I wasn’t cut out to be a journalist. I don’t remember what month or even what day of the week it was — all I can recall now is the gray morning. The sun wasn’t shining when, as
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In the spring of sophomore year, I failed one of the first engineering classes I ever took and came close to not passing a few others. I began to doubt that I was cut out for the academic rigor of this university. I remember telling my roommate at the time
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I have this thing about keys. When I was a kid, we were forever getting locked out of our house. I didn’t understand what it meant then; I thought we just needed the right keys. When I grew up, I knew better. I knew what an eviction was, what “foreclosure”
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My life is defined by an endless number of to-do lists. I like the feeling of checking something off after I do it. It’s who I’ve always been — just like other Cal students, I am constantly running around campus, going to meetings and class, and I like it that
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A few years ago, I came across an article to “aspiring authors” that denied the term altogether. The gist of the argument was to cut out the qualifier: You’re either an author, or you’re not. There is no “aspiring,” only writing or not writing. This Yoda-esque concept, an essentially “do
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When I first got the email that I had been accepted to UC Berkeley in 2010, I was obviously ecstatic. I had a free period and immediately went to go tell an English teacher who had gone here, and the one piece of advice he gave me that has defined
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During my freshman year, I felt as lost and lonely as an astronaut stuck on Earth. I had dropped out of my engineering courses by week two. After hanging out with my floormates all night in the fire escape, I would go to bed still feeling dizzy and lonely. Then
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It’s traditional for the Daily Cal’s outgoing editor in chief and president to write a farewell column. The purpose of that column is to make some kind of book-ending statement about what it’s been like to lead this paper, or go to this school, or live in this city, or
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I often think of life as a series of lucky breaks. Getting into UC Berkeley, being able to move across the country for school and falling in love with the place I chose seemed like an improbable string of good fortune. This notion continued when I found I would be
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I am graduating with nothing before me. I should be overtly anxious and scrambling, fumbling for a semblance of stability in the postgrad world, but instead I feel calm. Deep down inside, I have a gut feeling that everything will work out fine. Here’s why: I am about to graduate
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