DAY 2: Where have you been spending your time lately? Three/five/ten years ago would you have expected to be there?
The precise answer to this question would be underground in Main Stacks (aka the library...) but that's a pretty boring answer (did I expect to be in a library ten years ago? Considering I planned to go to college I'd say yes) I'm going to go with a broader answer here.
It's already been 1 & 1/2 years that I've been at Berkeley, a place I swore I never ever ever wanted to be. My entire childhood I had dreams of the East Coast or the Midwest (anywhere but here), I had dreams of private school, I had dreams of perpetuating the white-washed environment I grew up in. Berkeley was none of those things. Not only was it an hour away by plane, it housed ridiculous numbers of Asians (apparently it's 45.7% now, a clear majority out of any ethnicity). The only college I dreaded more than Berkeley was UCLA, which had all the same characteristics and, as a spectacular cherry on top, was less than an hour away...by car (being a half hour drive away from home was, & still is, pretty much a god-awful nightmare).
Till the very last moment spring semester of senior year, I still had no dreams of going to Berkeley. My attitude had changed from nowayinhell to iguessifthatsthelastresort, but when it came down to it: Berkeley vs. Northwestern: I was championing Northwestern so, so much. It got to the point where I read their student newsmagazine every single morning and wrote pages & pages about how I wanted to go there so badly (dreams of Chicago, the L, the publications, the time difference).
In the end money was the deciding factor, as it usually is (people also tried to convince me by making a big deal out of the Chicago weather, which I guess I would've bitched about...a lot). I didn't have any big qualms over coming here, but time to time I still wonder what it would've been like to go to Northwestern. Not so much "would I be happier there?" but more like, "how different would my life be right now?"
Am I glad I am where I am now? So, so much. There are so many things I've discovered through all the different people I've met (super cheesy sentence but it can't be helped), so many different opportunities I've been given, and I've realized an hour plane ride is definitely far enough away from home. Yes, school is ridiculously hard (and more than the material itself being ridiculously hard, it is ridiculously hard to get /good grades/) and I am made to feel inferior every day by all the geniuses around me, but that's alright. My laziness needs a kick in the ass every so often so I can get to work (which should be right now, three days before my finals).
And so it goes. The 13-year-old self would've hated to see me be here at Berkeley, but teenagers are bratty blind beings anyway.
photo | southerncal88 ; flickr
