Rewind: Freshman Year

I just finished an interesting first year at Berkeley.

I call it interesting because it's too hard to really categorize. I've had messy years, easy years, intense years, but this past school year was none of those. I had to make new friends, I had to figure out what I want to major in, but most importantly I had to leave my comfort zone and really grow out of my shell. 

But all of these things are for another post. In this post I just wanted to recap some of the moments from freshman year and immortalize them in this blog. I want this post to really encapsulate everything freshman year was about into a little package that I can look back at and be flooded with nostalgia. 

The first impactful experience would have to start off with Golden Bear Orientation. Before going into college I would always hear about people complaining about how boring and useless orientation is. But I really think GBO is a little different from other university orientations. I don't think it's perfect, but I do believe it played an important part in making the transition from high school to college slightly easier. During it I was able to figure out the landscape of the campus itself, figure out where to eat, and understand the overall culture that the school really promotes. Inclusivity, diversity, and acceptance are concepts that are engrained into Berkeley's culture and these concepts are clearly promoted within GBO as well. Even if all of these things were incredibly important, the most important part about GBO was the friends that you make through it. I actually ended up meeting Owen at our Foothill Dining Commons and quickly bonded over mildly tasty lemonade, biology research positions, and 3s on the AP CS exam. I've always said that the people that you meet at a prestigious institution are the best part about being at it, and luckily enough GBO was able to prove me right. 

Secondly I want to talk about first semester a bit, and just a couple of things I unfortunately very slowly learned during it. It just wasn't my semester. I was lost. I had no clue where to go, what to do, who to go to even. I'd made a group of friends, I'd decided to switch from pursuing Applied Mathematics to Computer Science,  I'd even, well ok I didn't really do much else. But, I did leave it learning a lot. I realized my study habits wouldn't cut it. I realized nothing would be handed to me here. I realized that I'm competing with some of the best of the best now. I made sure that second semester I would change, I knew that the change would be slow but I was happy knowing it was still possible. 

That semester I visited SF for the first time and truly appreciated how beautiful the city is. I never really considered working in SF but after having Cheesecake Factory and looking at it I realized that LA isn't the only places I see myself after school. I also started to work as an Administrative Assistant at the Mechanical Engineering Graduate Student Services Office as well. I know it's a mouthful but I really felt productive while working, and the extra dough was always awesome. Paying a part of the tuition that I owed with the money that I had saved through working was one of the best experiences I've ever felt. I really enjoyed the people I worked with, even if I might not really miss the place because by second semester I started getting too busy and felt like I could be using the time more efficiently, I do believe it really helped me grow professionally and as a person. Suddenly I had responsibility and my work truly mattered, which provided some sense of fulfillment, even during first semester when I didn't really feel that too often. A really unique and eye-opening experience that we had was a guy from Uber talking to us about blockchain when we were playing basketball. From this I really learned that the people are what made this place special. CalHacks was also a big event that I took part in, and it was also the event that caused me to really consider completely switching out of CS. Michael Siebel was talking about how the people that wanted to join companies like Google would never be the best programmers because the best programmers would always end up making their own successful startups, and that's when I knew. I've always wanted to be the best at something, but I never saw myself programming for my own startup. I've always dreamed big, as big as possible. In CS I only dreamed of joining a company, never making one. From him I learned that those that create startups have Google careers as their backups, not their goals. Since then I decided I would never be a programmer. I was already bad at it, but hearing about that I decided it wasn't worth pursuing something just for job security if I didn't enjoy it and wasn't going to dream big with it or be 'bad' at it. 

SF Cheesecake Factory 2018

Now moving onto second semester. First of all, it's important to note that I completely changed my major by this time. I'd spent winter break in India which was amazing and a great way to wind down and not even think about school at all. But, the minute I was back I knew I wanted to change. I decided that pursuing Economics as a major along with Statistics would be the right choice for me. At this time I decided I wanted to enter the field of finance and started to soak up as much information as I could about it. From following subreddits about financial careers, watching econ movies like The Big Short, or joining the Undergraduate Economics Association, I made sure I learned as much about it as possible. I decided to apply to two clubs, and luckily for me both of them ended up accepting me. After that one day I found out about case competitions and decided to spontaneously just do them whenever I could. I ended up doing one by N26 with Aom, and actually won 3rd place. We got to talk to N26's CEO and got a cool startupy jacket from him too! From just this single experience I realized that I loved presenting things, brainstorming about solutions, and really sucked at PowerPoint. But, I've always been a quick learner so I picked things up quickly. Next, I was invited by the other PA intern to join her team that was doing a case competition. And that's where I realized how behind I really am. The other PA intern that invited me was already an amazingly hard-working individual that hustled whenever and wherever she could, and I knew that. I thought she was the top of the top. That was my first mistake. She is in the top, but not the top of the top. I met two people that were on our team that were truly the top of the top. They were ambitious, goal-driven, and hard-working. They were everything I wished I could be. But, they also had an advantage I never had. They went to some of the best schools in not just the Bay Area, but all of California. They'd been doing case competitions since high school, and winning them too. Not winning on a regional level either, rather a national level. I felt so small being around them. I also had dreams like their dreams, but I was woefully behind them. We ended up getting 2nd place at the Beghou Consulting case competition and I learned a lot, but most importantly I realized that I needed to be putting in more work, a lot more work. After Beghou, I applied for a Clorox Case Study Competition at their headquarters, and once again, luckily enough, got in. I met even more amazing and accomplished people there and realized that I also have the skills they do.

A picture from the few all-nighters at Moffitt.

Now there was a lot of academic-figuring out for me to do during last semester, but I still had fun! Joining UEA was an amazing experience especially since the retreat awesome and the socials were tons of fun as well. I learned to play ping-pong for the first time ever and enjoyed it so much that I'm pretty sure I put hours into ping-pong than into studying. I stayed over for spring break and started skating around Berkeley and now can actually go down a hill finally. I started watching Game of Thrones finally as well. I didn't play as much basketball as usual, but that time was usually spent on my skateboard anyways. I don't necessarily have any well-defined interests, I skate around when bored, I play basketball if I have the time and on any downtime I'll be watching Game of Thrones usually. We still had hangouts in 211 or 111 every weekend and as our friend group got closer and closer they became harder and harder to plan for. We started getting board games soon enough and started playing them a ton as well.

Overall it was a bigger year for studying and doing things rather than playing around. 

It didn't feel like it although, which I'll take as a good thing and a step in the right direction.