UC Berkeley is truly defined by opportunity. It’s everywhere. In the classrooms, clubs, random introductions to strangers, and even in office hours with our professors. It’s almost like jumping from one reality to the next; at every corner, a new world waits. We meet so many different people on this campus and are exposed to countless new pathways to experiment. Alongside this wake of exposure and excitement, though, can come a quiet resistance that echoes to hold back. A lot of us are overachievers, and with that comes the need to be amazing at everything we do. I mean, we spent months curating an admissions story that would give us the edge we needed to make it through. During that time, we shaped our strengths, our passions, our achievements, and, most of all, our pride into an identity that felt solidified, quite literally.
In our late high school years and even early college life, we lived by this characterization, nurtured it, and learned to capitalize on it. This is who we are, and along with this certainty comes the career we envisioned, dreamed of, and wished upon every star for. But the interesting thing about college is how often this identity is tested and challenged. Maybe a peer will ask us to join a startup, a professor emails about an event in a field we’re unfamiliar with, or we see other students pursuing something completely outside our interests, and surprisingly we’re curious. I know some of us have also walked through Caltopia and spotted clubs that look intriguing, ones that we hadn’t previously researched, but we walk past them, regretting not initiating that interaction.
This subtle force, this decision that we make to stay in our lane and only pursue what we planned, what seems familiar, is the identity we’ve brought to life. It’s the protective part of us, the part that doesn’t want to risk failure or discover that we aren’t extraordinary at everything. But, this instinct doesn’t understand the entire picture. Let’s look at the flip side. What if we join a new organization and start fresh? What if we grow to love this experience? Or better yet, what if we develop a new passion and our whole perspective of our future changes? It’s a slippery slope; nothing is guaranteed when we start anew. Not results, recognition, awards, or validation.
Sometimes we look at these new potential experiences and see no significance, even when the opportunity is staring us in the face! It’s possible that letting our guard down, trying something we haven’t perfected, and allowing ourselves to be beginners again is exactly what we need to grow. Not everything we do has to be measured by value; sometimes a side quest is just a side quest. We shouldn’t look at everything Berkeley has to offer as a test; instead, we should perceive these chances as invitations. An invitation to discover a part of ourselves we didn’t know existed. Sometimes, all it takes is one moment, one conversation, one word: yes.
So, the next time we’re walking through campus and feel the urge to join that club we’ve been eyeing, a startup we’ve been thinking about, or an offer from a conversation we can’t stop contemplating, maybe we should stop asking ourselves whether it fits what we’re supposed to become, and just say yes. Because the opportunity doesn’t always have to change our lives or become the next line on a resume. Maybe it really is just a side quest we pursue. Maybe along the way, we’ll discover that the person we were so determined to become isn’t the only person we could be.