Entering my last year of undergraduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, has left me with a lot of nostalgia and think pieces about my last year. Turns out, you don’t just graduate and turn into an adult, no matter how much I’d love for that to be the case. With that, a lot of what you cherished about your undergraduate school will never be replicated in your eyes. Here are my final year realizations, as I begin the third and final year of my undergraduate career.
Graduate School
I wasn’t originally intending to graduate this year; in fact, I thought I had a whole year to waste until I’d need to start thinking about Grad (Graduate) School. Alas, I’m now graduating early, and with that comes Grad School. The realization here, though, is that graduate school is infinitely more difficult than simply applying to undergraduate school. Letters of recommendation require you to have awkward email conversations with professors you haven’t taken classes from in years and reaching out to internships you completed months ago. On top of that, application fees are even more expensive, and if you’re like me and still paying for your undergraduate tuition, that means you barely have money to spare. But the biggest thing I realized about graduate school is that you don’t need to go there automatically, but at the same time, most jobs won’t hire you without a graduate degree, so it’s an endless cycle of confusion.
Moffitt Library
My true love, and one of the only things I’ll really yearn for years from now. Moffitt Library closed at the end of my Fall semester of sophomore year, leaving an open wound in my heart that I have yet to really heal. It’s more than a library to me, but a space of community and connection, somewhere I hung out with friends and met new people. So, to realize that I’ll graduate before it’s open again makes me extremely heartbroken to know. To me, Moffitt Library is one of the few things that could really stop me from graduating early, but alas, it’s time to graduate and leave this core memory behind.
Tri-Tip and Chimichurri
A lot of my friends know me by my love for the Brown’s Tri-Tip and Chimichurri served on campus. However, this wasn’t always a defining feature for me, at least not until my Spring Sophomore year semester when I would take the ever-long 12-minute walks from Wurster Hall to Brown’s just for some lunch. If there’s one realization I wish I’d known sooner, it’s this: go to your favorite places more than you usually would. Changing my graduation date a whole year ahead has left me wanting to visit Brown’s every day, when I could’ve been appreciating its food and beauty throughout my whole time here, which would’ve made this graduation a bit easier on the heart.
Tattoos
I’m not a massive party person, and be it that Berkeley isn’t notorious for their parties, I didn’t experiment with a more chaotic lifestyle too often. Recently, I got my first tattoo and am quickly on the way to 21 years of living. Both reflections of my life had me realizing that I, and everyone, shouldn’t take these last years of their teenage life for granted, enjoy the partying, late nights, and spontaneous body ink. More times than not, I feel like I prioritized my education over my happiness, making it difficult to really live out these last teenage years. Although I’m still happy I did everything I did for me, I wish I’d done it just a bit sooner, and I didn’t put all this pressure on myself to prioritize my education over everything.
As I scribble all of this down on a Google Doc, I’m forever grateful that I got to experience all these memories; even the act of writing for this organization was a beautiful experience. I can only wonder two years from now, what realizations I’ll come to in the last year of my graduate school and school years at that. But for now, if there’s one thing I’d recommend to all future or current undergraduate students, is to remember not to take anything too seriously. Experiment, sleep in, eat a whole carton of ice cream, crawl across campus, sleep in the library, etc. Do all the things you can right now so you don’t regret not doing them when it’s too late.