Finding My Place at UC Berkeley as a Transfer Student
I am late for class—abysmally so—and the day, like the year, is beginning to get warm. I am no stranger to a concrete jungle, but the paved and stoneworked hill of Berkeley is beginning to feel a little…too enclosed. I’m a junior transfer student, and I spent my first semester here at UC Berkeley doing a fair amount of nothing on my own. In fall, I had found some people who had been on campus much longer than I, and I followed their lead. I did what they did, liked what they liked, and I relied on them to show me this sparkling new city, in which I very much felt like a tourist. I hardly went anywhere if it wasn’t with my guide—this was their home after all, not mine.
But now, I am on my own. Cal is a big place, from the top of the hills to the tip of Oakland. Of course, that means it can be hard to figure out where to stand. If there’s too much to look at, you’re not going to really see much, are you? Suddenly, the world was big, I could go anywhere—granted I was willing to walk there—and I’d find something I’d never seen before. Wandering is a luxury, it’s true, but the problem is you’re more likely to walk past everything than right into it.
And here I am, late for class, walking down the path, right past a little white fold-out plastic table. It’s the only table sitting in the open humidity of the grey afternoon. It’s adorned with a handful of fliers and a hanging cardboard sign that reads: CAL HABITAT. It seems rather plain in the dead air of the empty plaza. As far as I can see, the only two souls about are myself and the patient-looking man seated at the table. He makes no attempt to grab my attention as I barrel past, though I’m sure I don’t look much for conversation. I’m ready to keep walking, keep my head down, and move through another day. But I can’t keep doing that. So, for the first time on my own at Cal, I turn around and involve myself in my life. I talk to the guy, and as it turns out, Cal Habitat for Humanity is having its second general meeting of the year. A perfect opportunity to get involved, the guy tells me. He gives me a flyer and everything. 9 o’clock tonight, Evans Hall, free pizza.
It’s 8:55 p.m. now and I’m thinking about this club meeting. I’m tired, I have class early tomorrow, it’s getting cold, especially for a San Diegan transfer, and I don’t have my heater this semester. I go anyway. The lecture hall gets full quickly, and it seems like everyone knows each other. Camaraderie sounds from every corner of the room, and I feel more than a little out of place. Then everyone takes their seats, and the organization officers start their presentation. It’s wild, each slide is accompanied by a skit, which is almost always accompanied by laughter from the audience, the officers themselves, and—to my surprise—me. The theme of the night is seemingly Greek Life, complete with backwards hats and a (water) chugging contest to win a Cal Habitat hat. It’s getting loud, a little warm, and honestly fun. I’m talking to more people than I have in a while. They go over all the coming opportunities for fundraising, learning about housing, and volunteering. What stood out to me was the Fire Trails maintenance event happening that weekend. I am not an outdoorsman by any stretch. Growing up, I hated yard work, and I still didn’t even like hiking, but for the past month, I couldn’t stand being indoors on my own. So maybe some outside work was just what I could use. When the meeting ends and everyone starts lining up for free pizza on their way out the door, I sign up for the Fire Trails.
A Stick in the Mud
It will almost certainly rain this morning, I think, as I roll to face the gloomy Bay Area just outside my window. I can just barely make out the shadow of Oakland through the distant fog. It’s Saturday, time to make the donuts. Precariously climbing down my bunk and into jeans, I wonder where the fool who thought signing up for an 8:30 a.m. hike was a good idea has gone. Part of me keeps glancing out the window, hoping it begins to pour before I finish putting socks on. I go anyway. It’s cool out, but I’m still sweating as I walk up the hill past Clark Kerr. At the start of the trail steps, I meet the group and a woman named Francesca, the facilitator for today’s volunteering. Francesca and Jim run Take To The Hills, an organization that maintains the Fire Trails just above the Clark Kerr Residence Halls. Been doing it for 15 years, too.
Francesca briefs us on what we’re doing; lots of weeding. She tells us Jim is waiting for us at the top of the trail with all the tools we’ll need. Francesca herself is a character; honest, straightforward, and a right hard-worker. She’s up on those trails every day the sun’s out, for just as long as it is, too. “It’s endless work,” she tells me, “you have to set little goals.” She says there’s a lot of freedom to it, though, that you can work on whatever you like up there, however you like. Not today, though. Today, Habitat has a very specific task: take all the Wild Oats out of a little square beside the trail at the top of the hill. We get to the top and meet Jim, who gives us a rundown of what’s native and what’s not in the area. It’s still gray out, and I can’t help but notice how wet the ground is. Well, I didn’t come to get clean. We work till 1 o’clock. There are a lot of weeds to get through, but there’s also a pretty decent amount of budding natives, and you have to learn to pay attention to those. It’s not just ripping through the soil, it’s about tailoring nature. So it’s slow work, my hands are frigid in the wet soil, so too are my mudcaked knees, and despite it all, I’m sweating. Yet despite all that, I’m having a great time. I’m learning about plants, and I’m connecting with other students, all with a pretty wide variety of studies and interests. I’m actually doing something, with people, and it feels pretty good.
The group decides it’s about time to wrap up. The sun has come out by now, and it’s going to start getting hot. We got through a pretty decent chunk of the work, Jim and Francesca tell me it would have taken forever to do this on their own. We clean up the tools and gather for a photo.
Me (bottom left) and the whole group with Jim and Francesca at the top of the trail.
The group starts walking back down the trail, but Francesca and Jim stay and keep working, trying to finish clearing what’s left of the section. I’m not ready to go, either, I realize. Standing at the top of the trail, I take a look out over the city. It’s the first time I’ve seen the Bay Area from above like this, and it glitters like silver sitting beside the water. For a moment, it doesn’t look like a tourist sight, it feels like home again. I don’t think I’ve breathed this easily all semester. I ask Jim if they could still use any help. He tells me they could always use help, and I stay and work with them until 5 o’clock before I hike home.
The street entrance to the Spiral Gardens.
Just Add Water
Something definitely bit me out there in the weeds, and it wasn’t the garden snake we had found. That next weekend I went with Cal Habitat to the Spiral Gardens, a little community garden that grew everything from onions and borage to strawberries and fennel. You would walk right past it and never know all the work and all the beauty that goes on here. I met some of the kindest and most interesting people here. Walking in off the street into a whole little farm is a surreal moment. If I had to pick a word to describe the feeling, I’d say it was refreshing.
And that really describes the following weeks, too. For the rest of the semester, the gardens and the trails were the places where I spent my time. Every minute I could, I had dirt caked under my nails. A year ago you couldn’t have dragged me to a trail, but now I was outside every second I had to spare. It wasn’t that I hated being indoors still, it was that I just liked being outdoors more. I didn’t see Berkeley and Oakland from windows or screens; I saw it from the streets, from the trails, from the rooftops and the flowerbeds. When I first got here, I wouldn’t go farther than a block from the residence halls. Now I’d walk anywhere I couldn’t take the bus, not that there were many places I couldn’t.
I slipped into a groove. Sure, not everything was sunshine and poppies, (my coursework was definitely a little more than I anticipated) but you know what was? All the sunshine and poppies. It had taken me some time, but I was starting to feel like this was a place for me. Coming in as a transfer, everything had been a little hard to believe. Everything had seemed so far from what I knew, so far from what I was. It turns out that was never the case, I just hadn’t seen Cal for what it was yet. I wasn’t feeling better about Cal because it had changed for me, I was feeling better because I was making it work for me. I found it all very allegorical, to work in the dirt, to shape the earth—well, that’s me literally making this place my own, isn’t it? There’s an element of artifice in gardening; it’s not just making the world more “natural.” To me, it’s simply making the world. Jim once said that the Take To The Hills program was a “kinetic art project” to him. Now, the program means something different to everyone—and can change meaning all the time—but that really fit the bill for me, and I extend it to everything else I’ve been doing here, too. There’s so much around for you, not just to find, but to make. There are so many places to be, so many people to meet. Personally, after Cal Habitat I found even more groups and opportunities—for instance, the Blue Heart Initiative feature for CalLink marks every club and organization on campus that has no application requirements, making it easy to jump right into something new.
Watch It Grow
It took me a while to figure out what this new place could mean to me, it was a lot of waiting around for something to happen. The thing is, you don’t have to wait around for it. In fact, you shouldn’t. I’m not done meeting new people or doing new things or trying to figure it all out, but I do see it now; All the world’s a garden. If you want to see something grow, you have to plant it. So go! Tend your garden, make your world. Water yourself, and watch as you grow.
Vincent Vidana, Class of 2026, is majoring in English and minoring in rhetoric.
Want More?
- Preslee talks about Making Friends as a Transfer.
- Check out Milana’s Day in the Life about her busiest day of the semester.
- Learn how Nolan balances classes, work, theater performance, and community.