Expect the unexpected.
Education comes with expectations. You probably know that. A lot is expected of you when you’re on that higher education track — from teachers, parents, and the world at large, too. It’s a two-way street, though, isn’t it? My life, like most, isn’t quite what I expected of it. I certainly didn’t expect to end up here, at UC Berkeley. And Berkeley wasn’t quite what I expected of it either. My transfer student journey at UC Berkeley has been a bit strange, from a near high school failure to a near 4.0 English graduate at the top public university. Maybe you’re here looking for what to expect from your time at Cal. If that’s the case, I don’t know how much help I can be at telling you what your life will look like, but I can tell you what I didn’t expect from my time here, and I think that might be more meaningful.
The view from the Fire Trails.
City on a hill
UC Berkeley, the shining city on a hill. That’s what I had always imagined it was. The closest I had ever come to Berkeley before was San Francisco on a little road trip with my father when I was younger. I didn’t catch more than a glimpse, but that was quite enough for my aspirations. Berkeley became a secret envy for me through my run in high school, like a wish you can’t voice for fear of jinxing it. I did a lot of running around grades-wise in high school, and it set me back a bit. I ended up having to spend a stint in community college (CC), working my way back to good scholarly graces. The more time I spent there, the more I thought about Berkeley and what a university might look like. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad for my CC — I think a soft start was what I needed — but I couldn’t get that picturesque figure of a university out of my head on the commute between class and home back in San Diego. So three years come and go, and there I am back on the application circuit, Cal still a wish somewhere in my quiet heart. Then one day, just before I’m about to go tour UC Irvine, I get an email I hadn’t really expected to get, and bam — it’s off to bear territory for me.
That was probably the first thing I hadn’t expected: just how pretty the campus was. I mean, a 10-minute walk was basically five minutes through the redwood forest and five minutes through what seemed like the halcyon days of Athens. Finally, time for the real college experience, somewhere between “Animal House” and “Good Will Hunting.” As an English major, stories are where my intrigue lies; they’re my life, in a way. Being one of the first in my family to go to college, there were a lot of expectations, both on me and from me. My father always wanted me to get a better education, and, just like Gatsby, I wanted to be an Oxford man — smartest in the room, suede elbow-patches on the tweed jacket sort of thing.
So, looking to maximize my college experience, I signed up for the residence halls. As a transfer, I wasn’t really expecting to be moved onto a floor of almost entirely first-years. It was a little bit of a rough transition. I hadn’t had to share a room with anyone since I was a kid, but I caught a bit of luck and was rooming with two other similarly aged transfers. That doesn’t always happen though. I knew plenty of others who ended up being roomed with underclassmen, and while it wasn’t the worst experience, it could get a little uncomfortable being the only one who remembers watching “Hellboy” growing up.
That was something else I wasn’t expecting: the discomfort. I came into the city with equal parts dread and excitement, though I knew that’s how most people feel about new, big things like college. But settling in didn’t really happen, not for a long time, not even after I made some friends. I got out plenty, learned a lot of names fast, saw a few places that it would have taken me ages to find on my own. Really, though, I just sort of attached myself to people and tried to keep up with already really well-established circles. It was kind of strange; I was seeing a lot of Berkeley and Oakland fast. I felt like I hit the ground running by being brought into so many scenes right away, but the more I met these people, who had been here for so long, the more it seemed like I didn’t know what I was doing here.
Not just in the social sense, either. The academics were jarring, once again inspiring shock and awe for this leviathan of greater institutions. The Ida Wheeler building was exactly what I expected of an esteemed university, and my first proper class — an English seminar on criticism with Jasper Bernes — was exactly what I had hoped of a UC Berkeley course: rigorous, engaging, but also a whole lot more demanding than I had anticipated. I had done well enough in community college, and I could write a high school paper with my eyes closed, but now I had to break my own ceiling of expectations for what I thought I was capable of. I had to start reading just about two books a week, start working harder than I knew I could, start typing notes for three hours straight, and go right on to another class to do it again.
Wolf House from afar.
City by the sea
But, as iron sharpens iron, rough times make tough minds, so I only got better at putting in the work. At some point I realized that, if I was going to stay here, I was gonna have to make the place my own, start building my own habitat, as it were. I got level, I put my ear to the ground and my feet in the mud for a while. I started finding people rather than waiting to be introduced to them, and I found them up and down, high and low. I started volunteering, joining clubs, and sitting in on classes I barely understood just because I could hear the professor’s passion from the hallway. The way I see it, you only get what you can take, so I took it all in.
I rambled and shambled my way about college for too long, and with only one year left, I decided I was going to make it as weird and wild as I could. So before my junior year was over, I signed a contract with the Berkeley Student Co-Ops and bought a ticket for my study abroad in London.
That was a pretty good summer, and by the time my next fall semester started, I couldn’t walk to class without seeing a familiar face, and most of my classes even had them sitting right next to me. Couple that with a new house of 28 people, and suddenly Cal felt like a village, my village.
Living in the Co-Ops was one of the best decisions I think I could have made, and maybe I’m biased, but I don’t think I could have put in a better one. For the last year of my undergraduate experience, Wolf House has been a real home base of good times. I knew there would be rough days in college, but I suppose I should have expected for there to have been more bright days than rainy ones — even in the Bay Area.
This land is my land …
And this land is your land, too. I’ve met some beautiful people, some of them the closest friends I could hope for, thorns and all, and they’ve driven home the point that it’s not the place that makes a people, but the people that make the place. When I left home, I wasn’t expecting to find another one all the way out here. Ultimately now I have to be moving on, but this will always be my place, with all its snakes and waterfalls — and I can only hope the woods are even greener over yonder.
Vincent Vidana, Class of 2026, is majoring in English. Cover photo by Vincent Vidana.
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