
The month of March is a particularly trying time for high school seniors, and with my younger brother and his friends all biting their nails to find out where they’ll be accepted, I feel like I’m experiencing the confusion of college all over again. There’s the typical questions of what to major in and if dining hall food is any good, but also the more nervous, keep-you-up-at-night ones: will I make friends? Will I fit in? What if I don’t do college the “right” way?
As the oldest child in my family and the first to leave the nest for college, I definitely was worried about all these questions coming to Berkeley. Leaving the home I’d known for years and growing up is scary. After hearing about college life from my friends in grades above me and watching movies taking place on college campuses, I thought I had to follow these images that formed in my head in order to have the perfect story. And when I told eager adults that I would be heading to the Bay to Berkeley, I felt the pressures to strive to do everything I could to live up to the expectations of a prestigious school.