graduation

I’m feeling happy, free, confused and lonely in the best way — it’s been a long time coming, and I can’t wait to cross that stage to receive the diploma that seals the excitement and hard work I’ve exhausted in the past four years.

It might take a second, but I promise you that every laugh we’ve shared, every joke you’ve told me and every memory we’ve made is stashed away somewhere in my brain.

“I will keep thinking of it not as four months or as sixteen weeks, but as eleventy-one days, because it feels bigger. Longer. It’s a reminder to take it a day at a time, not to chop it into chunks that make time fly even faster.”

As we enter the spring semester of the 2022-2023 academic year, many of us seniors are getting ready to say goodbye to the school we’ve shed gallons of blood, sweat and tears at. As an incredibly bittersweet sensation the class of 2023 is feeling rolls in, there’s still so many things most of us may not have had the chance to participate in yet.

Going into my last semester in Berkeley, I can’t help feeling anything but nervous and anxious about the future. With trying to find a job after graduation, finding a place to live in the Bay Area on a small budget,and feeling like I’m not as prepared as my peers, it’s easy to see why. Since I know many seniors may be feeling the same way, I wanted to share my own experience so some feel a little less alone. 

Being someone so averse to change, I learned that adapting to the unexpected was good for me because it forced me to mature.

Coming home. Moving on. Sailing away. These are common themes among graduating classes, especially those who have received their diplomas through Zoom screens or masked ceremonies.

I’m disappointed my semester-long run as the arts columnist at The Daily Californian isn’t ending with more intrigue. If there’s an arts opinion that could get me canceled by the UC Berkeley student body, thus ending my time here in scandal — I can’t think of it.

As a current senior, the question I get asked most often is, “So, what are your plans after graduation?” I’m still uncertain about what I want them to be.

What terrifies me most as the reality of adulthood grows near is not the choice I made to pursue a life in writing, but rather the notion that it now may be too late to do something different.