Pushpin memories

When I first opened my online portal to view UC Berkeley’s admission decision four years ago, I read a rejection letter. But a few weeks later, my dad told me to double-check it, just in case. Logging back on, I found a waitlist letter instead, realizing I’d misread it the first time.

I often think back to this moment, sitting on my childhood bed, as my dad randomly passed by my room, asking me something along the lines of “You sure you read it right?” I wonder where I’d be if he hadn’t asked this. What would I have studied? Who would’ve been my friends?

When big moments in our lives, like college, come to an end, it’s hard not to try to sum them up into one perfect package, whether that be in a photo album, an Instagram post or in an essay. I like to think of significant moments and their passing as a story — a graceful flow of narrative that begins with “Once upon a time” and finishes with “The end.” Maybe it’s a way to make sense of the final chapter of my experiences, or, even more so, it’s an attempt to finally write the last line of the book, close it and put it on the shelf.

But as much as I’d like to write that simple little story, a summation of four years of college, I know that my time at UC Berkeley was made possible because of a random comment by my dad — a moment that easily could’ve never happened. And because of this, I think it’s best to understand my college experience as a collection of accidental moments that have landed at random points onto a pushpin map of Berkeley — a complex grid of streets and avenues, a square-shaped campus in the middle, bordered by the San Francisco Bay and the Berkeley Hills, with colorful, plastic pushpins covering it, all pressed deep into the paper.

I have a pushpin on Haste Street, home to a freshman dorm UC Berkeley blindly assigned me to, which allowed me to create friendships I’d have throughout the next four years. I have a pushpin at Abe’s Cafe on Euclid Avenue, where a graduate student instructor at office hours jokingly said “You should be an English major,” planting a seed in my freshman brain that eventually grew into double-majoring with another degree I prefer. There are pins even in the simpler moments, like the unconscious choice to sit next to a stranger on the first day of class in Dwinelle Hall, a stranger that eventually became a friend.

On Friday evenings, I used to walk home from a long week of class, down a sunny College Avenue and count all the new moments that happened that week. Not the routine ones, like attending class or going to work, but the moments that I didn’t expect, like meeting someone new or running into an old friend, a peculiar comment or even something clumsy like dropping a coffee or tripping up a staircase. It’s these random moments I like to think have changed and shaped my college experience entirely.

It’s having high school boys throw boba at me and my friends on College Avenue — a moment that sent us running and gave us something to laugh about for years after. It’s viewing a photo of New Zealand in Stephens Hall, one that sent me flying down to the other side of the world, where I lived for six months. It’s last-minute encouragement to apply to The Daily Californian from a roommate in my first apartment on Hillegass Avenue — a decision that flipped the remainder of what I expected my college experience to be, upside down.

It’s an off-chance comment that led me to reread my UC Berkeley rejection letter, something that was never a rejection letter after all, but a chance to create a new life, entirely made of ungraceful and unexpected moments.

I’m thankful for these pushpin memories, good and bad, serious and silly — memories that somehow add up to four chaotic, unexpected and utterly wonderful years, rooted into the cracks and crevices of Berkeley’s streets. And I am thankful for the accidental opportunities they’ve opened for me, the accidental experiences they’ve granted me and most of all, the accidental friends they’ve given me.

It’s these pushpin memories that have created my very own map of Berkeley — a map that values lived experience and distinct moments over street names. It’s these pushpin memories that have shaped my college experience.