It’s a Sunday afternoon: farmers markets, churches, families with strollers and brunch. Exhausted from endless assignments, projects, meetings and practices, I finally have time to catch a break, but I don’t. My bed’s ruffled cream sheets invite me with a warm embrace, yet my brain refuses to listen.

I’ve grown avoidant of rest, especially at UC Berkeley, where everyone seems to be curing cancer, launching startups or networking their way to success. As a humanities major, feeling undeserving of rest, I’ve signed myself up to juggle five different things at once because that’s what success looks like. Staying busy reassures me that my double major in political economy and cognitive science has depth beyond sinking into the tech bubble.

I came to UC Berkeley pre-med as a biology major, hoping to add computer science. Numbers always made sense to me — I excelled in STEM courses, volunteered over 200 hours at the LAC+USC Medical Center and dedicated my future to science. It felt safe, like home, because I was good at it.

My first semester, fueled by freshman ego, I enrolled in CS61A, Chem 1A/L and Math 53. People around me cautioned me with good intentions, but confident in my STEM abilities, I dismissed them. I should’ve listened.

Coding a few lines of Java hadn’t prepared me for the abstract logic of computer science. There was only one correct path, and I couldn’t even find the first step. Despite weeks of studying, I failed every exam. Yet chasing a life like Meredith Grey’s — days painted in blue scrubs, friendships forged in chaos and starting a family with a McDreamy — I still clung onto biology.

In my second semester, I learned destiny had another plan for me. After weeks of attending lectures, study sessions and office hours, finally getting a grip on organic chemistry, I received an email from UC Berkeley’s Office of the Registrar declaring that I’d been dropped from the course. 

I was utterly distraught, but not enough to fight my way through the system and pursue my love for medicine. Deep down, I was tired of the inflexible rule book of STEM. There’s always a problem with only a few paths you’re allowed to take to arrive at its solution. All the theories, equations and formulas became suffocating. I grieved the liberty of the arts, where solving a problem allows you to travel beyond space on a 10-legged vehicle and defy the laws of gravity, making every assignment a canvas for self-expression. 

I always found something so sophisticated in storytelling, decorated with vivid imagery and precise diction, that indirectly critiqued history, politics and society. It was like how author Min Jin Lee, in “Pachinko,” stripped down the Japanese occupation to a personal level, showing how power struggles between governments destroy innocent lives and families. And like how Hanya Yanagihara, in “A Little Life,” achingly portrayed how sexual violence embeds itself into every corner of a survivor’s life and how it can ultimately consume them whole.

Like a religion, I had to convert. It felt as if I were betraying my intellectual capabilities and wasting my potential, as STEM seemed far more innovative. But my hunger to not only be heard and seen but also to listen to the aches of others was far greater than my desire to assimilate. 

Today, I still feel like a fish swimming against the current, going the opposite direction of where the good is, where the treasure is. Just so I can say I am doing what I love. Everything I dream of doing is against the current, away from the gold. 

I’d love to be a lawyer one day — not the corporate one, but the one who helps people, the one who barely makes any money. The world seems to be incentivized by money, and the money is placed in regions I detest. Everyone swims toward the gold, sacrificing ultimate fulfillment because, in the end, at least they can afford to spend Christmas drinking hot cocoa in Switzerland, donate to philanthropies that save the world and drown themselves in luxury. If survival and comfort ultimately depend on financial stability, is comparison actually a guiding star in disguise? 

No, because a guiding star doesn’t empty your soul. 

Even as I write this column about a common phenomenon, I feel unoriginal and uncreative, reading other pieces about niche topics written in even more niche and witty ways. I’m frustrated by mind-blowing analogies that I couldn’t ever think of. Yet I continue to write because there are infinite pathways, uniquely curated by the author’s creativity and personality, for every topic.

And sometimes comparison is good. It momentarily lures me in to do something the world is telling me I should do, but I quickly leave dissatisfied, even more assured that I must do the thing that I love. It also motivates me to do and be better, although it becomes unhealthy at a certain point. 

Comparison will be a thief of confidence, rest and happiness only if you let it. It’ll shove you around and scream at your face, but don’t let it win. 

To all my humanities majors: You’re no less than the engineering majors immersed in their black screens of Python with six- to seven-figure jobs waiting for them straight out of college. We’re swimming against the current, not toward the gold but still toward a life we’re meant for. 

So take that break on a Sunday afternoon to watch your favorite Netflix show while munching on your favorite snacks. You don’t need constant motion and a stacked resume to prove your worth. You’re not falling behind. You’re a visionary, building something far greater than what the world can see.