When I started at Glendale Community College in the summer of 2024, I made a few TikTok videos about going back to school later in life. Along with that came a slew of education influencers touting that going to community college with the intention of transferring later was not a good idea. Influencers were telling people not to go to community college because it would ruin their college career. Videos like those are harmful to young people. They make the assumption that there is a one-size-fits-all educational journey. If you’ve been reading any of my columns, you already know that’s a load of nonsense. 

There’s a misconception that community college is not as hard as a university, that you can’t make friends there and that transfers don’t have to work as hard as the students who started UC Berkeley as freshman. But I don’t see it that way. Community college is not only a worthy destination in and of itself for those who want less complicated access to education, but it is also a conduit to infinite opportunities. Don’t even get me started on the money you can save. The idea of avoiding a community college due to lack of prestige is a sad and classist way to think, not to mention a waste of local resources. 

For nontraditional students like me, these campuses are often the deciding factor when it comes to going to college at all. I never would have applied to a four-year university right off the bat. It was my community college that made me understand a four-year university was a possibility. It acted as a ramp for me and many others who decided to transfer. I got a lot out of community college because I’m the student I am, and I know I’ll get a lot out of UC Berkeley because I’m the student I learned to be at community college.

I will treasure my time in community college forever. It held the weirdest and most intense memories of my life. The first class I took there was an online creative writing workshop where almost everyone was using AI except me. It was infuriating and discouraging in so many ways. But it inspired me as a writer, and I ended up writing a hermit crab essay in the form of a conversation with a chatbot. I never would have made that creative choice if I hadn’t experienced that fever dream of a class.

Even up until the very end of my time at community college, I had friends asking why I was trying so hard. “You already got into UC Berkeley,” they would say, “Why do you even care?” But I cared because regardless of where I am, having the same work ethic matters to me. It doesn’t matter whether the institution is world-renowned or not.  If I didn’t try at community college, what makes me think I’d be trying anywhere else? This is who I am as a student because I didn’t used to be; as a kid, I cheated all the time. But now, even if no one can see it, I still care about academic integrity. 

I think people who look down on transfer students assume that students skate by in community college, but I’m proof that they don’t. A student’s time at community college holds massive consequences for whether they can transfer to a school such as UC Berkeley. 

The reason I loved my community college so much was because the value was evident. I could see myself frequenting my local college much later in my life because I don’t want to stop being a student, even if it’s taking one random class. 

My favorite professor was a shouty Spaniard who taught marine biology and never shied from using the word anus (for starfish, it’s on the top!). He was so passionate about marine biology that oceanic jokes poured from him as if from a pitcher, and he couldn’t help but snicker at the concept of human supremacy.

He never assigned homework, only tests which he made tricky and uncheatable. He did not command fear so much as respect, and receiving a high test grade felt like being reborn. That class taught me how artistic science can be. I learned so much in a category I always believed myself to be bad at. The faculty at community college can be just as trailblazing and profound as university professors. 

I could never forget my 80-year-old tap dance teacher or my hilarious geology lab tablemates who taught me Gen Z slang. I could never forget what I called the ceramics mafia: ceramics students who scared the bejesus out of me with their intensity about clay. Yes, I learned how to make working cups, even with the watchful eyes of the ceramics mafia over my shoulder. I was tickled by the age range and eccentricity of it all. 

By far the best part about community college is that if you have a solitary artistic bone in your body, it’s impossible to miss the whimsy under your nose at any given moment. It’s the reason shows such as “Community” exist: because community college is interesting, and so are the people who go there. I love other transfer students because I have a shared language with them; we had to learn one system and now we’re navigating another. 

Implicit in those anti-community college educational influencer videos was the belief that the barrier to entry makes community colleges a bad choice. But they had it backwards: that’s exactly what makes them a good choice.Â