Obtaining a degree (or multiple) from UC Berkeley is no small feat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nobody provides the playbook for balancing academics, work, extracurriculars, relationships and play. Yet somehow, we built it anyway. This chapter of our lives is over, and we hope that you like \u2014 and are proud of \u2014 the person you\u2019ve become. As we all take down the photos from the walls, move out of our apartments and turn toward a new life, the graduating class of 2026 at The Daily Californian is proud to present a tiny snippet of ours.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Congratulations, UC Berkeley class of 2026!\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2014 Chrissa Olson<\/p>\n
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Last walk down Sproul<\/a><\/p>\n The conclusion I\u2019ve come to is the following: Yes, turns out, I have no argument. The last four years have been a series of unpredictable silliness, and I suspect the next four years (to put a number on it) will be more or less the same. I\u2019ll probably change my mind again, do a bunch of random things, take many, many walks and still hate writing about myself.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2014 Ananya Rupanagunta<\/p>\n In defense of indecision<\/a><\/p>\n It\u2019s in the past four years that I have discovered my true passion: talking. Talking on the phone, grabbing a gratuitous beer or a coffee at Strada, catching up with my roommates in bed at night, letting meetings run too long because we got too caught up in our own long-winded ideas.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2014 Clara Brownstein<\/p>\n Finding pieces of them in me<\/a><\/p>\n Four years ago, I began working on a 1,000-piece puzzle rendition of Hokusai\u2019s \u201cThe Great Wave off Kanagawa\u201d with my best friends in our freshman dorm. It took us three weeks, a series of midnight study breaks and approximately 17 iced green teas to complete.<\/p>\n \u2014 Izzy Nunes\u00a0<\/p>\n I thought I was done with journalism. I was wrong<\/a><\/p>\n But if the test of faith in my freshman year taught me anything, it is that nothing can keep me away from reporting. Journalism is an unforgiving profession: low pay, high stress and thankless 99% of the time. That rejection may have been a sign to turn tail and run.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2014 Alexa Vazquez\u00a0<\/p>\n A cyclical becoming of self<\/a><\/p>\n Everything moves. Everything returns, in some form or another. Like the moon, life is cyclical. It asks you to trust phases you don\u2019t fully understand while you\u2019re in them.\u00a0The moon has always known this. And now, finally, I do too.<\/p>\n \u2014 Amara McEvoy\u00a0<\/p>\n I owe it all to the Daily Cal<\/a><\/p>\n The Daily Californian has given me a lifetime\u2019s worth of memories. As I graduate and head into the world with clear goals in mind, I know the experience also paved the path for me to create a lifetime of memories moving forward.<\/p>\n \u2014 Kyle Ngo\u00a0<\/p>\n A leap of faith<\/a><\/p>\n There is a serene beauty to the idea that there are people who come into our lives of their own free will and choose to stay, not because of some Hollywood script-like romance but because you have become a source of familiarity to them.<\/p>\n \u2014 Rae Wymer\u00a0<\/p>\n My quest for idealism<\/a><\/p>\n I\u2019m not looking to impart knowledge as much as I am passion. When I watch someone light up at the thought of copy editing or writing an investigative piece, I get access to just a second of that extra special idealism. It\u2019s not the same as my own idealism, at least as I (idealistically) imagine it was, but it gets close. All I can do is take comfort in the fact that while being here, I\u2019ve done all I can to connect with my campus and my city.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2014Ella Carter-Klauschie\u00a0<\/p>\n Retracing my final undergrad footprints<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n There\u2019s no log of all the in-between moments: Strawberry Creek burbling as I walk over the bridge, grass tickling my ankles, golden hour over the Campanile through the trees.\u00a0The video doesn\u2019t show everything I\u2019ve learned in my time here.<\/p>\n \u2014 Nichelle Wong\u00a0<\/p>\n Finding a sense of self<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n I will never forget my first September weekend in Berkeley. I had spent my morning studying with friends in the Unit 1 lounge, laughing while attempting to work on my readings. I spent the nights going out to frat parties or discovering new restaurants. Though I was having fun, it was the strangest experience to be exploring, studying toward a degree and spending quality time with friends rather than attending my 11 a.m.-6:30 p.m. ballet rehearsals.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2014 Emewodesh Eshete\u00a0<\/p>\n What this column is not<\/a><\/p>\n Suddenly, I am back in my childhood bedroom in Texas, the one I painted lime green when I was 11, struggling to write my college application essays, trying to prove my thoughts, my experiences, my life had been enough .Now, the problem is the opposite. UC Berkeley has given me more than I even know how to hold. I thought writing this column would force me to find the right words. But maybe the inability to find them is the reflection.<\/p>\n \u2014 Arfa Momin\u00a0<\/p>\n If I\u00a0could go back in time, I wouldn\u2019t<\/a><\/p>\n I no longer need to question my worth, my identity, my purpose. I no longer need to worry about the choices I made or regret the paths that I took. Because of everything that has happened in the last four years, I have become the person that I am today.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2014 Emily Hamill\u00a0<\/p>\n No, the world didn\u2019t end at 19<\/a><\/p>\n In the end, I don\u2019t think it matters what changed things for me, because something did. I came to understand that my environment, my people, my circumstances were within my control, so long as I stopped trying to fit into spaces that simply weren\u2019t meant for me. Everything and everyone I needed had always been there; it just took me a little while to find them.<\/p>\n \u2014 Eleanor Dalton\u00a0<\/p>\n This dream\u2019s only feeling kind of sweet<\/a><\/p>\n For the past three years, I\u2019ve lived in my sorority house on Warring Street. There\u2019s a frat next door that\u2019s constantly playing music, usually Mac Miller, Drake and other party tunes. But a week ago, it was something different.<\/p>\n \u2014 Roxana Nourishad\u00a0<\/p>\n Welcome home<\/a><\/p>\n Apart from an incredible education, my time at Berkeley, both campus and city, has helped me find bits and pieces of myself scattered throughout its people and its culture, and shaped me into someone capable of stepping out into an uncertain world knowing that I\u2019m going to be OK. And isn\u2019t that what it means to have found a home?<\/p>\n \u2014 Ahana Sur<\/p>\n On grief and graduation<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMy father died\u201d is a very irritating sentence to have to write for the rest of your life. It\u2019s an even more startling sentence to think as you\u2019re trying to figure out when you\u2019re taking graduation pictures.<\/p>\n \u2014 Keemia Zhang<\/p>\n 37 and thriving: How UC Berkeley changed my life forever<\/a><\/p>\n There was one itch I never scratched, a nagging presence that never went away: Maybe I could become a journalist. Even now, it sounds crazy: hopping into a world I knew nothing about in my 30s to do something I had never done.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2014 Eric Urbach<\/p>\n You don\u2019t get to hate the Daily Cal unless you love it<\/a><\/p>\n Having joined the paper as a reporter the summer before college, I made my best friends in the Daily Cal\u2019s news department. But at the same time, I had seen how the demands of news editing had severed relationships, ruined academic transcripts and destroyed people\u2019s mental and physical well-being. I was adamant that that would not be me. I was committed to never letting the Daily Cal take over my life.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2014 Amber X. Chen<\/p>\n On the beauty of uncertainty<\/a><\/p>\n Looking back, I can recognize that by allowing myself the freedom to change my mind and occasionally botch things, I eliminated a lot of the suffering that is wondering what could have been. My time at UC Berkeley also gave me a lot of stories to tell, ensuring I am well on my way to becoming the eccentric aunt I believe I\u2019m destined to be.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2014 Antonia d\u2019Auria<\/p>\n Grad diet<\/a><\/p>\n I believe that the act of loving is itself an exchange \u2014 whether of memories, secrets, intimacies, sentiments or even past versions of ourselves. To love something is to hold it as your own, but also to relinquish a piece of yourself. There is something miraculous about consuming something you love, since it embodies the very dynamic that loving requires.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n \u2014 Mikaela O\u2019Brien<\/p>\n A goodbye from a person who hates goodbyes<\/a><\/p>\n As graduation looms closer, the future is about to become my present, but I genuinely don\u2019t know what comes next for me. Will I find my dream job? Will I take time off to travel? Will I doom and gloom at home? Will I be back at UC Berkeley for another first day of classes?<\/p>\n \u2014 Aditya Hariharan<\/p>\n Warmth, grief and gratitude<\/a><\/p>\n How beautiful it is to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard, especially since I feel like I am the happiest I\u2019ve ever been in my final year at UC Berkeley.\u00a0As I embark on a new, exciting but somewhat uncertain chapter in my life, I\u2019m grieving the community and life I\u2019ve built over the last four years. It\u2019s bittersweet, but more sweet than bitter.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2014 Luc\u00eda Umeki-Mart\u00ednez<\/p>\n Becoming a surfer at Berkeley<\/a><\/p>\n It is easy to reduce all of this to a line on our resume, to a set of outcomes that can be measured and compared. However, that feels a bit beside the point because this education has made things less simple. It has made it harder to ignore what does not make sense. Harder to stop asking questions once you have started.\u00a0So the onus, now, is on us \u2014 literally!<\/p>\n \u2014\u00a0Meiya Gujjalu<\/p>\n Remember to snap away<\/a><\/p>\n On my plane ride to my last spring break trip with my friends, I went through my iPhone gallery like any sane person with no signal does. I ended up all the way back in 2022 when I first moved into Christian Hall in Unit 1. I quickly found my way to my second year at UC Berkeley, with only 92 photos and 14 videos to my name that first critical year. At the same time, I took 36 gigabytes, or 1,200 photos, for the Daily Cal.<\/p>\n \u2014 Jun Oh<\/p>\n