The day that this blog is being published, August 28, 2024, is the first day of my senior year at UC Berkeley. Also known as the last first day of school I’ll probably ever have. It’s definitely bittersweet. After Berkeley and obtaining my Bachelor’s, I don’t have any plans on returning to school, at least not for the foreseeable future.
I’m not against pursuing a masters or higher education. I’ve actually thought about it for a few years, more so now that my time as an undergraduate is coming to a close, but I just didn’t find myself committed enough to pull the plug and apply to grad school.
So, I’m ready to soak up everything that senior year is going to give me, including the procrastination that will lead to the stress of completing my assignments.
I can’t say I’m not excited for senior year. My senior year is going to be filled with classes for my minor, while also just taking filler classes. So, yeah, I’m done with my major requirements and I could graduate early, but I can’t. As a transfer student, I am required to stay at Berkeley for two years, because that is how long it takes to complete the amount of units I need to graduate. So, even though I am done with my major requirements, I do still have units to finish and therefore, the minor I’m choosing to complete.
While I love being a transfer student, there is one downside to this path and that is after your first year, it’s your last year. Last year, it took me a bit, but I did find my footing here. I met a few people who became close friends of mine, who also happen to be English transfer students, and with the little time we have left at Berkeley, we want to make it the best year we can have.
Going into this fall semester, I couldn’t be more excited for my classes. With a planned schedule of three classes and a few decals, working on my minor couldn’t get off to a better start. The first class is English 100. English 100 is a requirement for the English major, but the coolest thing about Berkeley’s English department is that students are able to repeat classes, as long as it is with a different professor and different topic. For my first English 100 class that I took last fall, it was based on literary criticism, but for this fall semester, the English 100 class is about the rise of young adult novels. While I do read a lot for school, the majority of my reading is outside of the classroom. The books that I choose to read for myself tend to fall into the young adult category, while not all the books, but a good majority. So, I think it is pretty obvious why I’m looking forward to this class. I get to read young adult novels from the past and present and talk about it with classmates and professor. It will definitely be a cool class.
My second class is a part of the College Writing Program, ColWrit 175, called Players, Spectators & Fanatics: Writing on the Cultures of Sports. I’m honestly not 100% sure what this class is about, but I think that it is about analyzing sports journalism, which sounds very exciting to me. More recently have I been interested in sports journalism, so this class could not have come at a better time.
The final class that I am enrolled in, that is not a DeCal, is English 143C, Long Narrative. This is the class that I am the most excited for as the main goal of this workshop is to write a book. There were five creative writing workshops that were being offered this semester and 143C is the one that I wanted to get into the most. The English 143 series are application based, so depending on the specific workshop and professor, applicants would send in writing samples for the professor to read and we would either get accepted, waitlisted, or rejected. Each workshop accepts 20 students and are known to be difficult to get into due to the large quantity of applications. Becoming a published author is a goal of mine, whether it is in the near future or further down the line, but this workshop is definitely something that I am looking forward to. This workshop is a great chance for me to learn and grow as a writer all semester long with support from a professor and peers.
I don’t know what the future holds for me after graduation. I’ll most likely look for a job, but I also might just take my time with that too. I honestly might just stay unemployed for a bit, so I can travel before setting down my roots somewhere. That was actually my parents' idea. I also want to write a book, like I said before, maybe I’ll give that a shot before I find a job.
Yeah, so right now, that is what my mind looks like going into senior year. A lot of maybe’s about the future, although the one thing I am sure about right now is that I am going to graduate in the spring and I couldn’t be more excited.
But until then, I’m definitely going to make sure that senior year is one for the books.