The size of UC Berkeley is incomparable to the size of my high school.
UC Berkeley’s student population is around 40,000 students, undergraduate and graduate combined. Berkeley the city is almost at 119,000. I graduated from West High School in Torrance, California in 2021, my graduating class had around 500 students, a total student population of 2,000 or so. And about 141,000 people call Torrance home. So, while Torrance’s city population is higher, the school population is truly incomparable.
While growing up in Torrance, I attended the same school as the people I graduated with since middle school. That’s seven years. Seven years of the same people, same classmates, and same relationships. There’s nothing wrong with that, but going to the same school with the same people for so long, mentally, I cared a little too much, than I’d like to admit, about how much I cared about their perception of me.
While I love being from Torrance, the thing about Torrance is that it’s kind of, well, bland. Torrance is a residential town, it’s not a tourist attraction. Unless you want to come to our local mall where they filmed a 30-second scene from Euphoria or to my high school football field where they filmed a minute scene from Criminal Minds, or maybe my community college where the fictional college from All American took over the campus on certain weeks to film.
Okay, Torrance has a few cool fun facts, but growing up in a town where everyone was similar was hard. Coming to Berkeley, the biggest culture shock that I experienced was the diversity here. Comparing the diversity between Berkeley and Torrance is pretty exponential. Before I came to Berkeley, I’d never been asked for my pronouns, I’d never seen and met so many people from all over the world and from all different backgrounds. Honestly, I think that it’s a lot better because I’m a transfer student.
I’m a transfer student and I’m very loud and proud of that. There are many benefits to being a transfer student, but I think the best ones are all the different people who are transfer students. First-year students all have the same story, the majority of the time, but each transfer student has their own story and why they chose to transfer, rather than come in as a freshman.
The openmindedness of Berkeley was what really changed my personal mindset. I realized that there are more important things than what people thought about me.
I do hate to admit that I care about what people think about me, but I do. Even if I try to change that, it’s hard. I learned that it takes time to stop caring so much about what people think about me. Every semester, I go in with the mindset that I’m going to talk and participate more in class. I’m not going to lie, that hasn’t changed much. However, I have to give myself credit and say that I do talk a lot more in class than I used to, even if it isn’t to the extent that I was striving for.
I think it's more about noticing the difference in my mindset and how much progress I made.
Changing one’s mindset isn’t something that is going to change overnight (as much as we want it to). It takes time and work, but it’s also important to remember that everyone goes at their own pace.
My favorite thing about Berkeley is how different it was from my high school and community college. The large size of the school really gave me perspective on how important what people thought of me was. And it isn’t important whatsoever. It taught me that I can be truly me and that there is acceptance everywhere.