student life

Before I was a Cal fan, I was a Taylor Swift fan. While our graduation speaker wasn’t Taylor Swift (I almost flew to NYU just to see the queen get an honorary degree), I still have found many valuable lessons in her songs that relate to my time at Berkeley. Most of the time I was jamming to her songs on the way to class, or getting hyped on a Friday night to her catchy tunes. I can see my four years through the eyes and ears of her song lyrics. Every high and low could be remedied somewhat by listening to Taylor’s discography.

Freshman year was a blur of new...

Dear freshman year,

With the end of my freshman year approaching, I've been looking back on what made it so great, regardless of how it was unfortunately cut short.

A lot of those great memories have to be credited the UC Rally Committee. Rally Comm gave me my friends, my future housemates, my job, and a great deal of happiness. Looking back on how scared I was to join makes me laugh, I can't imagine my freshman experience without the UCRC. I've come so far and I'm excited to give back to the committee that gave me everything I wanted and more as the new Director of Security...

This week marks one year since classes at UC Berkeley went online, and since then, it has been difficult to connect with students outside of my apartment. Over the last year, I have learned to appreciate spending time with my housemates, especially cooking dinner with them. Even though things have been online, all of our schedules are still very busy with classes, work, and various student organizations. However, we still make time for what we call “family dinners” at least four days a week, where we all help cook a meal and sit down together at the table to eat.

...

Bem-vindo, Bienvenue, Bienvenidos, Welcome. These words in their respective languages all signal to the listener that the space that they are in is hospitable, that the speaker is greeting the listener in a positive manner. This is a common introduction I have heard during my time at Cal learning different languages. I knew I wanted to study another language that would not only be useful for me when I travel, but also in my career field.

So first, I decided that I would strengthen my Spanish knowledge and would learn Portuguese since there are already many...