Street interviews with UC Berkeley students reveal what they love about campus: diversity, weather, and opportunities for learning. They criticize high food prices, expensive housing, and the planned demolition of Evans Hall. Their dreams range from medicine and research to entrepreneurship and off-grid living.
Chapters
What do you love about UC Berkeley? What have you learned from UC Berkeley? What do you hate about UC Berkeley? What's your dream? What's your name and where are you from?
My name is Yelin and I'm from Korea.
I'm Darren, I'm from California.
Hi, I'm Swala, I'm from Iceland.
My name is Evan, I'm from California, from Santa Barbara.
I'm Nolan, I'm from here, from the Bay Area.
Hi, I'm from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
I'm from San Diego, California. I'm from Westminster, California.
I'm from Palo Alto, California.
I'm from Pescadero in California.
I'm Aki.
Hello, I'm Koutaro. Hi, I'm Tiger. What are you majoring in?
I'm majoring in mathematics.
I'm studying molecular and cell biology.
Oh, and I'm studying economics and data science.
We're both majoring in math.
Yes, pure math.
Okay.
Pure cells.
Yes, yes.
I'm majoring in bioengineering, minoring in electrical engineering and computer science.
I'm majoring in bioengineering. Majoring in bioengineering.
Also majoring in bioengineering and Electrical engineering and computer science.
Cognitive science, and I'm minoring in disability studies and public policy.
Environmental economics and policy.
I'm a freshman studying computer science. I'm a freshman studying architecture.
What do you love about UC Berkeley?
For me, I love the people and the weather the most. I really like how it gives off a very optimistic vibe here with the weather as well.
I love the opportunities the most. School gives you a lot of opportunities to do what you want to do later in life, which is really nice. I also love campus itself.
It's very pretty. I love that every single student here has something they're really, really passionate about.
A cake.
Has a dream that they really, really care about. It's a nice place to get inspiration for yourself.
Campus is absolutely beautiful.
People are amazing.
Everyone here is working on something cool that will change the world for the better.
I think honestly I just really like the location that it's in because for me I like being able to get out of the city and still stay in college. And I think the people I've met over here for the last couple last couple years have been worth it.
Yeah, I'd say also the location, like it's super close to the city.
So yeah, I love the culture, the people, politics of the school. I think the people here are good, the weather is awesome, everything's great.
Go Bears!
It's big, there's a lot of people here, there's a lot of really smart people here, a lot of motivated people here, and so being around like in that environment around those kind of people is great. But at the same time, you know, if you look around, everybody's just chilling out the grass, having fun. Great student environment.
I love how there's something always going on. It's really easy to meet new people and talk to new people. You know, you never know what's gonna happen. I think the people really make the experience, so that's probably what I love the most.
I like the sun. I like the teaching methods here and how close the professors are. I have a lot of small courses, so definitely like that.
I like the diversity of the student population. People from different regions of the United States, and people from all over the world. Within different cultures, I also see differences in economic situations and family backgrounds. There is always something I can learn from every person I meet.
Berkeley has, like, lots of international students like me. There's students from Asia, Europe, Africa. I think, like, just get to know, like, other people from, like, all over the world is, like, just inspirational. Give me some, like, new idea every single day, and I think it's really cool. I get to meet a lot of inspirational people from same major or different majors. I get to know so many people who are good at coding, who are good at business. So many talented people always inspire me to be better, learn new things.
What have you learned from UC Berkeley for 4 years?
Since I take really interdisciplinary major, I take classes in a bunch of different disciplines. I don't know, I've learned a lot. I think that having diversity of education is really important, so just a ton from every different concentration.
I feel like because UC Berkeley is such a big school, something I learned is to be very proactive and take your own initiative. Go out and see the opportunities for yourself because they're not going to come on a silver spoon here, but it's really rewarding once you actually put in the effort seeking out those opportunities.
I think in terms of my actual major, I learned how to be an engineer. I learned how to do the whole process of engineering, which is really interesting. But I guess just over the whole 4 years, I learned kind of like what Hoa said, to be proactive about learning about different things related related to what you want to do in the future, and for me I think that was like social justice issues. You wouldn't learn here because you get really a big picture idea of like all of that going on, and it's really enlightening.
I'd say the most important thing that I've learned was for most students in university it's really easy to kind of just go with the flow and you take the classes everyone takes and apply for the jobs that everyone else is applying for, you know, do research like everybody else, but UC Berkeley really forced me to take a step back, try to think about my own personal motivations for why I'm doing things. Being honest with myself about what I really value is what I learned. That's what I am most thankful for learning.
Berkeley has so many opportunities because there's so many cool people. They're there, they're available to us, but you have to take initiative if you want to do great things.
What do you hate about UC Berkeley?
I hate the fact that they're about to get rid of Evans, that building right there, that big building, the ugly one. But they're gonna demolish it. That's the math building. It's been here for years. It should stay, okay? Don't get rid of Evans.
That's the worst thing.
Oski, our mascot, He's a very scary mascot. He's not friendly looking.
I don't like him.
When I see him on campus, I turn the other way. Oski needs to change. Give him bear paws. Why does he have human hands?
It's funny you said that you hate they're demolishing Evans because I was gonna say I hate Evans. It's cold, the layout's horrible, it's dark, it's musty, the elevators don't work. Just a sad, gray, morose place. And the reason they're demolishing it is that it's seismically unsafe if the big one hits. It could fall apart. So I hate that building.
These sensitive math students afraid of the big earthquake.
No, I just— it's, it's, it's a nasty building, and I'm glad they're demolishing it. Do I hate anything else?
It's hard to hate Berkeley, man.
Yeah.
Oh, okay. I'm pretty happy.
It's actually the fact that those awful sandwiches at FSM are like $14. Oh, that needs to change.
That's horrible. Okay, okay, okay.
It's too expensive.
Too expensive?
Yeah.
Oh, one more thing. Everything in this town closes at like 8 PM.
Yeah, it's—
everything closes super early. Like restaurants, the 7-Eleven by my place closes at like 11.
What happens if you need beer at 11:01?
You know, you're screwed. Over.
And last question is, what's your dream?
I guess my dream is to work on a really cool research project and to scale it up. I'm really interested in entrepreneurism, and that's something that I really want to move forward with, uh, develop a really good spin-off from my research, just make it big so that it can impact the world.
So my dream is to become a physician, hopefully a cardiologist one day. Keeping it simple for now, and not that it's easy to get, but keeping it there for now to see where life takes me. It might change.
My dream is also become a physician. I'm most interested in psychiatry right now.
My dream is to make the average lifespan at least 100, have it so like medicine is good enough that everyone can be running around and healthy to like for as long as possible.
Probably to travel, like travel My dream career-oriented-wise would be surgeon. I do want to work over here and work with healthcare.
I'm going to graduate school, so my dream would be academia. I want to be a mathematical professor or researcher.
Yeah, at Iceland or—
oh, probably here. I like the States, so probably California, hopefully.
For some—
yeah, I don't know, to make enough money to survive To be around my friends, to achieve some level of mental stability, and to buy a Porsche. Mine?
I would like to graduate, throw my phone in a river, somehow acquire a buttload of money, and then just go live in a cabin in the woods. I want to be Ted Kaczynski without the eco-terrorism. I just want to be completely disconnected from society and never have to worry about anything else. I don't want to have a phone. I don't want to have an email account. I just, I want to live off the land and all that.
As a person interested in energy policy, I wanted to become an individual who can help make energy policies better in Japan. I think I want to do that from the standpoint of like policy advocacy.
After graduating, I want to go to graduate school and study more about architecture, like just being ready for my career and enjoy my 4 years of college. I guess as a CS major, I want to be a software engineer. I'm still kind of deciding what kind of part of software engineering is inspiring to me. So I'm kind of exploring what I want to do in the future. Okay, thank you.
Cool, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you very much.
