The Biggest Lesson I’ve Learned From Berkeley

By Priya Sriram

When I first committed to Berkeley, I thought I was set. Me being the perfectionist that I am, I thought that if I worked hard enough, everything would automatically fall into place for me. I thought I’d magically ace all my classes, land my dream internship, and get into my dream law school.

Of course, in an ideal world that’s how things would work: the harder you work, the better results you see. However, as the events of the past year have so clearly showed us, it’s naive to assume that the path to success is that straightforward. The fact of the matter is that no matter how hard you work, there are a myriad of things beyond your control that you simply cannot account for.

So many of these CEOs and rich people will boast about how their secret to success is to get up at 7 am, to save money by forgoing those morning coffees, or to spend every waking moment drowning in productivity, but the truth is that there is a certain degree of luck, being in the right place at the right time, involved.

This doesn’t mean there’s no hope for the rest of us unlucky folks though. While we may not all be destined to cure cancer, or make millions in cash, we are all destined for success in our own way. The thing to realize is that success is what YOU make of it: the metrics you use to quantify it are yours alone. Life is all about learning to celebrate the small things and accepting that the idea of success is subjective.

Most importantly, do not let yourself get caught up in what others are doing: at the end of the day everyone is different and there is no singular formula to a great life.

Absentmindedly scrolling through LinkedIn, I often found myself getting caught up in the internships my friends were getting, or the companies they were starting, even though these were not at all applicable to me! Most of these people I was comparing myself to were CS majors, or from other disciplines. I am not a CS major, and I’m not even trying to work in tech, so comparing myself to these people was completely ridiculous.

But at Berkeley, the culture makes it so easy to fall into that trap: and it’s definitely a mindset we need to teach ourselves to grow out of. At the end of the day, it’s all about trusting the process, and trusting yourself to be the best person that you can possibly be.