Winter of our Graduation

I can count myself as a graduate of University of California, Berkeley. Until now, I had been unwilling to say that I was a student of UC Berkeley, for the last three years. Now, I am graduating from the very institution that has been the bane and blessing of the last five years, since I was rejected. I was not rejected outright; instead, I was offered a chance to go to a community college before transferring as a third-year student. There were plenty of other good schools I had applied, Santa Cruz and Davis among them. I only know that now in hindsight, when I slowly removed the prejudice that my mother had set before me. I realized that her only two cases for Berkeley were 1) it was close to where we lived, so I could commute there, and 2) it was the school she had heard of in Hong Kong. It was the school to choose, the school that Asia knew was the best and most famous.

I also had five years ago a goal to learn and practice American Sign Language. At first, I thought that going to community college was a hidden blessing because UC Berkeley did not offer ASL classes. I had several choices, and I made Ohlone. Unfortunately, Ohlone was in Fremont, 20 miles away and not close to public transportation. I would have to drive on the I-880 every day, commuting to Ohlone. Either that or live there. After so many conflicting feelings, none of which I could put into thoughts, I eventually chose to go to the safe school of California State University, Hayward (renamed CSU East Bay in 2004). The benefits were that it was close and that it had an ASL program. I later would learn that my mom was disappointed at my choice, even though she gave her support.

At CSUH, I ranged from being happy to being unhappy. Here was a relatively good school, but its atmosphere, I was very aware, seemed to be infused in a feeling of inferiority. On one hand, I could not be happier than when I was learning ASL. On the other hand, I did not have friends that I could talk with. The services provided to a deaf person were mediocre. I was provided either with a microphone to give to a teacher that worked poorly, or had a transcription service that barely meets even half the requirements of providing "equal access" to disabled people as required by law. I was also unhappy with an unpleasant disability counselor for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

It was the disappointment of my first year at CSUH, coming from a sad year at San Leandro High School, that propelled me to apply to Berkeley again in my sophomore year. In the personal statement, which I think helped convinced the officers to accept me, I talked about being hard of hearing, how I grew up having to learn to talk and write, comparing myself to my hearing cousin, explaining for example how he was already talking at the age of 3 about Pokémon, while I was still struggling to learn to talk when I was 5.

I was accepted, but it was an acceptance tinged with my suspicion that I was a fraud. I mean, I had been doing well in CSUH. I got mostly A's in school. My GPA was in the 3.8 or above. And yet, when I got to Berkeley, I felt a sense that I was a tainted man unfit to enter the "hallowed" halls of this university that only the best and brightest go. The last two years and a half, I have struggled to keep myself upbeat, but I always felt that a sense of failure was imminent. I would be exposed by having an F, a D. I would take easier classes to avoid the harder ones. When I took Organic Chemistry, I got below average. It further reinforced my feeling that I was just a charlatan.

But, later, I met some people that I realize are normal people. I know that all Berkeley students are brilliant, but they are also human. Sometimes, you wonder why they got accepted once you find out certain things, but you just know that they must have done well on the SAT, or wrote well in the essay, or been helped by their parents.

Now, I am graduating, with a degree in Molecular and Cell Biology. I seriously doubt that this will be a big part of my career, because I am not smart enough. I at the very least see that I am not smart or crazy enough to try to continue with lab research that I can comprehend, but not see how to turn into breakthrough discovery. I understand that I do not need to make breakthrough discovery. Many scientists working at Genentech have discovered many drugs that they are testing, but they are unlikely to find something deserving of a Nobel Prize. Instead, they continue to work for Big Pharma.

I still like science. Maybe my experience at Berkeley soured me on doing research because it was always competition with other students and deadlines that I could not effectively comply with. Maybe the real world will be different. I still value my stay at Berkeley. I think that living there for a year, going there for two years and half, have opened my eyes to the world that CSUH could not. In fact, the geography of CSUH, being on a hill, prevents it from being as engaging with the local community as Berkeley has. It also prevents CSUH from being attended, because driving up the hill and dealing with the traffic are not fun for me.

As I graduate, I feel like I have not learned any useful skills, though I have learned many useful facts, thoughts, ideas. I just don't think, for example, that I have learned how to write an essay or a prose, learned how to do comprehensive research, or learned how to program. I do not even have a sense of how to write a conclusion. Maybe that's something I'll have to do by myself.