As Berkeley students, we are so busy, we don't have time to spell things out.
In a single morning, I walk to campus past the GBC to my class in VLSB, then go to FSM for lunch or hit the RSF. I've worked at the BSFC and go to meetings with the CSSA.
My life at Cal has been one giant acronym. Not a single day goes by that I don't see a new one I've never heard of before. Some of them are practical, helping us keep our conversations succinct as we rush from place to place (to say I'm on my way to my "Environmental Sciences, Policy, and Management" class is a bit of a mouthful). But some surpass the threshold of practicality, harder to pronounce than the individual words themselves.
BJGLJ.
SFFWW.
AAPIHRG-S.
(these are real)
Combinations like these seem more like a secret code than any sort of informative label.
For anyone outside of Cal, these letters are like a foreign language. But to the students, they define our identity and signify our pride in the groups we choose. They mark of what matters most in our college experience.
My time at Cal has been filled with both the greatest and the most difficult experiences in my life. Amidst the social and intellectual excitement, I have often struggled to "find my place" in a specific community. I am more inclined to flow from group to group than ascribe to a single identity. I don't know exactly "who I am," but that's the way I like it. I take it as an opportunity to be fully present, to embrace and absorb all that these four short years have to offer. I found this perspective in a poem by David Whyte, which has stayed in the back of my mind throughout college.
These few words are enough.If not these words, this breath.If not this breath, this sitting here.This opening to life We have refusedAgain and againUntil now.
Students have apparel and accessories covered with the acronyms that define their lives. They "wear their letters." With my Berkeley Memento, I am wearing mine too.
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