i couldn’t help but wonder… was I a Berkeley student, or just another cog in the silicon valley machine?
there I was, sitting in class, talking about the culture of uc berkeley—particularly its intimidatingly selective clubs and hyper-competitive departments. it’s a place where getting into a club sometimes feels more impossible than getting into the actual university. where the line between networking and socializing is blurrier than my vision after a few too many at a frat party.
And then, of course, there’s tech. tech is to berkeley what overpriced oat milk lattes are to san francisco: omnipresent, unavoidable, and somehow still an acquired taste.
so many students walk onto campus dreaming of majoring in something completely different—english, environmental science, maybe even … art history. but by sophomore year, they traded in their copies of vogue for leetcode. the gravitational pull of computer science and data science is so strong here, you’d think apple itself was funding student orientation. one minute, you’re sketching in your journal, and the next, you’re debating whether to take CS 61A or just sell your soul directly to a cs recruiter.
FOMO is real. and at berkeley, it’s coded in python.
it’s shocking how many people conform to the same trajectory, simply because it’s what everyone else is doing. original thought? rare. a student majoring in CS who’s actually passionate about it? even rarer.
but then my professor asked an interesting question: is berkeley just a silicon valley pipeline? or does it have its own identity outside of tech?
i thought about it. if I had gone to school somewhere else—somewhere without the looming shadow of google internships and venture capital dreams—would I still be me? would I still feel the pressure to optimize, monetize, and disrupt? or would I just be vibing, majoring in something obscure, making zines, and embracing the slowness of life?
of course, Berkeley is so much more than just tech. this is the birthplace of the free speech movement, the epicenter of student activism, a hub for social change. civil rights, anti-war protests, lgbtq+ movements—berkeley’s history is filled with moments that have reshaped society. the culture here isn’t just about coding and consulting; it’s about questioning the status quo, fighting for justice, and making noise when things aren’t right.
We are products of our environments, but that doesn’t mean we can’t resist them. just because berkeley pushes a certain narrative doesn’t mean we have to accept it. we can break the cycle. we can write our own scripts.
or, at the very least, we can pretend to be passionate about coding while secretly dreaming of a life filled with art, culture, and maybe even a little bit of chaos.
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