Category: 2025

            Experiencing new things in new places with cool people is always fun. It promotes going outside of your comfort zone and creating new meaningful memories. Most people say we live in a small world, but sometimes it seems that you’re just a tiny ant who has barely seen anything. I recently visited UC Berkeley for the first time, and it felt like a worlds difference compared to UC Merced. Different scenery, different people, and different things to do – everything just felt so surreal.

            Compared to Merced, Berkeley is overall just more established. The campus feels developed with modern buildings with a mix historical looking architecture. The coolest part was looking toward the bay at the base of clock tower Campanile, seeing the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. The variety of restaurants and eateries was also nice, everything looked really yummy. I think the stereotype of Berkeley being ghetto doesn’t apply to the UC, as the campus and its surrounding town was pretty clean. Occasionally you will see some homeless people, but overall, everybody walking around seemed nice. To me, the school was bigger than I thought it was, with many pathways and areas where people could hang out. Overall, the campus was lively and full of energy, just somewhere you would want to be.

            I think that social culture is something that is incredibly important in college. The people you are surrounded with have a huge influence on who you are as a person. At Merced, I think people are typically quieter, and it takes longer for people to get to know each other. Compared to Berkeley, there are just less people. The social culture in Berkeley can be described as open. I think the people you meet there are very welcoming and eager to do new things. It may feel overwhelming at first, but once you get used to the culture it becomes easy to connect with others.

            Along with visiting the school, I also went up Mount Tamalpais to Trojan Point. The drive to the point was fun, the roads were smooth and windy. There was little to no parking though, due to its popularity of being a great place to watch the sunset. The hike up the hills was exhausting, but in the end the view was worth it.

            Visiting Berkeley was fun, and I can’t wait to visit more places in the future. There are still many places I need to explore.

            Old people are everywhere. They go on daily morning walks at six in the morning with their little fluffy dog named Daisy, they greet everybody they see with a very big smile, and they love sitting on their front porch with a cup of coffee, just staring at their neighbors’ houses. Old people remind me of my grandpa, he is a happy old man that plays golf, watches the stock market, and takes naps in the afternoon every day. Every time I see my grandpa, he asks me how many girlfriends I have and when I am going to be better than him at golf. Then after the interrogation, he goes to his room and hands me a wad of cash.

            Growing up, I loved being around my grandparents. They live in Taiwan, so my family used to go back every winter to visit them. A day in Taiwan for me as a kid would start with going to the gigantic mall called Sogo with my sister and my grandparents all day, and then playing games around the night markets in Taipei at night. My grandpa would always spoil me and my sister by getting us lots of yummy food and fun toys, filling our tummies and suitcases up with random things that you could never find in the United States. He would also take me on walks to the bank, where he took me around the ins-and-outs of the building to say hi to every single employee. Then we would go to the coffee shop right next to his apartment and talk about random things until my grandma told us to go back.

            As a little kid, I always thought that my grandpa was always an old man, and he was born that way. I never thought about how his life was growing up and how he was as a father to my dad and my aunt. As I grew up, I was able to understand more and more of the family lore and the story of my grandpa’s life that ultimately enables him to spoil me every time I see him.

            My grandpa was the oldest of seven or eight siblings. I say seven or eight because nobody is sure how many infants died at birth. He grew up right after World War 2, when control of Taiwan was first given to the Republic of China. The economy in Taiwan was depressed as it experienced constant inflation and shortage of goods. My grandpa’s childhood home reflected Taiwan’s struggling economy, the building is located on rural farmland. It looks like a blue shack and is equipped with three bedrooms and one bathroom. The concrete inside the house was so dirty that it is permanently dyed black. In the whole house there was one light in the living room and had basically no plumbing. The condition of the home is so bad that two years ago the home was deemed uninhabitable.

            My grandpa moved out at around 16 in search for a better life. He worked hard in school and was able to be the first in his family to go to college and graduate. According to my father, my grandpa was a role model for my great-uncles. They were inspired by their older brother to go pursue an education to help their chances of getting a high paying job. Out of college, my grandpa got a job at Taiwan Cooperative Bank, one of the major banks in Taiwan. His salary helped him get an apartment for him and my grandma in Taipei. Over the years, he was promoted multiple times and finally earned his title as executive vice-president. He retired after decades of hard work and became the happy grandpa I know today.

            I am grateful for what my grandpa has done for me. Without his hard work, my dad would not have been able to come to the United States for grad school and find stable jobs in the Bay Area. My grandpa is an example of “hard times create strong men,” and is proof that anybody can achieve their dreams. He is getting older now and age comes with health complications. Who knows when it will be the last time I can see him, all I can do is hope for the best and pray. No matter what, his story will continue to inspire me and my aspirations to achieve my dreams. Keep pushing forward, make dreams reality.

            How hard do people really work in college? Is the college experience truly the classic studying and grinding out homework during the week and then partying and having fun on the weekends? I go to UC Merced, where there is literally nothing to do and last semester what me and my roommate did for fun was play mini golf around our dorm building. The people you meet here are hardworking, but for me coming from a more densely populated area to Merced was a big culture shock.

            Growing up I was always slightly introverted. I never really went out to seek social interaction and only had a few good friends that I sometimes talked to. This started to change during high school, as I learned how to socialize and make more friends. I would not consider myself as popular, but I was “cool” with many different types of people. Graduating from high school and going to college really put my socialization skills to the test, since nobody that I knew came to UC Merced with me. I made a few friends quick, becoming part of a small friend group. I had a blank slate; nobody knew anything about me except for the few things that I had on my Instagram that gave them some insight on my hobbies and what I like. When my new classmates saw me for the first time, they probably thought that I was your typical Asian student that was just smart for no apparent reason except for genetics.

            The first semester of my college career I proudly lived up to the typical Asian student expectations. A girl at a party even asked me if I was FOB or “Fresh off the Boat”, a derogatory term for international students or people who had just immigrated to the United States. I got a 4.00 GPA and set the curve for most of my midterms and finals. Truthfully, I did not study all that much as my classes were easy for me and I watched a lot of YouTube and Netflix to pass the time. The bulk of the time I would consider as studying was helping my classmates understand material, kind of reteaching topics or tutoring them. In a sense, tutoring others was very beneficial for me and boosted my understanding of the material, but it was not like I was working very hard. Yes, I made sure to always turned in my projects and homework on time, but that was pretty much it! If the professor was looking at my work, they probably expected this hard-working young man, studying for at least four to five hours a day, going through all the resources that I have access to. To the people in my classes I was most likely seen as just another smart Asian kid just there to have fun doing derivatives and integrals.

            Currently I am in my second semester at UC Merced. Compared to my first semester, my classes this semester are a lot harder. My first midterm is next week, and I feel under prepared. I understand the material, but doing exam problems is another type of animal I need to tame. I feel as if I don’t know how to study like I never studied for an exam in my life. People say, “fake it until you make it”, and I can say that I have been trying to do that. So far, I have just been faking it and hoping that I would make it. I questioned at the start of this blog if college was the classic grind during the week and party on the weekends and hard college really is. For me, reality is setting in, and I am beginning to realize how much work college really is.

            The culture shock from coming to UC Merced had created a clean slate for me, and I was able to use this opportunity to obtain some good stats and give people an impression of who I am. But now my classes are getting harder, and I am starting to realize the amount of effort I need to put into my education, as my reputation is on the line. College is making me realize faking it will not help you make it.