WRITTEN BY ANKUR GUPTA (PEACE TUTOR AND ADVISOR)

I’d like to preface this blog by stating that I am a former UC Berkeley premed student, and I wanted to share with you my personal story in these 4 years. I’ll admit, it was not easy and there were lots of up and downs. But, my philosophy mimics what Rocky once said, “It’s not about how hard you get hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.” Many students come in with the mindset that Cal premed is cutthroat and super competitive. The pressure to be involved in a number of extracurricular activities, maintain a good GPA, and even have a personal life can get burdensome. Although certain aspects of these statements might be true, not all of it is. I met a lot of awesome, supportive people at Cal who helped me through the 4 years.

Coming into UC Berkeley, I was super excited to be living on my own and to meet different people. This new sense of freedom was appealing to me. I was even looking forward to my classes, just knowing that I could be learning chemistry or biology from a Nobel Laureate. I can probably say freshman year was one of the best years of college for me- just because my only real focus was on coursework. I had not exactly engaged in any serious extracurricular activities during this year since I was still finding my niche and organizations I felt passionate about.

I definitely struggled in school during my second year. It may have been my overconfidence or that classes had gotten harder. I still remember how stressful midterms had gotten, and I started to lose faith in my abilities to do well academically. But, these failures actually helped me become a better person. I learned the proper method of studying: not plain memorization but understanding the material. Hence, I joined PEACE to tell other students about my experience and what worked. Lots of good things also happened though like I got my research experience, joined PEACE, and became an FPF Ambassador. These organizations gave me more inspiration and hope that I was doing what I was passionate about: providing free and accessible education.

In my junior year I finally understood the proper way to study for my classes. In fact, I started to really enjoy all my new classes because I was mostly done with my MCB prerequisites, and I could focus on classes that I took an interest in. One of the most memorable classes I took was MCB 166 (Biophysical Neurobiology). Yeah, it’s a mouthful, but this class definitely took my neuro knowledge to a different level. The fact that our body performs all these mechanisms just to keep us alive still astounds me to this day. My love for science will always continue to grow just because there’s still so much we have yet to uncover about ourselves. However, as fascinating as science was to me, I did have some mental health problems this year, which even carried on to senior year. My personal problems began to overwhelm me, and my inexperience in dealing with this made it even worse. I honestly had never suffered from depression before, and this experience affected my social interactions, schoolwork, and level of commitment to extracurricular activities. But, the best way to deal with it is to talk it over with a friend or therapist. I actually ended up using the Tang Center counseling services to cope with this, and it helped me overcome this problem.

I always heard that senior year of college would be awesome- best classes, best professors, and even best friends. So, when I came home from my first semester for Christmas feeling burnt out from school, I felt like there was something wrong with me. Why wasn’t I having as much fun as I should be? There are a lot of answers to this question that I’m not going to delve into. But I’ve recently come to realize that the hardest part about senior year, for me, isn’t any of these things. It’s hard to explain, but at its core, I would describe it as the process of reverting away from the person I had in my mind as the person I wanted to become (a successful premed student who would be published in a research article and had a 4.0 etc.) and into my actual self (an uncertain graduate who doesn’t even know if he gets into med school).

Senior year is hard because you expect to know yourself and what you want to do by now, but for me, I still find myself a little unsure of who I am and what exactly it is that I feel passionate about. But I realized it’s ok to be uncertain. I feel like our society has pushed us to do things in a very systematic way. But, you lose the joy of spontaneity, the joy of just wanting to do something new every day. The joy of being who you want to be. What has brought meaning to you in these 4 years? For me, it’s my ability to overcome my problems and be mentally tough enough to deal with it. I just wish I realized this earlier, and I hope if you made it this far in reading this, you will realize what I’m saying. In fact, if I have one piece of advice for anyone getting ready for senior year, it’s to enjoy it, cherish it, and not worry too much – worrying never gets you anywhere.

Moving on to the next story of my life is scary, but that’s something I have to overcome because if you think about it, nothing lasts forever. I’ve left my legacy at Berkeley, and although it was a rollercoaster, I’m proud of all my achievements and failures. It’s time to take the next step forward and make my mark on the world.