Describing my life using the well-worn analogy of journeying down the road, it’s safe to say that thus far, my journey has been a bit bumpy. That’s not to say that I’ve had an unfortunate or uncomfortable life in the least–I’ve been blessed with a caring, loving family, fiercely loyal friends, and educational opportunities that others have missed out on, and I take none of this for granted. At this risk of sounding melodramatic, however, I’d simply like to say that I’ve found myself clumsily tripping along this road that is my life, stumbling over questions of identity, meaning, and fulfillment, and–more often than not–coming up with ‘answers’ that prove uninspiring, unsatisfactory, or downright depressing.

In high school, I assigned myself a role, anchoring my identity firmly to being a serious student, with a clear-cut goal to shoot for: get kick-ass grades to get into a top university. During those four years, I thought I knew who I was, and was confident in my belief that I had it all figured out. Besides burying myself in books, I was also training intensively as a ballet student, attending two-hour classes six days a week, often in preparation for a performance. As my main form of fitness, ballet meant an escape from my reading glasses, and the opportunity to tap into both an athletic and artistic part of myself that would otherwise have remained ignored. Unfortunately, while I recognized that ballet offered me this opportunity to tap into these two parts of myself, I could only see its value in terms of college applications, as an ‘Extracurricular Activity’ demonstrating my well-roundedness.

Four years passed, and I reached the clear-cut goal that I had designated on my life road of getting into a respected university. With a mixture of excitement and uncertainty, I arrived at UC Berkeley with the vague plan of pursuing an English Major–”It’s what I was good at in high school, so I guess I’ll just keep doing that in college.” Just as I had done in high school, I placed for myself a marker four years down my life’s road: graduate in four years with an English major.