There are some things you learn when you transfer to UC Berkeley in the fall of 2011. You learn the signs of a protest: chalk written calls to action on the pavement, the sound of hovering helicopters, police that grow in numbers the closer you get to Sproul Plaza. You learn the correct answer to “whose university?” is always a screamed back “our university.” It becomes clear UC Berkeley is a place where students don’t do anything by half, including protest signs, “I’m afraid for Virginia Woolf,” “We’ve got 99 problems, but the rich are 1%”
You become intimately acquainted with the body odor of the guy standing next to you when 5,000 people are crammed in Sproul Plaza, listening to economist Robert Reich speak about the wealth gap. You learn how hard it is to concentrate on media theory when your TA holds class outside, in solidarity with the Occupy Cal protest, with the overwhelming smell of sage filling the air and a gospel choir singing “Move Along Freedom.”
You watch the violence creep down Telegraph Avenue, from the police raid at Occupy Oakland to a sunny Wednesday afternoon when peaceful students are beat by UC campus police; you learn the anger and outrage experienced when watching UC police beat your classmates doesn’t fade, even when you’ve watched the YouTube video half a dozen times.
You learn the WarnMe campus alert system your parents made you sign up for in the beginning of the semester works. You learn this when you get a text from the school informing you that a student brought a gun to the same building where you had class two hours ago. The student will be shot by the police, and die in the hospital. You learn how to use Twitter on this day, frantically refreshing and trying to figure out what’s going on. A few days later, a five-alarm fire will break out on Telegraph Avenue. An apartment building will be destroyed, with dozens of students left homeless.
Sometimes, it can all seem like too much. When a homeless man on the street makes fun of your sweater, when everyone in your section gets a better grade than you, when you feel, more than ever before, that you’re one of 25,000 students. You become acutely aware that you’re not at SRJC, where all your professors knew who you were, where two years flew by in the comforting embrace of Sonoma County.  It’s easy to walk around Berkeley and think that you don’t belong here, this strange place with the Nobel Laureate parking only spots and the endless hills, where everyone but you seems to have a double major and infinite, career-building extra curricular activities. Yet, time passes. The days tumble one after the other with unnerving speed. You make friends. You walk across campus, talking about Marxism, and feel like a cliché. You go to parties. One day, you realize that you deserve to be there. You learn.