 Graduated from UC Berkeley was one of the best days of my life. Social workers, that's what we do. We bring others back up on their feet and help them out. Then they go off and do the same thing and we make the world a better place. My name is Brian Vargas and I was wounded in Iraq. I was shot on January 17, 2007 by a sniper. We were in a firefight, went through my left hand here, went through my face. I have shrapnel all in my face. I have my eye, tongue, all that. And that makes being a student hard because it's days where if it wasn't for my wife, I literally wouldn't be able to roll out of it. I did not think I was Cal material, right? I decided to apply to UC Berkeley because I had a couple mentors that were Cal graduates, right? They were in the Marine Corps in the Army. They both had been to Iraq and been through similar situations as I had been through. They were telling me, like, hey man, there's nothing that you're going to do here is harder than what you've already done. When I came to the orientation, I looked around and everyone was like, oh, excuse me, sir. I'm like, oh, I don't work here. I'm here for the orientation. They're like, oh, I don't know where we're going. Like, do you know where we're going? They're like, how old are you? I was like, well, I think I'm 27 or something. And they're like, oh, well, I'm 18. I was like, I'm 17. I was like, cool. I was like, all right, then this is going to be interesting. There are a lot of smart people here. There are a lot of geniuses and there are a lot of smart people here. But I started to realize everyone here that are veterans are just as smart. I realized there was a lot that I could learn, but I also learned that there was a lot I could teach my younger peers, right? I'm a social welfare major. I like to engage with the community of a people person I realized. And I like to get out there and talk with vets and share my story. I don't like to see people hurt. And if there's something that I can do to stop that hurt, I would like to do that. When you graduate? I graduate in the Bay. In the Bay? This Bay, right? Yeah. If you want veterans to succeed at Cal, they've got to have a space. The Cal Veterans Services Center has definitely become like a home base, right? Like our forward operating base. Next fall, I'm going to be taking a corporate social responsibility class. It's a high-stress environment. We come from a background of being able to perform very well and very highly under pressure. So it's fitting that Cal and the veteran community kind of go hand in hand. We're a bunch of overachievers sometimes, right? He tells us when we can't do something, we're usually going to try to prove you wrong.