 Welcome. My name is Brie Rosenblum and I'm the faculty director of the Berkeley Discovery Initiative here on campus. Discovery is the theme for Cal Day this year, which gives us a chance to share and celebrate Berkeley's vision for undergraduate education with all of you. Today I'm so excited to be joined by three of our illustrious undergraduates who will be in conversation with me about their own personal discovery journeys. I'll also sprinkle in a little bit about Berkeley Discovery itself, which is a new initiative to ensure that all undergraduates are supported to pursue these kinds of unique and transformative experiences. Berkeley Discovery was created because we believe that a journey at UC Berkeley shouldn't only be about degrees and diplomas, it should be about having transformative experiences that provide meaning purpose and joy. So the Discovery Initiative aims to bring more of a holistic arc to the discovery journey, regardless of what major a student selects. And we think of this arc in three phases, connect, immerse, culminate. And we'll be talking a little bit about these phases with the students today based on their own real life experience. A sense of discovery isn't only what we hope each and every student will experience at their time at Berkeley, but it's also an institutional commitment we're making to provide students the support they need to make this vision possible. So I'd like to now turn and introduce the student panelists that we have today with us Kendall Archie, who's a conservation and resource studies major, like a Duvoray who's a mechanical engineering major, and Vivian Bowie who's a public health and molecular and cell biology major. And what I'll be doing is inviting the students into conversation about the theme of discovery in their lives at Berkeley. So just to kick us off in our new vision for undergraduate for undergraduate education at Cal, we really want each student to be on a journey of discovery but as you all know as students this journey starts far before you actually arrive on campus. So by way of introduction I was hoping that if each of you could pick one or two words to describe how you felt just before arriving to campus, what would those words be and feel free if you'd like to share a few words about where you were coming from when you came to campus or anything that you'd like to say by way of introduction. So I'm excited now to welcome you and to start our conversation. So who wants to go first. You do. I'll take the dive. Hi everybody. My name is Kendall Archie. I am majoring in conservation resource studies and focusing on fresh water, fresh and marine, excuse me fresh water and marine ecology. In regards to like, I guess one or two words that describes how I felt when I got to campus. I think my first feeling was a sense of being anxious. You know, I guess it's kind of like going on like a blind date and you don't know what's going to happen. You're unsure of everything of what's going on, but it feels good like you should be there like you're going to be doing this. And then I think my second word would be inspired, because I felt a sense of empowerment and my life's journey as a unrepresented from coming from an unrepresented community as a non traditional student, being a student parent and a veteran got me to where I am. So yeah, so I felt a sense of an inspired and an empowerment. I mean, I guess I can follow that up. So, yes, hi everyone. I'm Leica. I was coming a pretty traditional path. I had gone to high school in Monterey so only a few hours south of here also within California. But for coming to Berkeley, I think my first two words would probably be fairly similar to Kendall's first just terrified, because I went to a very tiny high school with 50 people per grade. And so going from that to what I knew would be a massive university was an entirely new experience. And then second word would probably be odd, just because I know how I mean all through high school all through before I'd see like articles coming out of Berkeley or different things going around here. For model UN I'd come up for weekends to Berkeley and like walked around the campus a bit. And so knowing that I'd actually get to be on this campus for four years was definitely exciting and scary at the same time. And I love, Leica, I heard you said odd like a WED, but I heard odd as ODB because I think I've always felt a little bit odd in my own path. So it's nice to recognize how much all of these conflicting and competing emotions are often there when you start a new journey. Vivian, can we hear your voice as well. Hello y'all. My name is Vivian I'm a fourth year at Berkeley studying public health molecular cell biology, and also global poverty and practice, and on a very similar vein to Kendall and Leica. I think my two words, kind of contrast with each other so my first word is I felt very overwhelmed. I know a lot of people when they come to college, like I think about like their classes, a lot of what I was like nervous about was also like, how am I going to get my groceries without a car like how am I going to get my school supplies how am I going to get to places outside of Berkeley and I think it was like being overwhelmed with that on top of schoolwork was like a huge stressor coming into Berkeley. But at the same time I felt very optimistic because like we all hear about Berkeley as college as high school students as being like this huge innovation hub of like research and like political action and I was just very optimistic to see how I could like fit in during college. And I love all three of you have spoken to the reality that there's an incredible amount of kind of creative tension when you start a new experience, especially something as big as starting college, and the sense that there's kind of all this excitement and enthusiasm but simultaneously, all of this anxiety and kind of almost overwhelm and so it's nice to recognize that that's, that's kind of par for the course of being human and especially being human entering college is this sense of real competing, competing and conflicting emotions. And we find at Berkeley particularly, it can be really overwhelming when students first arrive on campus it's a huge campus, and that can be really exhilarating but it also can be really confusing to navigate. And students need to figure out practical things not only like what to major in but like you said how am I going to do my laundry, but they also need to figure out what their deeper interests are. And so to be navigating all those different facets of life as you enter this new experience can be really intense so I'm curious to hear a little bit about when you first arrived on campus. What helped you feel connected, not only to the campus itself, but also to your own path to the sense of like where am I going with this and sometimes I think about it as like was there a spark moment where you felt like your path at Berkeley started to become clear. Yes, I can start with this one. Mine was a little strange because I think my spark moment started right before I even came to Berkeley, because when I was deciding what university to go to for college. I did one of the sweet overnight host programs so I stayed overnight here at Berkeley, and in the morning a bunch of the different engineering competition columns had little loose and we're explaining what they were doing. I think I forgot to mention the last question but I'm majoring in mechanical engineering, double minoring in linguistics and aerospace. Those two minors definitely came later. All I knew was Mechie coming in. But so at that event, I saw the solar car outside. And so I went straight up to the person next to the solar car and was like whoa this is really cool. How do I join this team what do I need to do. And they basically said, Oh, it's super easy once you come to Berkeley, all you have to do is start coming to meetings and once someone on the team knows your name that like means you're in. You don't have to go through any sort of application. Once you repeatedly show up and like people actually start to get to know you then you'll be part of the club. And so that team was counsel, a club that I've spent like most of my time for the past few years a part of and so I don't know there was something about just seeing this really cool vehicle, like in the middle of the Berkeley, Berkeley campus that helped me to realize that like that's what I wanted to do. And then the two other clubs I joined freshman fall semester, or Cal origami where just meet once a month or once a week and fold origami and Cal climbing, which is mostly listservs that you can meet and go rock climbing with. I joined all three of these clubs as soon as I got to Berkeley and I've like stuck with all three of them, all the way through. I kind of knew I needed to just like throw myself into small communities because I wouldn't really find that in classes. So clubs is the way that that was really going to happen. Well, and I love your sense of like really what matters for membership is showing up. Right. And for those of you that are listening Berkeley is famous for having a million acronyms that no one ever. So I will just interject when I need to so Mechie is mechanical engineering that's like as major, and then Cal so Cal so is the Cal solar club. And we'll talk more about that as we go on I'm sure Vivian or Kendall does one of you want to chime in next. So I think on a very similar vein to Leica. When you first come to campus, I think I felt, or I felt really connected when we had our like Golden Bear orientation so when you first come as like a freshman there's like this week long program pre COVID, where like you kind of were in orientation groups with law folks that were in your dorm and so like they weren't mandatory events but I for some reason decided to go to all the events on all the days which was kind of a lot. But I think it was probably one of the best decisions that I made in college because, like, I think when you first move into the dorms, it might be kind of easy to kind of just hold up in your room and kind of get really anxious that week before school starts. But like, as our orientation group did a lot of things together like the height went to the Rose Garden. We just like talked about the different clubs and organizations we wanted to join. Like, that was kind of the moment where I started to like get my community on campus. And so similar to Leica, I think I found a lot of my many communities through clubs on campus. And so, when I first leave on backtrack a little bit. When I came to college, I wasn't sure if I wanted to do like social entrepreneurship, health care business administration health care policy. So I knew that I wanted to join a lot of clubs on campus to kind of like dip my feet in the water. And I think my first semester I tried a lot of things that I don't think panned out that well that I ended up not being a part of, but then I joined suitcase clinic and that was kind of like my spark moment in college where I started to realize that all the things I want to come into college with doing social, social entrepreneurship, health care administration, all of that aren't like mutually exclusive. That was kind of the moment I realized that my career can like be encompassing all of that. And so suitcase clinic was a place where I found my community with also some people from my orientation group being a part of, and also just exploring my current interest through it. And I know we'll hear a little bit more about suitcase clinic in a few minutes so you can share a little bit more later about what that is and how it's kind of floated your boat in big ways. But one thing that I wanted to mention is that there's kind of this misconception that you need to know what you want to do before you arrive at college which is completely not the case and especially at some places big as Berkeley all of you so are expressing this kind of sense that you need to not only try things but also have things not work out right like try a bunch of clubs some of which don't resonate with you at all so that you then can kind of narrow into what really does speak to you. So Kendall I'm curious to hear a little bit from you as well. It's interesting that you talked about not knowing what to do when you get to college because that's a perfect transition for me and my story. I'm a transfer I'm a transfer student. So coming into UC Berkeley I only had two years and you kind of gotta hit the ground running just because that's the way it is. But to be honest, I was lost. I didn't know where to go on the campus physically in any room. This is coming out of the pandemic. So my first semester was the first semester back for everyone in the midst of COVID and stuff like that but not only was I was I kind of lost in where to go on campus but when I first enrolled to UC Berkeley. I wasn't necessarily aware of what I wanted to do specifically. So for me I got into the conservation and resource studies program which is an interdisciplinary program that lets you source classes throughout the campus that you wouldn't have otherwise have access to and going through that process and talking to the graduate students instructors and my instructors and my academic advisor. It kind of set me on a path of where I wanted to go and where I wanted to take this pursuit. Also, in the time that I was on campus, I had the opportunity to kind of just walk around without this knowledge which actually was beneficial and basically get myself out there and to go explore the campus on my own and to go make these connections and walking into different arenas where clubs are happening and just just posing questions and asking what's what's it all about and see if I can get involved in it. So that's kind of what got me connected in regard to the the initial question about what was my spark moment at UC Berkeley, I'm still in the process of finding that out but from what I've come with now is that my spark moment it wasn't necessarily one specific moment it was a series of events that transition from one to another. So just to give an example of that my first semester, I had a chance to work through a class with a community partner researching plants used by the indigenous people as peoples of this area. And that transitioned into me thinking oh I can do this research I can, I can this is something that I can do so my second semester. I was accepted to the spur program and to explain spur it's the sponsor projects for undergraduate research and to make a long story short I basically watched recordings of salmon salmon baby salmon and they're feeding behavior. And that transition into the third semester which essentially was kind of my spark moment where the same graduate student that I was working with the previous semester, asked me to be a field assistant in research. And I found myself doing something that I never thought I would be doing in my life. And so this moment, which was out in a local log need is creek which is about an hour from UC Berkeley campus, actually snorkeling and looking at those same baby salmon and their nature natural habitat, and then using scientific equipment to measure certain aspects of that habitat. So, so yeah to answer that question it's it's been quite a crazy ride but I wouldn't give it up for anything else. I like it snorkel for research. That's so cool. It's fun it's cold but it's fun. And one of the fun things just about this, this panel getting to know each other a little bit is I think we've all realized that we're a little bit jealous of each other. Like wanting to, like I want to drive the solar car I want to snorkel and star break creek so it's fun to know that horizons are endless. I also just wanted to pick up on one thing you were saying Kendall which is this feeling of like you can go from literally walking around campus and having no idea where anything is or what anything is. And a couple semesters later be doing original research like that's it's pretty phenomenal, especially like you were saying, coming in as a transfer student and you're actually in a design your own major major. So there's a pretty high bar of figuring things out pretty quickly. And so I just wanted to before I transition into the next question to mention that you all did this very organically in terms of finding a connection to the place finding a connection to people that you wanted to get to know and have as part of your academic and personal journey, but in the discovery initiative we're really trying to make this connect part of the discovery are a little more intentional. So that students can really feel connected to themselves, each other and campus because what we find is that when students feel a sense of belonging on campus it's much easier to then immerse in discovery experiences whether that's inside the classroom or in clubs or in personal research. And if students have had that scaffolding where they feel really connected. They've had immersive experiences. It's much easier to then really move into a culminating phase where students can contribute directly to scientific research or create works of art or start businesses or lead community engaged service projects. And so this is a time where students really kind of shine and take everything that they've done at campus and not that you have to have a single culminating experience but let it all come together in a way that's uniquely your own. And in the ideal world we want every single student to find something that they're really passionate about during their time at cow and that the university supports every student to pursue their dreams. And each of you, part of why I invited you to be part of this panel is to me, you embody the spirit like very wholeheartedly. You've each really kind of sometimes struggled sometimes flown sometimes you know all the different things but you found things that you want to that you want to give yourself to. And so I'm curious if you could share, even if you have a bunch of them share one thing you really gave yourself to during your time on campus and and what it meant for you like what you gained and what you learned from it. I feel like we're doing this informal who wants to start and you can tell if you're listening that this is actually an informal conversation we don't have it planned out but it seems like Kendall you were you were leaning in there. Yeah, I was I was leaning else going to jump in there. Let's see what one thing that really I really gave myself to I think brutal honesty is is being open minded about following my natural curiosity and pursuing opportunities in my case it was research. My natural curiosity was something to do with water, and I know when in some of my first semester as I was working with you Brie, and exploring that natural curiosity and then by the end, which is, you know this may and I graduate, graduate on another month here. And that curiosity I'm going to continue to to explore that. But yeah I think something that I fully just kind of immersed myself in is is not only being open minded from an academic standpoint, but also from a personal standpoint, and trying to shed. Whatever, you know, conceptions that I had certain aspects of society, and just to follow through with what I would like to do and how I would like to achieve that goal. And all this led to, you know, me applying to my department's senior honors thesis, and it also puts me in a role of being an independent researcher in the future. So I think if you, you just gotta, you know, I'm gonna leave it like that. Well, will you tell us just a teeny bit about what the research is that you're doing now because there's a long distance from your first days of paddling around in Strawberry Creek to actually having your own research project that's contributing to new scientific knowledge so you don't have to, you don't have to go full on but it would be fun to hear a little bit about you about what you've been doing. I'll do a brief explanation, but and by the way like this saying what I'm about to say was not a part of my vocabulary when I got enrolled in UC Berkeley so there is a clear transition that you'll take throughout this process. But for me, I'm basically studying the role of ancestral knowledge and the revitalization of Hawaiian fishponds. And I could really get into that but that's just, I think I should stop there instead of trying to get too far into the research and potentially confusing someone or saying the wrong thing. Well, I find after 20 years of doing research that I should probably stop myself after the first sentence also because you get free to goes kind of narrow but that's amazing to just recognize how you can imagine going from just like arriving and taking general classes and knowing you had kind of an intuitive sense that you wanted to do something with water. And then leading to I mean when I look at your work it feels like this is graduate school level work that you've honed in on a really interesting and unique question that hasn't been answered before. So, yeah, so Kendall is kind of an example on the research side but not all of our students use their discovery experiences to do independent research. And so I'd love to hear from one of our other panelists who has taken their discovery experience in a different direction. I said no. I'm down to do rock paper scissors. I guess I'll just go. So I guess, something that I really gave myself towards I don't think there was particularly one thing I think throughout all of college I've just worked a lot with like people experiencing homelessness on intervening both like upstream and downstream. So I think where that began was kind of coming into college my first semester, I came from a very privileged high school area and family in Southern California and coming here. I think when I first said I came to that was going to go to Berkeley I think there was a little reluctance and wanting me to go because I think a lot of folks. There was almost people in the Berkeley area and there was a lot of stigma, stigmatized language use and so when I came to Berkeley. I didn't initially understand why that language is being used and so I took it upon myself a second semester to join suitcase clinic, which is a nonprofit in Berkeley that serves a lot of folks experiencing homelessness in the southern Berkeley area. And so there's three different drop in centers, a yqt plus a woman's and a general clinic. So, so the reason why I bring this up is like, I think my first semester in college when I wasn't a part of this org I was just focusing a lot on my classes going to like club meetings but kind of not being fully present and engaging in the material but it wasn't until I came to suitcase clinic where I started to see a lot of like the sociological principles that were mentioned in class talking about the public health interventions that we can do kind of take, like, you can just see it in real life and see those principles happen. And I think throughout the past four years I've been involved a lot in this organ that shaped a lot of my different career and research interests so I used to be a clinic runner housing coordinator and now I'm one of the clinic directors and so it's just been probably the most important thing I've done in college and probably one of my proudest accomplishments. Yeah, and I love how you connected because it can seem when people are thinking about coming to college and it even seems overwhelming just to do the basics right to get to take courses and get a degree and so then to think about running a clinic for homeless people like that it just feels like a huge amount that you're devoting time and energy to an iconic complex time in your own life right and so I'm curious just to ask a quick follow up and then we'll come to like it just for you to speak a teeny bit. Let's talk a little bit about how this has interfaced with your actual coursework because it's from when I hear you talk about it it's not just a separate thing like you have classes and then this huge volunteer commitment is that in a sense, the volunteer work you're doing is the application of the kind of theoretical and intellectual work you're doing on campus so that the on campus and off campus work aren't just like two separate lives is that am I vibing that right. It's completely right I think a lot of what our org focuses on is the fact that people experiencing homelessness are not a separate entity from UC Berkeley students like we all intermingle on campus we all are on the same campus borders going to the same restaurants and having amazing conversations together and I think that that also ties in with a lot of how like I took public health classes I'm also a biology major and I also study global poverty and practice so a lot of the phenomena that we talk about in class can show up just by the nature of public health and poverty as general topics so I guess a lot of how what we learn in classes interface and what we talk about I guess goes along the lines of like. Hmm, let me think about this this is a hard question. No, but you're speaking exactly to it for me because what you're what you're saying is like we learn about all these things in an intellectual frame classroom and then they actually seem like different topics right like global poverty and public health like you kind of you might take classes that have different names and the content is sequestered in those different content areas, but then you have a real life applied experience and it all comes together so when I hear you talk I really feel like it's not just that you've kind of enriched your own leadership capacity through this work and done something really of meaning in the local community, but that's also been a place where you've been integrating a lot of what you've been learning into real life. So yeah, thank you for speaking to that let's, let's hear from you a little bit on this theme. Yeah, for sure. So I'd say the main thing I do myself into and the like broader sense is just hands on design and build. For me I knew that the reason I chose mechanical engineering the first place is I just found out from my school I loved robotics and I loved working with my hands. And so coming to Berkeley that was the part of it I knew I was most excited to to learn. And honestly for most classes and mechanical engineering major you don't get an exposure to that. But if I wanted those experiences, they would need to come from clubs or everything outside of your direct curriculum. So, council, like it's been mentioned a little bit before is the solar car building race team. And we were building the teams actually existed a very long time it started in 1990 is team Stanley, it was Stanford Berkeley before it split off a few years later. And so there's a lot of history, but coming into my freshman year it was the first time would ever built a four seater solar car instead of a single seater. And so there's been a million new design challenges that needed to be done. And I came in at a time that most of design was finished but there was a lot of build and innovation that needed to be done. So every single weekend I'd be going out to the Richmond field station, which is where all the engineering teams can actually work and build stuff because Berkeley campus itself isn't very large. And so in that workstation I would be spending every single Saturday many of my evenings during school also, just really actually learning how things work. And I just gained so many amazing experiences and so many valuable skills from really getting to work hands on with this team. And then over that summer we did our first base that car we're just building at the circuit of the Americas, the F one track in Austin, Texas. And because I'm small enough, I got to sit in the car and actually be one of the drivers. So getting to drive this car that dozens of Berkeley students had spent years designing and building was like was insane. It just made me feel so connected to what we were doing and want to do this so much more. And so I actually made the really big decision to take off that fall semester from the university. And then I went to Australia for a month for the World Solar Challenge. And so we were basically driving the solar car from the bottom of the country up to the top and then racing it back down to the bottom. And again, like amazing experience there's so many stories I could tell from that time. And it was so scary to take off semester because I knew it would push my graduation date back. So now I'm going to be still graduating eight semesters but over five years because I took off that semester to do research full time and go to Australia for a month. And then I'm also taking off this fall semester for an internship. Just so that I'd stay aligned to act on the schedule, but really like throwing myself into council. It of course was an insane amount of time and work but I just learned so much more from it than I ever would have just from being in classes. And so when COVID hit and of course everything stopped and we couldn't work on the car and I really didn't have any chance to work in person. It was, it was pretty hard. And so that's when I joined a research lab, which was, it's through cyber and it's the Center for interdisciplinary and education and research, but really the project is squirrel inspired robotics. So learning how squirrels jump between branches to make a robot that can move in that way. And so I never expected when coming to Berkeley I would be spending hours and hours outside with like a peanut at the end of a long stick, trying to get a squirrel to like follow the end of it so we could get video and force data. And like every one of these experiences just built on the last and then after being in that lab for it. It's not my fourth semester in that lab. I then joined the battlebots team, which is making like 250 pound murder robot that fights in a ring for three minutes. I filmed in Vegas in September for a few weeks right at the beginning of this of the fall semester. It's a discovery channel TV show. And so, just finished airing for season six. But it's just been insane because when I first came to Berkeley I never would have thought I would have had any one of these experiences, but just going from working on solar called the way through I was engineering director for last year to joining robotics to like a murder robots, every one of them just were different ways and like very similar skills get applied of some level of design prototyping bill working with others. But learning how they can be applied to such different areas is I think one of the best things I've learned at Berkeley. It's amazing and it makes me want to take the four of us and find like the intersection of all of our interests like what happens if you bring public health need and squirrel robots and salmon aquaculture together like what amazing thing is going to be great. So that'll be my challenge to us after we finished this panel discussion, but this is not like none of this is meant to be sharing all of these personal journeys as a intimidation factor because for new students it can feel like oh my god I'm going to do like 10 different clubs on top of you know the background but what we're trying to get across is the incredible uniqueness of each journey through Cal. And the reason that we formed an initiative across campus that has a name called the Discovery Initiative is because we recognize that these kinds of culminating experiences that take what's learned in the classroom and then applies it to something that's deeply meaningful and students own lives. This has a phenomenal impact not only on students experience at UC Berkeley but on their confidence and the directions they take in the rest of their lives. And so we're investing really heavily campus wide right now to ensure that every student can have a really full and unique and personalized discovery journey. So we're doing all sorts of things to try to remove barriers that students face when they are looking for discovery experiences and also to expand access so that all of our students can have these kinds of experiences. And so some of the things that we're doing at a campus wide level is that we're expanding programs that build community for new students to really solidify that that sense of connection when students first arrive. We're giving lots of grants to lots of faculty and departments around campus to infuse more discovery and project based learning into the majors. That means that that immersed part of the curriculum gets really rich and supportive. And we're creating a centralized discovery hub so that students have kind of one stop shop for helping navigate the discovery landscape and connect with opportunities and mentors and funding and whatever support they need to plan these kinds of more culminating experiences. So I'm curious because you three came through and are still, you know, in your culminating phases but you, you came to UC Berkeley before this was a formal initiative so you faced and overcame lots of barriers you didn't necessarily have the institutionalized support to help you along these phases of the discovery arc. So I'm curious if any of you are interested in speaking to what gets you excited about this discovery initiative the fact that campus is really making a new level of commitment to supporting these kind of journeys. And what do you think will have the strongest impact on this generation of students that that we're hoping do have kind of a new layer actually layers of support for the unique personalized nature of a collegiate experience. Does anyone want to hop in on that. Either things that get you excited about the initiative and what's the possibilities will be for new students or if you have things you want to speak to about your own experience and challenges you face that you know you would have liked to have more support around. I can speak on this pretty quickly which is mostly just I'm really excited if just more people get involved in general which sounds so broad. And especially with the pandemic these past few years and everyone shut inside there's, there's a period where, as soon as things are opened, a lot of people suddenly went out wanted to join stuff. Then there's also a lot of people that got very used to staying inside and had a much harder time being able to really join that because it's hard after you've spent so long like self isolating and really small groups. And honestly like the thing that I'm just really excited to see is just having more people have that support to feel able to really push beyond what they may be used to but to join clubs to actually apply for research and just talk to more people and like get involved with stuff is amazing because I just think there's people I know coming out of mechanical engineering, like at the same time as me we started together but they did nothing but classes all the way through and I've been a bit of classes basically everything outside of that all the way through and our experiences now as we are going to be graduating not not too far off, are just so extremely different. And it's those that have had experiences outside classes that really like, once you go into the real world to some degree, and they're trying to find a real job or any anything past that you already have so much more that you can build off of as previous and help so much once you have that foundation. And I'm just so excited that this is happening, because I think it'll be great for everybody involved. Well and I love like that you're kind of highlighting the almost like this sense of like flourishing if you really do try things outside of the classroom like you're getting to know yourself and you're building skills and you know opportunities for yourself in a totally different way and my hope is that we have more of that on campus but that we also kind of blend some of what used to happen is like the classroom you just learned the content and then outside the classroom you applied it. And to me that seems very old fashioned and not at all kind of what the promise of higher education should be offering in the sense of, we really would love that the classroom experiences also a dynamic engaged applied, you know real life and so I think they'll still be that that need for students to push themselves outside the classroom but we're also hoping with this initiative that some of those kind of most high impact experiences also don't have to be an extra because there's a lot of students on campus that don't have time or the financial, you know flexibility to do a million extras and so the more that we can enrich the core of the curriculum to offer some of those same things I think the more that we really set up all students to graduate. There's less of a feeling like you're expressing that from the last generation it's like if you just did classes, you maybe aren't graduating with the same sense of richness, then if you did all these other things and my hope is in this next generation, that if you come out, your classes are going to have offered you something really different than they did, you know 10 or 20 years ago. So thank you just for speaking to that. Kendall or Vivian to either of you want to chime in on this. Yeah, I can jump in I think I'm like on that same vein sometimes and this is not to put it, you know, right on the parade or anything like that because that's not what it's coming from but I think it's at times like, you know, when attending UC Berkeley and UCs in general it could be a little overwhelming and it can feel a little disconnected. And I think the Discovery Program is in place and will be in place to help mend those disconnections by creating a like a sense of cohesion, not just through the like the throughout the whole school. And, and regarding to what you just said, Marie, the, the, the opportunities to pursue things outside of the normal classroom rigor may seem few and far between but I think such a program like this in place would remind students to like, hey, you know, take a decal class or join a club that has nothing to do with your major just to go experience something new, or jump into, you know, research opportunities. And go look at these different institutions and colleges within a college to see what might be out there that she may, you may look past otherwise. So I think, I think the, the biggest impact is like at the beginning of a student's time and you see Berkeley, the program is meant to help students get out of a little bubble that they may put themselves in or that they may feel that they're in, and in explore this this large vast university that is that is honestly there and willing to help. Yeah. Yeah, just adding on unless you wanted to add more brief, but I guess what makes me really excited about the Discovery Initiative is just, I think sort of reflecting back on my past four years. I'm just really proud of myself, but not because of like the grades I got in classes I guess just, I'm the most proud of the things I got involved in outside of class and I feel like with the Discovery Initiative, like, you don't like, after you leave like you don't have to be proud of what you did in clubs, versus like how you did in your classes and you'd be proud of them as a collective entity. I'm super proud of like working in two research labs or like doing clinic work or like leaving a decal but in this new idea of like Discovery Initiative, like it would be like your classes plus your experiences together and I think that's just really exciting. Yeah, and to me I feel like you know we're such complex multi dimensional creatures as humans, and kind of trunking a whole college experience down to a degree or a diploma feels like that's incredibly valuable like having a Berkeley diploma is a value, but it's also a little bit one dimensional when you think about yourself as a whole complex human being. And what I really love about what all of you are sharing today is the sense that it's a totality right it's not like well I was this major and not defines me it's that all these different aspects of your experience past present future different aspects of your identity different aspects of your interest, like all kind of get woven together and a bit of a tapestry. And that's often for incoming students is the sense of pressure of like, I have to decide what I want to do and it feels like very like an arrow that needs to be shooting towards a bullseye right like I have to decide what my major is going to be what job that's going to prepare me for where it's all going to lead, and all of you have really expressed more of a sense of dimensionality, like a sense that you've let different different elements of your own, you know, interests and creativity be have a seat at the table during your time at Cal and I really appreciate that and value it. So thank you for that interrupt but I think I think this is like this is like real valuable for me and this has been on my mind this whole, this whole time. And I equate it to being a child and going outside and picking up a stick, and then okay what do I do with the stick you go whack a tree or like go poke something. It's basically like, you know you have this you've gone out you have this opportunity, but now you have something in your hands and now you want to go explore with it. So to me like this whole time, even though it has been up and down and it's been tough, but it's been very rewarding. There's a sense of confidence that you gain when going through this process and although in any field it feels like daunting at first, there are possibilities that are out there that pertain to your specific passion. So if I could put it in the simplest terms for me and this applies to me, I wouldn't played it but I wouldn't played with a goal and I wouldn't played with with some sort of an objective and along that that during that play time I found friends and other people who know how to play better than me. So I just asked them how do I play as good as you. I don't want to be it. But I think you're like for me if I if I narrow it down to just that. I had a fun time playing and I'm going to continue to play. But I'm just going to be doing it a more refined defined way. Well Kendall that feels like a very profound analogy because I think one of the things in our culture is this sense of like once you found a stick, you better get serious, you know, like, now you're an adult with a stick what are you going to do with the stick and I'm like, oh, I've got a stick I could make holes like you know like the sense that like that every tool you gain leads actually to more possibility and more possibility for creativity rather than the sense of getting more and more limited during the course of our education and you know in my dream, because I think in a way we have used higher education, not as a way of limiting ourselves because higher education is meant to expand the mind and prepare you for new things that give you all sorts of exciting viable career paths but in a sense, we've used it as a tool to be like okay well now I can define myself in this way and go do something rather than as a more expansive sense of like wow this leads to infinite possibilities and I can tell you, you know, 30 plus years down on the road that there that doesn't go away the sense of the possibilities still opening the sense that you know we don't know what happens next and and so I really like that analogy I don't know, like or Vivian if it sparks anything else you want to chime in on before we move on yeah. It gives me think of the phrase every tool is a hammer, but like inverse, once you have a tool you can apply it to anything like once I've learned the skill how can I use it here here here here here. Yeah. Yeah, that's actually cool to like you could have it both ways like a new tool opens up infinite possibilities or infinite possibilities for you to get new tools, you know like it's kind of this fun iterative process and I think, you know in the ideal that a collegiate education would would be a little more seamless into the next phase of your life less of like well now I've got my degree after apply it and more like oh now I've actually started down a couple different journeys and that those are going to kind of evolve and and I'm reminded when Kendall was saying when he first arrived on campus that sense of like you can't pre figure it out you can't like look at a map of campus and know exactly where you belong you have to live through it you have to live the walking around the trying things that work the trying things that don't work and my sense in that transition as you're starting to think about leaving college it's very similar you can't pre figure it out like you have to live through that transition and those experiments so I'm curious now that you know everyone listening has gotten to know you all a little bit that you're each approaching kind of a launch moment in your own lives with graduation coming near. I know this is always a very intense period with thoughts and worries not only for our individual futures but also, you know the collective future of being a human being at this moment in time. But I'm curious to hear when you look towards your own future, you know what gives you hope or gets you jazzed about the next steps, you're going to take. This is not a what do you want to be when you grow up question. And if you want to answer it in the opposite of what don't you want to be when you grow up. That's totally legit, but I'm just curious to hear a little bit about where where you might be headed or where you might not be headed. That's changed based on your experience at Cal. The lake is going to be a movie star. I mean, okay, I guess I'd say the only thing I've learned is I pushed off my grad date so I don't actually graduate until next spring. And I really don't know what specific field of Becky I want to go into after that. All I know is I want to be doing something where I can continue to explore and learn into research. And I know that's super, super broad. I have within that I don't really know. All I know is it like the main thing I've learned is I always need to be doing something where I can be working with my hands or prototyping or designing something just always looking to take what I've learned apply it to something and then being those girls do something more. I don't know it's about it. Well, and I love that you're you're underselling it but what you've learned are like pretty deep things about you, you know, like what makes you take what is where you where you kind of apply yourself best and so it feels like that's very similar to what I'm talking about the tools is like in the sense that you've spent a lot of this time, having profound experiences that have changed and kind of amplified how you see yourself that you can then bring that into lots of different contexts. And so I would love that if, you know, as we had a portfolio when we were graduating we didn't just say like, well now I'm a mechanical engineer and so I can do x, y and z but it's like, Oh, I'm someone who needs to use my hands and loves being part of a team and makes concrete things out of ideas like that feels like an awesome first line for your resume. Oh, I can go. I guess. So earlier I talked about how when I came to college I was kind of dabbling in a lot of different things and I think so I mentioned like healthcare business administration like policy community engagement, but like, I did not decide what I wanted to do and I think that's the beauty of it like even though I tried a lot of these things in college, I'm still entering and leaving with the same sense of like curiosity. And so I'm actually starting grad school at UC Berkeley this year this fall after I graduate, and I'm hoping to keep exploring all the different possibilities. Yeah, I love that and I love again that like this model of success is like, to me being successful is continuing to explore, rather than like checking off a certain, you know, a certain box. And by all means we have lots of students at Berkeley that have very specific goals for their time on campus and for their time after campus, and we support them as well. So that's exactly what you want to do. It's not like that's not interesting. That's still like a fascinating journey that has all sorts of twists and turns and, you know, learning about yourself and learning about the world. But obviously for the student panel we intentionally invited students that did have a more kind of dispersed, you know, experience where they were exploring lots of different things because what I find is that your students that know exactly what they want to do. There's a lot of reassurance that college is going to work for them because they kind of know what they want to take advantage of and where they want to go, whereas for our students to have more of a explorers mentality. There is often a need to kind of reassure like this this is this is real like this is not only that this is a valid approach to college, but this is a deep and profound and meaningful way of looking at one's own growth and potential during these years of transformation. What about you? Where are you headed or not headed? Oh, I don't know. The honest answer to the question is, you know, after getting my associates degree, you know, being a transfer student. I didn't think I would go to a UC, but I got into UC Berkeley and coming in going through the process of UC Berkeley and talking to professors has put me on a trajectory of confidence and saying that you know what I can go get a graduate degree. And then once I potentially get a graduate degree after I take some time off because of life circumstances, I may pursue a PhD. Who knows where that's going to lead. But ultimately, you know, once I go down this field of conservation, water conservation or aquatic conservation in some way or aquatic ecology, I'm looking to continue these studies, potentially at another UC, looking maybe like UC Hawaii or something like that. But ultimately, you know, my dream is, you know, promoting, I'm sorry, promoting different UCs and stuff like that. You're creating one. You're going to create UC Hawaii. You're asking me why it doesn't exist right now. There's a technical name I don't know at the top of my head, the name of the university is. It's just the thought right now. That's how honest this conversation is. But ultimately, you know, sometimes some point in my life, I wouldn't mind being in a deep, deep rover vehicle at the bottom of the ocean turning the lights on and seeing one looks back at me. And that's that's kind of a dream of mine. But I think going through this process is, let me know that that that dream is possible. If not, I'll just stay on top of the water and just like track blue whales. So cool. There's a lot of RV research at Embari, which is in Monterey, my high school area, a few hours out of here so I know that I think Berkeley has a bunch of times with them and stuff but you could totally run one of their underwater rovers. I'm sure that'd be super happy to work with you. See folks, another reason to create these connections and talk to us. Now I have a solar vehicle, talking to a movie star about I don't know what else to do. I know maybe like it can help build whatever special functions you need in your underwater river and personally I was hoping you were going to say that 10 years from now you'd be ready for me to just hand the whole shebang over to you. The professor here. See what happens you never know where the where the pathway sometimes. Nice. Well, we're coming towards the end of our time together but I'm just curious if there's anything that we haven't talked about today that feels like something that you wanted to make sure that we got the word out about or something in your own experience you wanted to reflect to our audience. And I'll just give us a little pause to see if anything bubbles up. I mean, can I can I jump in there. Yeah, please. And specifically, and for others who identify or look like me I have to put this out there. It is doable. It really is doable. It just takes some patience, some passion and some discipline, and it may take some time, but you can do it, and you'll get it done. Thank you Kendall. Like or Vivian anything else bubbling up for you as we move towards closing otherwise I'll say a few words. I mean nothing specific other than the cheesy one which is just like that if you had any advice to give for people coming in my like one thing I tell absolutely everybody just like get involved with something freshman fall semester of like I know that's basically what we've been talking about this entire time. Like, you don't have to stick with it. You don't have to do it your entire time. I understand you might be busy, you might have other commitments, just choose something anything and just try it out for at least a bit. Because I promise you're going to gain and learn so much more from doing that than if you are like too scared or don't want to join something you might not enjoy. Yeah, just to add on this is very general advice but just going back to the first question where we all talked about being kind of anxious or overwhelmed coming in just for all the folks are watching and they're kind of anxious for coming into Berkeley just fake it till you make it. Simply that that's that was my takeaway my password. Well, or the alternative is we all stop faking it and we just actually be as where we are as we really are I mean I think that's a big part just picking up from this closing comments all of you made like it's a big part of why we have this as an initiative is we don't want anyone to come in and and feel like wow I don't like I don't see myself in this right like we want everyone to be looking around themselves at their peers at the faculty at the opportunities and feeling like there is something that connects with who they are and what they want and and also what their dreams are because all of you have spoken at some level to like whether the dream is something really specific like I want to be at the bottom of the ocean or something more general like these are. They are not small things to meet people that have dreams like wow and thinking about, you know I'm an evolutionary biologist by training I think about deep time and I think about, you know how the entire tree of life has evolved and about what it means to be humans like four billion years on and these things matter to me of like if we if we met each other's dreams really well like wow we'd be living in a different society so my hope is that you see Berkeley does it's kind of small kind of small part and really helping build that new story that new story of like what would it what would it look like to have institutions, not only you know giving degrees and diplomas but meeting people's hopes and dreams and meeting them exactly where they are. And each of us being so individual and coming with such a unique history, any unique identity and not feeling like you have to go to university to fit in in any way but that you go to university so that your own dreams and gifts and skills and challenges get addressed very personally in the way you really want them to be. So, I'd love to extend a very heartfelt thank you to all of you student panelists you are total inspirations and not only have you given of yourself for this hour but you've given to our community in so many ways over the years. And for those of you that are listening if you're actually on campus you can see these movie stars in your own neighborhood there are banners hanging up all over campus celebrating our undergraduates involved in discovery work. And these are three of them you can see their pictures writ large. And I'd also like to thank all of you that joined us today. You know Berkeley has really always been at the forefront of innovation in lots of different sectors, and we're really delighted to be leading a new era of innovation and higher education itself. I feel like the need is great and the promise is great. And we really look forward to having you join us. Thank you for joining us as we offer our students a more personalized journey, and our world, a new generation of innovators. The motto of UC Berkeley as you may know is fiat Lux, which means let there be light. And although in a way it sounds lofty and old fashioned, it's something that you know is a heartbeat that we live by every day. And so I wish you and yours, the best for the rest of your day and fiat Lux go bears. Go bears.