Published 10/21/2024 by Praniti Gulyani
I’ve had a difficult day at school today.
As I walk out of class with a nauseating swirl of confusion in my mind, I feel tears well up in the corners of my eyes. I just got rejected from an on-campus publication that I really wanted to get accepted into. If this was not enough, I found the assigned reading to be immensely complex, and my classmates seemed to understand the textual connotations better than I did. I am overwhelmed with a desire to talk to someone, someone who’s been through the same academic path that I am presently treading on. Even though I have a group of extremely faithful friends, they are STEM majors, and do not reckon with this interpretative entanglement with one’s coursework. Almost instinctively, I pick up my phone and call Maryam Ataie. Sure enough, Maryam answers the phone.
“You have 10 minutes,” she says. I can almost hear her stifle a smile. Both of us know that the conversation is going to last longer.
Maryam graduated last semester with a B.A. in English. I was her classmate in English 143N, a Creative Writing course in Fall 2023. A transfer student, Maryam took to the UC Berkeley atmosphere with an almost enviable ease. In addition to being an incredible writer who captured the pincer-grasp of pain with precision, Maryam stood out to me as a considerate human being who actually cared about what you thought. I remember telling her how I like long comments on my work, and the next afternoon, I ran into her in the English Department Lounge writing detailed feedback on the personal essay that I had submitted only the night before. In addition to fulfilling the requirements of our class, Maryam helped me realize a literary strength that I possessed, but never recognized before. “Your writing has an aura of magical realism,” she told me one day. “It’s unique, and I really think you should pursue it.”
However, Maryam’s impact escalated beyond the boundaries of the classroom and coursework.
As an individual, I tend to be over-ambitious which sometimes leads to a spiral of endless overthinking, and Maryam was always there to tell me that I was doing enough. She met me outside class to read my writing, and gave me all the feedback that I needed in a manner that was honest and considerate at the same time. She also listened to my school-centric problems, and helped me sort through the sheaves of thoughts in my head with firmness and compassion. Suffice to say, I could not imagine creative writing classes without her twinkling smile, and affirmative nod whenever someone appreciated my descriptive style. Before she graduated, Maryam told me that she would always be a phone call away. While I responded to her promise with a nervous smile, I did not expect her to live up to it. “People get busy,” I told myself. “There’s no way she’s going to remember me.”
This evening, as I sit on a bench near Sather Gate and tell Maryam about everything that has been going on, I think about how incorrect my assumption was. As always, she begins by asking me to take a deep breath, ensuring that the almost obnoxious echo of my exhalation is audible to her over the receiver. Then, she makes me do a realistic analysis of my workload, and points out all the writing that I’ve already been doing this semester. “You can’t expect to get everything you lay your hands on. You win some, you lose some,” she explains. Then, Maryam moved on to remind me how the publication that I had just got rejected from was actually a STEM magazine. “Everyone has their own writing style. You have a very poetic and aesthetic voice better suited for literary publications. You have your own space, and you must own it,” she says. As we move onto the classmates who, in my opinion, understood the coursework better than I did, Maryam changes my perspective. “Why don’t you speak to them and ask them how they do it? Make them your friends, and learn from them,” she advises.
Even though Maryam is no longer a student at Cal and works as a teacher in a local elementary school, she continues to exist within my newly-altered choices. As I choose self-confidence over self-contempt, and amiability over envy, Maryam’s legacy is in that unbeatable surge of confidence that races through me like a ray of twilit sunshine, assuring me that I am doing the right thing.