Published 1/24/2025 by Praniti Gulyani
I’ve always embraced ‘endings’ with open arms and held them close to my heart, looking upon them with affectionate eyes and a bright smile—almost as they are long-lost friends from another lifetime.
While this tendency does fill me with immense joy, it has, undeniably, been a point of question and concern for most people. Endings are ideally supposed to be sad, this is possibly why my unusual delight around them has raised several eyebrows. However, I’ve never been able to reckon with this ideology. For me, ‘endings’ are like the scattered petals of a flowering rose that when pieced together, yield an almost kaleidoscopic floral creation. This was especially true of our ‘We Are Cal’ column that peeked through the fertile soil of UC Berkeley life like an aspiring rosebud, before blossoming into a fully grown bush with fifteen vibrant flowers. As we look forward to the start of Spring 2025 and all the stories that the coming semester has in store, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge all our wonderful interviewees from Fall 2024. On International Education Day, let’s look back at what they brought to our column, and thank them for painting the ‘We’ in ‘We Are Cal’ in rainbow-colored shades of diversity.
To begin with, we had Sanya Aggarwal— a young sophomore who was the first interviewee for our column. She highlighted the importance of friendship for international students, and embodied the otherwise abstract concept of home away from home. Sanya also emphasized the importance of creating a door for opportunities that might not knock instead of waiting for them to come by. The week after, we had Anna Jung from Korea who attended Cal as an exchange student in Fall 2023. A vibrant woman with diverse interests, Anna showed us how to unite diverse skills from each class at UC Berkeley and combine them to achieve a specific purpose. I remember being particularly impressed by her honest acknowledgment of how the seemingly ‘challenging’ aspects of Cal were actually opportunities in disguise that contributed to her growth and development as a college student. Then, Sanghun Byun came to our frontline with his tri-cultural experience, symbolizing the astute importance of independent choice. For him, the diversity on the UC Berkeley campus taught me that he doesn’t really have to choose between the various aspects of his background, and could instead embrace a combined cultural identity.
After Sanghun, I was fortunate— and honored— to have interviewed Aarya Borele, an international student with an indisputable passion for sustainability. As I interacted with Aarya, she told me about her research experience with a whale shark, pausing to describe, with great emotion and passion, about how she had come upon a baby whale shark with a damaged fin. “It was because of drilling under the ocean. The baby whale shark wasn’t supposed to be there, and we realized that its hearing had been damaged,” Aarya had said, her eyes tenderly carrying a visual that had clearly touched her life and changed the course of her life and trajectory. Next up was National Transfer Student Week, and to commemorate this, I was able to interact with Hana Trieu, an English Major who also works as a Residential Safety Ambassador at Cal. Speaking to Hana really opened my eyes to the various definitions of home, and how utterly simple it is to establish your own living space that is conducive and affectionate. For Hana, the little things are of immense significance, and she described how the sight of her roommate sleeping soundly in her bed after a long day was one of the seemingly insignificant, but essential factors that made her apartment feel like home.
The next interview occurred as a result of an elevator interaction! I sat down with Alexandra Arion, an exchange student from Sciences Po, Paris. There is no better way to describe this interaction than to say that it was a magical vehicle that took me to France. With demonstrated caution and precision, Alexandra described her home university and highlighted the essential and interesting differences between UC Berkeley and Sciences Po, Paris, emphasizing on how the spontaneity and otherwise ‘instant’ nature of her interactions with the people she loved had to now conform to the structured frames of a significant time difference. After Alexandra, I spoke to Shivani Menon, an individual who has had a significant impact on my life at UC Berkeley. I assumed that I knew everything that there was to know about her, which is why I felt anxious as I requested this interview. However, after donning the objective ears of a journalist, I realized that there was so much about Shivani’s personality that I had probably never realized, such as her inclination towards Creative Writing despite being an Economics Major, and the simple pleasure that she derived from merely sitting on the glade.
Straight from Lebanon, thereafter, I had Kim Nasrallah who spoke to me about resilience and entertainment. All my life, I had assumed these emotions to be disparate and unrelated, but Kim showed me how her identity as a young Lebanese woman actually helped her embrace these emotions in an intricately intertwined manner. After interviewing Kim, I remember taking a moment and letting all the learnings that ‘We Are Cal’ was bringing into my life wash over me like a wave of golden sunshine. The week after, interviews continued to turn into time machines, and I was subjected to an unusual world tour with Matteo Mion, an exchange student from France who, through his powerful narrative, took me to Singapore, France, Morocco, India and back! Matteo brought an altered and unique perspective to ‘We Are Cal’ and explained how all the countries that he had visited over the course of his life had taught him something new. Poignant as this thought was, I remember concealing a smile as I absorbed the visual that it painted on the canvas of my mind. The thought of countries ‘teaching’ was comically educative, as I visualized the world map outlines of France, India, Singapore and Morocco standing at the forefront of a college classroom and leading different lectures about life.
As Fall 2024 came to an end, I had the opportunity to interview Christina Paz Arguello who brought me closer to the familial relationships that I hold so close, by describing how her Lola (Grandmother) had inspired her to pursue law. She had lived with her Lola for several years, and had become her caretaker, a position that she said was of great honor and pride for her. After losing her Lola to medical malpractice, Christina committed herself to fighting for her potential clients and getting them the justice that they deserve. As I reflected on my interaction with her, I thought of my loved ones in India and felt closer to them than ever before. Suffice to say, Christina had helped me revisit the art of loving in a way that was impactful, emotionally driven, and passionate.
My final interview was with Juliette Zhu— a young freshman who established an identity for herself during her first semester at UC Berkeley through her ‘Poems for Berkeley’ Instagram account. In addition to being a talented poet, Juliette came forth as a deeply humble woman who looked upon language and literature as a force to be reckoned with, instead of an acquired possession. Recognizing the timeless tradition of poetry, she sees herself as a vessel through which the poems emerge. I share Juliette’s passion for poetry, but as college began, the whirlwind-like nature of undergraduate life distanced me from my craft. However, listening to Juliette talk about poems and how they helped her build a community on campus, I was, for the want of a better word, smitten. And, as I finished writing her interview, I composed a poem about happiness, fulfillment, impact and community, the four-fold legacy that ‘We Are Cal’ and its interviewees had so generously left me with.
As Spring 2025 begins, I know that this legacy is only going to expand. I’m excited to meet new students, listen to new stories, and fill my heart (and this column) with a vibrant combination of love, learning and leadership—as I continue to encapsulate the essence of the International Student Community at UC Berkeley who are, in the real sense of the word, truly setting out to leave a mark.