we're here staying hydrated, not caffeinated

hello my friends it's nina and

i am finally going to talk about my entire college experience

as you may or may not know, i am-

i was a college student

i finished college, i graduated

i didn't drop out

i was a student at uc berkeley for 2 years

and i was also a community college student for 2 years

i already talked about most of my college experience in another video

but i'm going to talk a little more in depth about it in this video

and also answer some questions i got from you guys on instagram

about college

but yea let's go down memory lane and talk about it

i'm gonna mention firsthand that i have a pretty international audience

and so i'm talking about the american education system

which might be confusing to people who aren't in america

if it is confusing, i'm sorry

anything i might say about tuition or the value of college

in society or any of that

might be very different from you

this is just from an american perspective

and from someone who finished college and experienced all of it

but to my american viewers

i hope that this kind of makes sense or is a little bit helpful

but anywho i'm gonna first talk about my timeline

i'm gonna start the story off with my senior year of high school

then i'll move on to why i went to community college

and then how i got into uc berkeley

and then how i got here

i also do wanna mention everyone's college experience is subjective

my experience is probably going to be very different from yours

especially because i am a college graduate but i am also on youtube

but i'm just gonna talk about it, maybe there's something useful in it

but i figured i have to talk about my college experience at some point

so without further delay, here is my entire college experience

so it all started-

2014?

i applied for colleges in november of 2014

i was just like any other kid wishing to go to college

just bc i heard everyone else wanting to go to college

but personally my parents weren't very cutthroat about college

they were very chill about it

i don't know if that was a pro or a con

basically in my immediate family, not including my cousins or whatever

in my immediate family i am the first to finish college

but rewinding back to 2014

i was basically applying for college

but i had little idea of what i was doing

because i grew up having a lot of freedom about what i should do in the future

i didn't have a clear idea of what i actually wanted to do

i had a lot of freedom to live my life and explore my hobbies

i really loved drawing and painting

and being creative and all that

i loved storywriting, hanging out with my friends

i loved using my imagination, i loved watching movies

i loved listening to music

i was a good student but i wasn't a very passionate teenager

i was naturally a good student

just because i got my stuff done

there's nothing much to say but i just got a's and b's in high school

i was very attentive

i showed up to school all the time on time

being a good student vs being a passionate student were different things

it was like, i knew i wanted to apply to college

just because all my friends were doing it

college was just in my brain, like instilled,

drilled into my brain

that i have to go to college

but at the same time i had no idea who i was

i didn't know what i wanted to do

i didn't know what major i wanted to study

i didn't know my future at all

so in junior year i took my sat and did whatever i needed to do to get into college

but i didn't really understand what i was doing

i got a good score on the sat too, i got a 2010

back then when we were doing sat's the highest score was a 2400

i know now it's like a 1600

the only thing i really had going for me

were a few clubs that i took in high school

were my decent grades and a 4.something average

because i had a bunch of AP classes that boosted my GPA

and i had my sat score and i was crossing my fingers hoping for the best

i don't like thinking about my senior year of high school

and applying for college because

every time i think about it

i just think about how unguided i was

how i really kind of just-

screwed up my application basically

i'm not gonna get into full details, but

my essay could've been a lil different

my choice of major could've been a bit better

i didn't know what i wanted to do and that reflected in my application

in here, in here, everywhere i just wasn't ready for college

and i didn't realize it

i applied to almost all the UCs

and i did do the common application

and apply for some private universities and smaller universities

i tried to do some art schools

but then i was also unconfident about my portfolio and whatever

which is also sad to think about because

i loved drawing and painting and all that

i loved my art classes

but at the same time i wasn't passionate enough where i had a strong portfolio

which gets you into an art school

so all in all it was a pretty difficult process

but i was going through the motions and just going through it

in my mind i thought one college will accept me, i'll just go there

i think in high school i wasn't thinking a lot for myself

i kind of just existed and floated around

trying to get through each day

i didn't necessarily have goals or desires

at the time i didn't deal with my insecurities or problems in life

or really have some sort of communication with myself

i would go to school, be a good student

and then come home, get stuff done

and then go to school again, blah blah blah

and so that really took a toll on my college application process

and in 2015

when we finally got our college results

that is kind of when reality started to kind of hit me

i did not get into the schools that i wanted to go to

which were basically the schools that everyone talks about

and i got into a few schools but they were not really schools that i wanted to go to

they were kind of just back up plans

i got into a few schools with scholarships

but again it wasn't necessarily the plan that i wanted

even though i didn't really have a plan

so that is when reality hit, like oh..

hmm maybe i should've kind of figured things out a little bit more

maybe i should've really researched what i was trying to get myself into

and so a plan was basically to go to

these schools that i got into

but i didn't have this heart for

and then later on

i finally learned about community college

community college was not a plan, ever

because no one (i knew) ever talked about it

i only got into the idea of going to community college

when i found out that my friend was going

and then i was like huh that is also an option

but now that reality was hitting and i didn't have a lot of options

i really had to think about what i wanted to do for the next 4 years

community college became an option and i talked to my parents about it

the conversation about it was actually nice

just because as i've said before they didn't pressure me to get into a good school

obviously i wanted to make them proud

but going to a university is a huge commitment

it is literally four years of your life

or 10 years depending on what you're studying

it might be 4 to 10

i also wanna mention that college is not the path for everyone

and that's something that i wish i had known as a college student

but i did more research on community college

and that's when i figured out that you can transfer to another university in two years

if you are on time

obviously you can also take 3, 4, whatever many years you need

but you can transfer in two years and you can finish

your entire education within 4 years just like everyone else

and so i was like why didn't i know about this earlier

because personally for me i wasn't ready

and there's a lot of people who aren't ready

there are also lots of people who are ready for college right after high school

as you can see millions of students go straight into college right after high school

but more and more community college started to become a better solution for me

because i didn't want to throw myself into a school i didn't have the heart for

and also i learned about the whole financial thing where

literally community college you're not spending that much money

now these days your first two years are free apparently

but even then back then the tuition wasn't even bad

it was probably the cost of a few college books from a university

but the tuition wasn't bad

and i'd be saving much more money

i feel like it'd be time for me to explore my options

and really get myself together

and find out what i really wanted to study

because personally for me i did want to pursue a further education

not everyone needs that

not everyone needs college

not everyone needs college for their career

society is very different now

even if you do go to college it doesn't guarantee a career

because society is competitive

but personally i wanted to experience it

and i wanted to complete my higher education

that was my desire

and so in the end community college did become my choice

and my parents were actually very relieved

i am very fortunate that it was a good communication

that they were supportive of my choice

i was very thankful that they didn't think going to university was the only solution

and that any other solution wasn't a solution

that i wasn't throwing my life away

that my identity didn't revolve around me going to a university

oh man i don't remember my community college life that well

i can't remember my classes that well

but i know in community college, that is the time,

if you're planning to transfer

that is the time to take care of all your general education requirements

i highly recommend that you try to finish

every single requirement in community college before you transfer

because transferring is a process

it has its pros and cons compared to going to a university for 4 years

i was in community college for 2 years

so 4 semesters

because we were on a semester system

i took about 4 to 5 classes per semester

i'm pretty sure it was 5 each

i took english, i took one semester of math

i knew this time i wanted to do some kind of liberal arts major

just because that's what i'm interested in

in high school i actually considered more stem-like majors

when i was a senior in high school

my major that i applied for was computer science

we don't talk about her

but now i knew i wanted to do a major that

revolved around liberal arts but i was also considering art

i took my science requirements

i took a public speaking class

which kind of drove me towards my major

that i chose in uc berkeley

which was media studies

which is basically like mass communications but more focused on media

i was pretty daring in community college

i remember in my geography class we had an opportunity to go on a class trip

for extra credit points and other things

and i was like

i'll go

it was pretty far from home

and i'd be gone for a few days with classmates that i didn't know well

i even signed up for camping instead of having a hotel

it was quite a time

and i was trying new things

but community college was definitely a time for me to be my own person

and i don't think i would've had that experience

had i gone to a 4 year university

because i would be constantly surrounded by people