At 18 years old, getting accepted into UC Berkeley was an incredible memory and one of the biggest rewards I earned from working so hard.

Now I am 23 years old, I am living out of my trailer traveling across the United States, and arguably, I am far more proud of myself today than what I was at 18 after getting accepted into UC Berkeley.

Now let me explain…

For many of us, getting accepted into a top 4-year institute is an unbelievable goal. Truthfully, for me it wasn’t.

My mother conditioned my 3 siblings and I our whole lives to reach that moment, so to an extent, it was almost inevitable to go to a top university. If you work hard academically, participate in community events, and maintain an active high school sports career — you will get accepted anywhere because it shows how good you are at diversifying your interests all while still getting everything done and colleges love people who work above and beyond because it helps their reputation as a hard-working, rigorious univerisity (sounds like UC Berkeley).

So, getting into a top college was expected of my siblings and I and we did just that.

What we failed to do was determine a path or interest that we actually loved.

I know my siblings and I are not the only ones who can relate to the high pressure outside influences can have over our lives. It is especially difficult when your parent is the one pushing the goal, because stereotypically, our parents would only lead us to what is best for us, but truthfully, you are the only one who knows what is best for you.

By time I was a senior in college, I was over doing tasks and assignments that other people commanded me to do in order to get an opinioned-based grade (yes, I was a humanities) that I was supposed to be happy about because in my professor’s opinion, I did a good job.

I’ll be honest. Who cares.

There are a lot of things wrong with colleges, especially top universities. Students are overly-concerned about a grade that come from personal opinions and biases rather than being more concerned about their personal well-being.

Tests and assignments will have students staying up all night, thinking this grade matter when in 5 years, when they are working at their job that can look answers up, it won’t matter.

I went to school with students who were incredible mechanical engineers who later when on to get jobs with Facebook, Google, and various start-ups, but would laugh about not knowing about to cook eggs or starting a fire in the kitchen.

I can promise you I was more proud of myself for driving on the freeway with a brand new trailer when I had never towed anything in my life than what I was when I got accepted into UC Berkeley or got my first A on a college-level paper.

Towing is a skillset I will have for the rest of my life while getting into UC Berkeley was one-time accomplishment.

When I was camping at a state park, I once met an older Australian woman who looked insane and homeless. Everyone at the campsite treated her differently and as if she were stupid. When I met the woman and we started talking, she got her Doctorate from Oxford in Environmental Science and spends her days traveling while reading scholarly articles.

She told me it is pointless to tell people where your education is from because today in this setting how does it help. If she would have gotten mad at the other campers and said her educational status, they wouldn’t have believed her.

Besides that having a college degree from one university over the other doesn’t matter because we both went through college. And sometimes not having a college degree doesn’t even matter.

Life is about persuing peronsal goals and interests that sets our hearts and minds on fire. It is not about following the traditional educational system to reach the end-point as everyone else.

To this day, I am more proud to say I travel by myself around the United States as a 23-year-old mixed, raced woman than I am to say I graduated from UC Berkeley.

Going to Berkeley was a bragging right, solo traveling in a tailer is a lifestyle true to myself and I only hope everyone can find that passion true to themselves. Whether it be through education, sports, medicine, food, music, art, or traveling, everyone in this world deserves the right to know what their hearts beat for.