Dear Freshman Me - Chibuzor O.
Sup dawg, congrats on getting into Berkeley. Feeling like you’ve made it, huh? Somehow you’ve gotten in. You know deep down that it’s a miracle. You know it’s probably not because of your hard work — well, maybe a little. After all, you were an OK student in Nigeria. Anyways, why does it even matter, you’re in, bro! I’ll cut you some slack because, in the end, you are really in the Number One Public University in the World! (At least that’s what you think now -- watch us go from number one to unranked...) You are about to meet different kinds of people from different parts of the world. In the beginning, you’ll meet a lot of Church People. They love God, so they’ll keep loving you. This is great because you are going to spend a lot of time with them.
Okay, enough rant about Berkeley, let’s talk about you. High school was rough in different ways. Now you’re in college, all you want to do is rewrite your story. You want to show everyone from high school you’re not a weird, socially awkward boy from Africa who has no future. To sum it up, you think you were not cool in any way in high school, and you want to change it all in college. This will only lead to chasing worldly things that will bring no meaning to your life. You’ll try to lead a double life. In church, you act all spiritual, but elsewhere you try to conform to everyone else because you’re trying to be cool. Christianity is not that cool to the world, so you bring it up sometimes but most times you don’t talk about it.
The summary of your life right now is that you have no priorities: you want to be so many things and you want to achieve so many things. But take a step back and ask yourself one question: who am I? Your identity should be in God, not in the things of this world. When you answer that question, learn what it means to live with that identity. You are going to make so many mistakes, but they are new opportunities for growth. I won’t go on to list them because it’ll be ruining your future.
Also, say no to media, especially TV shows. Good shows will be coming out soon, but resist the urge to binge-watch. Remember once you click the first episode, it’s over, you’ll be defeated. Please, please, please save our GPA! Spend that time and study!
Good luck, buddy.