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Bioengineering senior
wins essay contest
By Catherine Cheng
Editor's note: Last spring, the College’s weekly student
newsletter, Engineering News, ran its first-ever student
essay contest. The topic, "What Berkeley Has Meant to Me,"
inspired several thoughtful entries. The winning essay was written
by bioengineering senior Catherine Cheng. Her piece, which was
published in the campus newsletter, earned her dinner for two
at Zachary’s Pizza and two movie tickets, courtesy of the
Engineering Alumni Society. Here is her essay, printed in full.
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| Catherine
Cheng, BioE senior |
Five Golden Rules of Life
Rule 1: Study-play-sleep-study-play-sleep- study-play-sleep.
Do not break that cycle. If you sleep more than you study or play,
you are missing out on life, and you may have a liver problem
from eating at the dorm’s dining commons. If you study more
than you sleep or play, you are probably ruining your health because
you never leave Soda, Etcheverry, or Cory for sunshine, fresh
air, food that doesn’t come out of a vending machine, or
human contact. If you play more than you sleep or study . . .
well, this case is relatively rare, since engineers seem to take
studying very seriously – but it is possible to get hooked
on a computer game and play it so much that you forget why you’re
at Berkeley. So the moral of this story is, keep the balance in
your life or risk becoming a zombie of some sort.
Rule 2: Do not sweat the small stuff, and remember,
most stuff is small. It’s all about putting everything in
perspective. In the grand scheme of things, one missed homework
assignment probably won’t ruin your otherwise perfect career
here. So don’t sweat the one question that you just can’t
get, because racking your brain at 4 in the morning probably isn’t
the best way to follow Rule No. 1. (Of course, you should learn
how to do the problem before the next exam, and this doesn’t
mean that you should stop doing homework altogether.) And remember,
grades don’t tell people what kind of person you are.
Rule 3: People are more important than things.
Friends will help you through just about any crisis you have here,
from roommate disagreements to breaking up with a significant
other. So making new friends is important, and your college friends
will be your friends for life. Not to mention the hidden benefit
that one of your college friends may turn out to be the next Bill
Gates, and it will be pretty cool to be able to say, "Sure
I knew (insert friend’s embarrassing college nickname here)
before he/she became rich and powerful."
Rule 4: Persistence will get you almost anything.
Telebears is something I definitely won’t miss. But it has
taught us that if you want something, like getting into a class
of 25 when you are last on the waitlist, you have to keep showing
your interest and continue to pursue what you want.
Rule 5: Everything is relative. Berkeley Engineering
is competitive, and everyone here is very smart. You only think
you’re doing well or poorly relative to how everyone else
seems to be doing. But if you just compare your progress to what
you know you’re capable of, then putting everything you
have into getting that "lousy" C doesn’t mean
that you’re dumb. In 10 years, you won’t remember
what you got in organic chemistry or how a certain professor wrote
tricky exams in order to fail half the class. What you’ll
remember are the friends you have and the fun times you shared.
So don’t forget to smile and laugh!
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