2022

all the best. Your future is bright and the sky is the limit.

Mariah Angelresza Peralta UC Santa Cruz Environmental Science

very depressed, but it worked out. So I guess it just showed me that it’s possible to survive or thrive, even in dire circumstances.

My second semester sophomore year, when the pandemic happened and they kicked us off campus, I didn’t have anywhere to go. So my roommate actually took me to his house in Arizona. I lived with him and his family for the rest of the semester.

A lot of things happened during that time for international students. Since school was gonna be online, the government was trying to figure out how visas would work. And so there was this whole scare like, ‘Oh, they’re gonna kick all the international students out of the U.S.?’ I was a bit calm about it. Part of the reason why I was not very worried was because of my faith. My faith was something I was able to rely on for just, like, stability in a time of instability.

One thing I’ve learned through college is that friendships are a valuable thing to have. Especially when unseen circumstances hap- pen, like the pandemic, your friendships are the things that you lean on to help you to keep going. The pandemic made me value my friendships more. major which is a Filipino organization at UC Santa Cruz. And that definitely provided me with the community that I was missing out on in my first year My biggest memory is that I failed my (calculus) series. I failed it. I was like, ‘oh my gosh, I can’t be an environmental science major anymore. Like, what am I going to do?’ I didn’t feel comfortable going to my professor. I didn’t feel comfortable going to the TA. The only person I truly felt comfortable going to was my ate — my mentor in Bayanihan. She was like, ‘Listen, we have these resources available to you not only within the Filipino organization but the school as well. Here they are, seek them out, take advantage of them — you’re paying for them.’ I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, maybe this is going to work out. I’m going to finish

I’m going to move to the Bay Area to start working, like late August. I’m going to be working as a software engineer at Google.

I’m not really scared about moving to the Bay, even though I’ve never been there before. I’m not worrying about it because we’ve been through this already, like, I’ve been through a similar situation or worse situation.

Looking back at myself as a freshman, I was very timid to join a lot of spaces on campus. I was very dependent on others to support me, like going to the dining hall or going to class — I hated doing a lot of things alone. And I guess that timidness prevented me from exploring other interests, or other spaces on campus where I feel like I can find a community.

I came from a pretty non-diverse city. My residential college (at UC Santa Cruz) wasn’t that diverse either. I was one of, I would say, a couple people of color in my residential college, and in my high school too. And so I didn’t get to explore that identity at all until I got to college.

Lingappa

— Interviewed by Elina

Luckily enough, I joined Bayanihan,

See LESSONS, Page 11 the major that I wanted to finish.’

I would say to a woman of color going to UC Santa Cruz or any institution of higher education that ‘There are spaces for you, and they’re made by other students who want to see you succeed and want to create a collective community that is successful and supports you.’ So

I would say, ‘Don’t be discouraged with how these classrooms look or how these resources treat you because there are spaces on campus that want to support you and want to see you (be) successful.’

— Interviewed by

Carolyn Kuimelis

Claire Tauber

UC Davis Sustainable

Agriculture and Food Systems major

I transferred to UC Davis in the fall of

2020, which was a really interesting time to transfer because it was full-on pandemic Zoom school. I was in a group of students who graduated from community college that first spring of the pandemic. There were a lot of us having conversations like, ‘Should I wait? Should I defer for a year and then transfer?’ Because everything felt so up in the air. A deciding moment for me was when I called my grandma. And she’s like, ‘Just go to university. What else are you going to do?’

I tried really hard to make friends as much as possible, but it was difficult because being a transfer, you already have the fear of ‘What if I don’t make friends?’ I found it too challenging to form a real connection with anyone online. You miss all the walking to class moments of just chatting with someone when you’re on Zoom. It doesn’t really facilitate casual social interactions. Once we returned in-person, I was able to make friends because we all were eager to know each other. But it felt kind of fast and furious. Everyone was like, ‘Oh my God, we’re back in person!’ And then about a month later I found myself wondering, ‘Why am I so exhausted? Why do I feel all these emotions?’ And I realized I just went from seeing a max of 20 people a day to seeing 3,000 people a day. I think the pandemic served a little bit like a mirror, or looking glass, to see the value of college. And in a lot of ways, it has not been worth it just due to the exorbitant cost of school. I’m quite fortunate I have a family that’s helping me pay for college. But even in that case, it still feels like, ‘Why were so many students expected to pay the exact same tuition for something that was so vastly different from what they signed up for initially?’

Mariah Angelresza Peralta, a senior at UC Santa Cruz, poses on May 13.

I think for me, personally, trying to cram so much in such a short span of time led to the risk of burnout. There’s kind of a sense of time lost due to the pandemic and then this desire to wring out every possible opportunity because it’s so expensive and short-lived.

— Interviewed by Emily Margaretten

CalMatters and student journalists from across California. Kuimelis and Margaretten are contributors to the network. Rashad is a senior fellow with the network. This story and other higher education coverage are supported by the College Futures Foundation.