living in berkeley as a rejected student

I’ve spent the past three months living right next to the University of California, Berkeley.

Last year, after spending months preparing my UC application, this is how Berkeley responded:

Safe to say, I was never planning on visiting that campus.

But I realized it had been six months since I last saw a friend who would constantly help me with my projects throughout school.

He had graduated the previous year, and was now living in Berkeley. And it just so happened that whenever he visited our school, I wasn’t there.

So, one day after work, I decided to give him a visit at his apartment, and fell in love with Berkeley.

That year, I visited it seven times.

I attended events hosted by Muslim Tech Collaborative.

I used a handheld camera for filming for the first time (and absolutely ruined the footage 💀).

I even went with my podcast co-host, Ali Almathkur, with a 10 minute notice, to document the encampment that the students established. We drove for an hour and got there before most news stations.

…we even made it onto the news 😅.

This year, when visiting my former classmate at his new apartment, he gave me some surprising news.

They had an open room for one semester, and were hoping to rent it out.

“So if you want it, it’s yours,” he jokingly said to me.

Two weeks later, I was living there.

Every Friday, students of the school I used to attend join the community for prayers at the mosque. I try to attend and catch up with the students, and last week, one of them made an interesting comment.

“How are you doing all these crazy things?” he said. “Like one day you’re riding an e-bike at the piers in SF and a few hours later you’re at Dave’s (Hot Chicken).”

I laughed, replying with “You gotta find ways to make life fun.”

And it was true—these past few months have been filled with some crazy experiences.

In the past three months, aside from moving to Berkeley, I’ve:

• Worked daily next to the piers and Coit Tower in SF

• Gotten 10K views on a YouTube video for the first time in a minute (and helped the channel pass 1,000 subscribers)

• Spent 25 hours+ on buses

• Ridden an unfathomable amount of Ubers

• Eaten restaurant food for lunch 45+ times

• Gotten into a car accident on the way to Google Ventures

• Missed about 10 buses and gotten off on the wrong stop at least 10 times

• Ridden 5+ e-bikes on the streets of SF (definitely not the safest place to ride haha)

And a whole lot more.

“Dude that would be AWESOME,” said my CEO after I hinted at the idea that I might move to Berkeley for a semester and work from the office Monday through Thursday.

My parents… weren’t so hyped.

But there I was, about to enter the office, early Monday morning. Was I about to work a real job for the first time?

Did working full-time mean giving up everything else? Was I a “slave to the Matrix” now?

Three months later, I’ve learned a few lessons. Lessons from living at a school I don’t attend, living with roommates, and working full time.

Lesson 1: fall in love with the work.

Even if you enjoy the job you have, there’ll always be boring work to do. For me, that includes making demos or tutorials, but the work that I do enjoy gives me the energy to finish the boring work.

I made it my goal to try to make the work I do as enjoyable as possible by implementing a few ground rules:

Take every opportunity to learn.

There’s always opportunities to learn new skills. We had the chance over the past few months to create a series documenting the day-to-day work and interactions at our company, and that gave me the opportunity to learn multiple new skills.

I learned how to film handheld, and mastered the FX3—a camera that’s been used to create Hollywood movies.

I dabbled with animation, with mentorship from our design lead who’s edited videos for creators like KSI before.

And even remade an effect from Into the Spider-Verse… (definitely did not hop on a call at 12:30am to realize I had done it completely wrong after 4 hours of work 🫠).

Switch things up.

Even if you’re doing the things you enjoy the most, eventually it’ll get repetitive. That’s when you gotta switch things up.

A few weeks back, I took a break from content creation to focus on creating a gift bag with merch to give to each employee.

Working with the same company we had our senior hoodies made with, I worked with our team to make sure each gift bag was filled with memorable, high quality merch. These will be handed out to everyone at our company offsite, and hopefully will be a success.

Lesson 2. Make life entertaining.

I hated how school was basically a 9-5 job that I made no money from, and learned from maybe once every two months.

I’d come home burned out without having put in any effort into the work I actually wanted to do. This made me hate the concept of working on a project for hours on end, no matter what it was.

But in these past three months, I’ve realized there’s ways to work a 9-5 without feeling burned out, and enjoying life as much as if I were working at random hours throughout the day.

Spend time with friends.

It’s scarily easy to lose contact with former classmates and friends after graduating. Thankfully, being part of a mosque and the greater Muslim community, there’s always opportunities to stay in touch,

Every Thursday, students meet at Berkeley for joint prayers, supplication, and occasional games.

Joining these programs is always something so look forward to, and after the main program the guys always hang out. We’ve gone to all sorts of restaurants and boba shops, and had some deep conversations along the way.

We’re shaped by our experiences.

There’s been many times where I could’ve taken the easy route, but knew that if I took the harder route that I’d have a better experience.

But better ≠ easier.

While booking an Uber would’ve been easier, a half hour walk home got a great workout.

While taking the bus would’ve been easier, riding an e-bike gave me that experience for the first time in my life and it was amazing.

While hiking on a trail near my apartment would’ve been easier in the evening, going at sunrise gave me energy for the rest of the day and some cool pictures.

Our character is built by the struggles we go through and the experiences we have, so if I have an opportunity to create a new experience, my goal is to now try and take it.

With all of that being said, it’s time for the next step in my journey of working full-time.

This was written across airplanes, airports, and rental cars while being lost somewhere in France.

More on that later ✌️