My Experience of Blockley University's Graduation
When I first moved to Northern California from Southern California, I was introduced early and often to UC Berkeley Cal graduates that really shaped my world and helped me grow into the person I am today. Starting with my next-door neighbor who invited us to her sheep-shearing event, where she showed us how to turn the wool into yarn, to the H4 teachers exploring a variety of subjects, early visits to UC Berkeley with Cal alumni taking me on campus for professor's slide show presentations of Yosemite and a presentation of Hamlet at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, all before I graduated high school. I had a firm belief that Cal students and alumni were fascinating people who liked to learn for the sake of learning and enjoyed their community and helping everyone feel like they were important members and their voice mattered.
When I graduated high school, I decided on a 2-year degree at FIDM, where I could study Advertising and Marketing, and be on the job market quickly. I learned soon after that my school of choice lacked the common events that helped make college a fun experience. So my best friend, attending Mills College, noticed a few things missing as well, and her stepbrother was a freshman at Cal, and we found a fun way to enjoy parties, meet new people, enjoy football games, soccer, and basketball games and other fun events. I met so many amazing people at Cal, even though I wasn't a student, I met many friends I still have to this day. They encouraged me to consider a 4-year degree, and so I ended up at UCLA as a transfer student and graduated with an Economics Business degree. Although I enjoyed my time in Westwood, I really missed the Bay Area and decided to move home. A friend of mine was getting her 4-year degree at Cal and saw a job offer in the Daily Cal for a position with a Software startup on University Avenue, a few blocks from campus. I applied and accepted the position.
I was back at Berkeley, this time as a full-time employee, working for an amazing and smart group of Cal grads. The company was started from a Cal engineering project, and pretty much all the employees and definitely all the founders went to Cal. I loved the people I worked with and enjoyed the fun community they created in this work environment! It hardly ever felt like work, and many team-building exercises with paintball, Shakespeare events, company picnics, and more. After a couple of years, I moved on, and I was blessed that in every company I worked, I always seemed to have a few managers and teammates that were Cal grads - and they were all among my favorites!
When my daughter announced she was accepted to Cal Engineering, I was so excited for her! I had only positive experiences with Cal, their students, and their alumni. In fact, when I was looking to go back to work after taking a break raising two young adults, I researched the best companies to work for in the Bay Area. An overwhelming majority of these "best" companies were run by Cal grads! So I imagined all the fun she would have, the friends she’d make, and the positive and challenging experiences that awaited her!
She joined a sorority and met and befriended so many interesting and intelligent young women in a variety of disciplines. She became friends with men and women engineering students in her classes, joined clubs, enjoyed football games, other sporting events, many live music events, and more! She had a really amazing time at Cal and made so many friends and I was so excited to attend her graduation in May of 2020.
However, when Covid19 turned into a mandatory shelter in place, the graduation was suspended. I called my daughter on Saturday since her engineering graduation was supposed to be on that day. Personally have been suffering from a lung infection since early March, so I was sad but secretly relieved. We decided that since she had accepted an opportunity to stay on at Berkeley we’d just celebrate her Master’s Degree in 2021, and that was that.
But later I was watching Trevor Noah’s The Daily Distancing Show – and he shared how students at Berkeley, lead by Cognitive Science major Bjorn Lustic, decided to recreate the entire of Berkeley’s campus in Minecraft, and the students would log into Minecraft and enjoy a graduation ceremony in the game.
This was a bit confusing to me at first; Minecraft is the game my son was addicted to in Junior high – I couldn’t imagine how this could house a graduation ceremony. So I did a bunch of Google searches and sure enough, found the right links, and the ceremony was starting in less than an hour! I immediately created a Twitch account so I could view this ceremony online and quickly started posting “Congratulations!” to my daughter and her friends! My daughter was still in her apartment at Berkeley, so we weren’t even together, but we were texting and she’d take screenshots of my posts and send them back to me with happy emojis. It was an amazing event created to share hope and joy during a time of uncertainty. I am so grateful for the chance to celebrate the class of 2020 online through this unique experience, and thank the 100+ developers who made this happen!
I learned the creators of Blockley University in Minecraft, included over 100 students, scattered all over the world since they all had to go home when the campus was shut down. None of the students met in person during this time, only online, to create this amazing space in a short period of time. They were creating 3 buildings a day, and each developer added details to the parts of campus that were special to them. They invited Chancellor Carol Christ to speak, as well as others. It was followed by a 4-day online music festival with EDM DJs and over 90 music artists.
I loved this quote from the creator, Bjorn Lustic, “We’ve been stripped of the community at Berkeley. It is more about trying to substitute that community into a virtual world.” This team of students created this experience first for the graduates, but also for incoming students or students at other universities to have a fun experience to understand the Berkeley community. This was so consistent with my experiences with Berkeley and their alumni, wanting to build an enriching fun community, and inviting anyone who is willing to share time with them. I wanted to let all my Cal friends know(and I have a lot of them!) this is an amazing group of young people; and also, welcome to the graduating class of 2020!!
Go Bears!!
If you missed the graduation or information on this event, I thought you might like the following YouTube links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9vpoJ1u26o