Redwood Middle School music teacher and Saratoga High School Class of 2002 alumnus Jon Jow remembers rarely going outside his dorm past sunset during the entirety of his first semester while attending UC Berkeley. Instead, he stayed in most nights to study or sleep early in lieu of attending social activities or going out to restaurants.
“I was the bubble child,” Jow said. “I was afraid of walking down the block to get boba because I was not in Saratoga and it was dark.”
Saratoga residents are often described as living in a bubble, sealed off from the rest of the world because of their wealth, their large homes with manicured lawns and security systems and public schools that rank among the best in the nation. Saratoga High has a graduation rate of 98 percent and a college attendance rate that is almost as high. Niche ranks it third among California High schools, and 169th in National rankings, with an overall score of 99.05/100.
Many SHS graduates interviewed by The Falcon say they were well prepared for college academically, but endured some hard times socially or culturally when strayed beyond the bubble during college.
Broadening connections
Entering college means transitioning into a new environment with people from different cultures and life experiences. For students from homogenous communities, this introduces the challenge of proactively reaching out to people of different backgrounds instead of drifting toward familiar people and friend groups.
Jow’s family moved to Saratoga when he was 6 months old. After attending elementary through high school in the SUSD and LGSUHSD school districts, Jow went to UC Berkeley for his undergraduate education, got his teaching credential in 2011 at San Jose State and came back to Saratoga to teach music full time at Redwood Middle School.
In the first semester of freshman year, Jow found that he tended to drift toward other Berkeley students who had attended Saratoga or nearby schools such as Lynbrook or Monta Vista High School. But later on as he became more accustomed to the new environment, he began to branch out to meet different people. Looking back, Jow said that his strongest connections weren’t necessarily with people from the same socio-economical or geographical backgrounds, but with people who were like-minded philosophically.
These experiences widened his perspective, and one of his favorite memories from college occurred when he had a conversation with a peer who was the daughter of migrant workers.
“She was in a position where she was excited to be in a college where she didn’t have to move depending on the seasons,” Jow said. “Getting to know these stories and talk to people is really eye-opening.”
Through his journey at Berkeley, Jow also recalls his encounters with homeless people and protestors — scenarios typically less common in Saratoga. Although he used to avoid the routes with more homeless people, when he finally overcame it, he would wave hi to them on his way to school.
Walking past people who were constantly protesting was also at first “shocking/nervous/intimidating,” since people living in Saratoga tend to be more complaisant. But now, they are one of the things Jow looks most forward to whenever he visits his alma mater.
“I thought that I really understood the world and I understood people because I read about it in a magazine or newspaper,” Jow said. “[But what I had to recognize] was that knowing something in theory is not actually as simple as actually living it.”
Now, as a teacher, he tries to instill this message into his middle school students, and encourages them to step outside their comfort zones to meet people with different backgrounds.
Class of 2020 alumna Zerlina Lai, who now attends Occidental College in Los Angeles, described a similar experience when she left for college. Lai said that the lack of diversity of Saratoga High’s environment, which consisted of people of similar ethnicities, socioeconomic statuses and academic aspirations, set her up for a diversity shock when she entered college.
“I subconsciously reached out to people who were like me due to the lack of diversity at SHS,” Lai said.
She said that she would advise incoming college students to seek out people with different backgrounds.
SHS graduates aren’t the only ones who face these problems. According to a 2018 report released by PR Newswire, 77 percent of recent high school students believe their schools could have done a better job of helping students develop key social and emotional learning skills to increase social awareness that would prepare them for college and beyond.
Spreading their wings
Besides the culture shock, alumni have said leaving Saratoga allowed them to appreciate their individuality rather than focus primarily on academics.
Reflecting on her experiences as a student at Saratoga High, 2017 alumna Michelle Jiang, who attends Northwestern University, said she now realizes that a major flaw is that students aren’t encouraged to appreciate how they are unique from others. Often, Jiang said, students are trying to hit the same checkboxes of SATs and APs among other extracurriculars.
“I don’t think as a high school student I was given enough time to appreciate how I was different from people, or really think why that was important at all,” Jiang said. “If that was more promoted as a goal in the classroom, I think the students that come out of high school would be much more prepared to be citizens of the real world, and would be more able to advocate for themselves, and know what they really want.”
Expectations vs Reality
Along with the mix of social unreadiness and culture shock, social media can also contribute to college misconceptions and unrealistic expectations.
On many social media platforms, college life is often idealized. According to an article by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, many college admission offices now focus on platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter to increase student enrollment, as two in five students use social media as a tool in deciding what college to attend. Through these platforms, colleges feature campus images, display stories from alumni and parents, and share what college classes and culture is like so prospective students can see how they would fit into the school environment.
According to Jiang, the media and popular culture tend to focus on the aspects of college that seem interesting from an outside perspective, but fail to convey the full experience. Similarly, within the Saratoga community, college is also depicted as the ultimate, desirable goal. But in reality, the experience is more complicated, graduates say.
For one thing, college classes are difficult and students still have to juggle many extracurriculars, Jiang said. She noted that along with the much anticipated “very high highs,” college life also comes the unexpected “very low lows.”
Besides the challenges that many incoming college students face, the Class of 2020 must also navigate remote learning. Not only is it difficult to maneuver the new environment, online platforms and teaching structure of different professors, it’s also difficult to get to know people beyond their screens.
“Class sizes are really big and you’re limited to the participants tab on a zoom call to figure out who’s in your class,” said Class of 2020 alumna Tricia Jain, who now attends UCLA as an engineering major. “If you really wanted to, you could look someone’s name up and reach out to them on Messenger, but that’s incredibly awkward.”
Despite social discomfort, some students find themselves pleasantly surprised to learn that in terms of academics, college is manageable.
“I took the AP route [at SHS], but I was always struggling to maintain my grades, so I expected it to be really hard in Berkeley,” Jow said. “But my first couple of math classes at Berkeley just seemed so simple, which was not what I thought they were going to be like, so that was a nice surprise.”
Lai felt a similar sense of preparedness for her English class at Occidental College, where she noticed that the types of writing that college was now trying to introduce to students for the first time were similar to what she did at Saratoga.
Last advice and fun experiences
Although there are many difficult, challenging or even chaotic aspects of college that students must adapt to, there are highlights too. Notable ones include Jow being in a discussion section with NFL Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, a fellow Cal student at the time, and Jiang’s last-minute ramen dinner ditch-effort with her friends at 11 p.m. during finals week.
In the end, the alumni said they met new people, created unforgettable memories, learned important lessons, picked up life skills and gained insights.
“The best way to know what’s outside the [Saratoga] bubble is to build relationships with people who are different from yourself,” Jiang said. “And understanding that college is not the end. It’s really just the beginning.”