Rachel Li
Can you introduce yourself with your name, year, major, hometown, and fun fact?
My name is Rachel Li, I am a third year graduating in 2022, actually maybe later, I might take a gap year/semester, we'll see. Hometown: Rockville, Maryland. Major: Computer Science. Fun fact: I used to have a study Instagram with 1000 followers.
What are your hobbies and interests?
I like board games, especially Avalon and Codenames, and recently I've been getting into Among Us. I feel like I'm really bad at it, but I like watching streams, especially Sykkuno and the whole OfflineTV house. I like bullet journaling and stationery in general as well, hence the studygram from high school. I like design in general; I like reading Medium articles about design principles and UI/UX design, and also productivity software/tips. I've dabbled in graphic design a little bit; I have working knowledge of Illustrator, but I'm not a pro or anything. I have a food Instagram (@rachellyeats) — I mostly just like to try new food places, I don't bake or cook that much. Also I like kdramas.
What movies/shows do you like, and is there anything new you've been watching over quarantine?
Mostly kdramas, I feel like that's all I watch these days. I watched 5 kdramas over quarantine, which I feel like doesn't sound like a lot because a lot of people like to binge stuff, but it's a lot for me. I'm really slow at watching stuff, and I can't watch during the semester because then I get distracted too easily, like I get invested in a show very easily. Some of my top kdramas are Hotel Del Luna, While You Were Sleeping, Pinocchio, I Hear Your Voice — the last 3 all have Lee Jong Suk in it and they're all by the same writer. In general I like shows that have some crime or legal aspect, and some fantasy aspect, just like not pure "slice of life". And then American TV shows, I like Black Mirror — that's not American, that's British, but it's English. I think Black Mirror is just really interesting because it makes you think a lot about tech, and a lot of the episodes could be real life right now, or could realistically happen in a few years, which is kind of scary but also a reality check. They also mess with your mind, so it's fun to watch those, even though some of them are pretty scary. Movies, I like Disney movies. I feel like I don't like Disney as much as I used to, but I used to really like Disney, and all the Disney Channel Original Movies as well, like Lemonade Mouth; songs from that soundtrack slap. I like Legally Blonde, I never get sick of watching that. It's just a feel good movie, and it lowkey made me want to be a lawyer back in high school. I also like Crazy Rich Asians, I cry every time they play the song Yellow, and then like he proposes or the mom gives her blessing. There's also another movie, Mamma Mia — also a good soundtrack. And also Marvel movies.
What's your professional experience?
I'm not super focused in one area, like I've had experience in a lot of different areas, so in the summer after freshman year, that was summer 2019, I did an internship at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center here in Maryland. There was no official title, but it was like a data management internship, so my mentors were working on a project that looked at the potential of Twitter data to augment satellite data from official NASA satellites related to precipitation. So that was just looking at people who were tweeting about the weather, or even official weathers, seeing if that could help augment the official satellite data. My part of the project was figuring out how to store the Twitter data in a way that's compatible with the existing NASA data formats. So that was more of a research-y internship, and then last summer, which was after sophomore year, summer 2020, I did a software engineering internship at Fidelity Investments. It was mostly web development and I did front-end, so I made one web app from scratch with 2 other interns, and we also did another project that involved adding features to an existing web app. It's pretty cool that I got to build a zero to one product, starting from scratch, and also see what an existing codebase is like and see how industry code is written.
Are you involved with any other clubs on campus?
I'm involved with the Blue and Gold Yearbook; I am one of the Editors-in-Chief. So yearbook, we focus on covering events on campus. It's changed a lot now that we're remote, now a lot of the spreads are like "_____ in quarantine", for example food in quarantine, which covers how dining halls have changed, like their operations, how students have changed how they're cooking and how they're eating meals. We also have photos of graduating seniors in the yearbook. I've been into journalism since middle school, so I wanted to continue it in college, and I think it's a really cool way to learn more about campus and get involved. I started off as a copywriter, so I got the chance to go to these events, and a lot of the events I wouldn't have found out about or gone if it weren't for yearbook, so it really pushed me out of my comfort zone. And it's just fun to create a book that commemorates UC Berkeley and keeps track of memories. I used to be involved in more things, like I did AFX for a semester. It was really fun, but it was a lot more time commitment than I thought, because you can just do the bare minimum and go to practice, but if you want to be really good, and learn the pieces well, you have to go to office hours and there's a bunch of socials as well, so if you want to be involved you have to put in a lot of effort, and I just didn't think I had the time for that after one semester.
How did you find out about SAAS?
The summer before freshman year of college, I went on Callink and I looked at every single club and went down the list. It slowed down my computer a lot, because I would just keep clicking "load more". So I don't recommend that to people because it was a lot; it might be better to just filter by interest. But yeah, so I went down the list, and back then I was interested in anything quantitative as a major, like Applied Math, Stats, Data Science, Computer Science, so I was definitely looking to join a major-related club. At the time SAAS was SUSA, Statistics Undergraduate Student Association, and I was interested in Statistics, so I was like oh this is pretty cool, so I made note of it, but I didn't plan on actually applying to any major clubs until my spring semester because I wanted to take it easy my first semester. But then during Calapalooza my first semester, I was flyered by Adish, who was the president at the time, and he pretty much sold me on it. I was worried, I was like, oh, I don't really have a lot of experience, because I saw the Data Consulting committee, and he was like, it's okay, we have Career Exploration, you don't need experience for that, I think that would be a good committee for you. So I was like okay why not, so then I applied, and here I am. So I started off in Career Exploration.
Addendum: It is April 2021 and I JUST realized that I actually found out about SUSA before I looked at the Callink list of clubs. Around late May of my senior year (after I had committed to Berkeley), my mom set up a time for me to chat with a current Berkeley student (we had never met before). Her name was Winne Luo, she lived 10 minutes away from me and was home for 1 week, so we drove to her house and I chatted with her. I asked her what extracurriculars she was involved in on campus and she said her main club involvement was SUSA. She was a Stats + Public Health double major and a Research & Publication director. So I think having that hometown connection probably made me more receptive towards joining SUSA as opposed to any other major-related club.
What other committees have you been on and what did you do in each one?
I started off in CX, I think that was actually the first semester where they changed the CX curriculum up a bit. I think in the past CX was more career focused, like they would bring in speakers, do resume workshops, and teach you about how stats is used in industry, but my semester, they changed it to be led by the Education committee, so the Education committee would come in and teach the CX committee basics of stats, data science, machine learning. And then after that, I did Web Dev for a semester, and I made a data visualization of UCPD crime rates. And then I was Web Dev Director for 2 semesters, so all of last year. We did projects like fixing the attendance system on the website where you can input your student ID and check your points, redesigning the website multiple times, a merch shop to sell SAAS merch — it's not up yet because we don't have merch, but that was a thing. And now I'm IVP.
Which committee was your favorite?
It's hard to say, but I can talk about Web Dev and why I stayed there for 3 semesters. I feel like I have a different experience from a lot of other people in SAAS in that I came in being interested in Stats and Data Science, and after CX, I wasn't so sure anymore. I wanted to explore software, other fields in tech, so I did Web Dev. I gradually realized that I liked Web Dev and software engineering a lot more than data science, so SAAS definitely helped me figure that out. Web Dev also kind of has its own culture; Web Dev is known for introducing Avalon, the board game, to the club, and hosting Avalon nights. It's a chill committee, also very fun and tight-knit. It was fun to create things that all SAAS members could use, like for example the attendance system has a big impact. The website's public facing, so I got to contribute to making sure that we're putting ourselves out there correctly. I guess that's very similar to what I do in IVP with marketing right now, but yeah I liked creating things that had a tangible impact on people. It was a lot of self-learning, so that was pretty useful too, because I feel like you have to do a lot of that in industry, so it's good to learn how to learn.
What would you say your proudest accomplishment in SAAS is?
I think maybe just rebranding SAAS, because I feel like in the past, Web Dev had to do stuff like redesigning the website, but it was hard because we didn't know where to find the logos and there were no cohesive colors. I didn't know what colors to use, I didn't know what fonts to use, so that was kind of hard. We actually did have a branding guide before, but people weren't really aware of it and it was a bit outdated. Once I became IVP I decided to standardize SAAS branding over the summer, so like redesigning the logo, making sure that the logo assets were available for everyone to use, picking colors, picking fonts, creating a branding guide that summarizes the fonts, the colors, how to use the logo, messaging, and defining SAAS values of community, exploration, and mentorship. I made sure these values were included on the website. We also picked some design elements, like waves and gradients, and making sure that's standardized across all designs. Also shoutout to Matt and Assata for helping a lot with that over the summer.
What do the SAAS values of community, exploration, and mentorship mean to you?
So exploration, I already talked about this a little before, but I think in SAAS we try to provide a space for people to explore different interests in tech, and I was definitely able to do that. With my first semester in Career Exploration, I learned more about stats and data science, some more advanced concepts, so I got to see what upper division classes would be like and what tools I would be using in industry. But then I realized that maybe it wasn't for me; I wasn't super excited about it, like it was cool but I wasn't sure if that's what I wanted to do. Then I did Web Dev, and that helped me realize that I liked creating things that had an impact on people. But I'm lowkey pivoting again now, I thought I wanted to do software engineering, but now I kind of want to do UI/UX or product design. IVP actually helps with that because I work on design and branding. Web Dev also helped with that, like redesigning the website and designing the project that I worked on last semester, the merch shop. So it's kinda cool how in SAAS, I always find a way to tie what I'm doing back to what I'm interested in career-wise.
For community, I feel like SAAS is big enough that if you're interested in something, chances are someone else is also interested, no matter how niche that interest is. In my first semester in SAAS, I met Joyce, and we bonded over bullet journaling and stuff, and now we're housemates. We lived together last year. I'm not in Berkeley now, but she's at our apartment. In general, I've met some of my closest friends through the club, people to do homework with and also people to carry me through classes, people to go to SF with, people to have spontaneous dinners with (sometimes in Oakland, like Shooting Star), and also people to go to career fairs and grind job apps with. What I really like about SAAS's community is that people are there for you socially but also professionally. If you have questions about careers, there's people to help you with that and people to like work on recruiting with you. And also academics, people to study with and upperclassmen to ask about what classes to take. So just in general, people care a lot about your academic, professional, and personal development, so it's a nice holistic experience
What is your favorite SAAS memory?
It's hard to pick just one; I'll probably talk about multiple. I really liked board game nights last semester; so once everything went online, we started hosting board game nights every single week, so we created a board games channel and there was a consistent group that showed up to that. That was really fun, since making a board games group was something we had been talking about for like a year; we were like, we should do a SAAS board games group, cause a lot of people are interested in board games, but it never really happened until last year. It was just a nice way to destress after a long week but also keep in touch and be social during quarantine, since this was the beginning of quarantine. I feel like any time we played board games in SAAS it was always fun for me. For retreat, I liked Fall 2019 retreat, because I feel like we got to do a variety of things. We went to the beach, it was cold but we threw a Frisbee around, we went to a grocery store and we bought ribs for dinner, so that was a nice unexpected dinner. I got to participate in the cooking, we played Avalon, Secret Hitler, a bunch of drinking games as well, so I feel like we got to do a variety of things, and I got to really bond with a lot of people that retreat. Another one that stands out is Face Mask Night from November 2019; so I hosted that at my place and it wasn't that structured, we were just de-stressing and doing self care together, we baked wine brownies, watched movies, watched random YouTube videos, just a very chill way to spend a Friday night.
What is your personal vision for SAAS going forward?
My vision for SAAS is mostly related to social culture because I'm IVP, but I really want SAAS to be a place where people have a chance to meet other people that are interested in the same things as them, whether that be academic interests or hobbies, and forge lasting relationships and find some sort of community. I want people to have the same experience that I had I guess, in terms of academic support, professional support, and personal support. Mostly encouraging people to be more active in the club, do small scale meetups like Donutbots, big/little hangouts, house meetups as well as whole club socials, and retreat, and making the Slack more active. I think the Slack has been doing pretty well this semester, I'm glad to see a lot of people doing Donutbot and submitting confessions even though it is a remote semester. For bigger picture stuff, I think maybe it would be cool to focus more on mentorship, I think we've been doing that with having Brian be the Professional Development Advisor, but something else I was thinking of was just like creating recruiting interest groups for people interested in for example software engineering, and there's a lot of people interested in quant, creating Slack channels for that so people can work together on recruiting for the roles that they're interested in and also people sharing more resources about the job hunt and professional development in general.
What is your favorite class you've taken at Berkeley?
Honestly, I really like Stat 140. I'm not a stats major at this point, but for some reason I just really like probability, like I find it to be really interesting, and I think 140 is a very well-structured and well-taught class. Adhikari is a really good lecturer, and I feel like the homework problems are hard, but when I do them I understand why they're hard, and I'm like okay I understand what concept this is reinforcing. The exams are fair too, like Adhikari really knows how to write exams so that's it's a perfect Normal distribution, and she always says that no one ever complains about the grading on exams and that's pretty true. I've been fine with my grades in the class cause like fair exams, fair homework, fair everything. Great class; it's a lot of work but I think everyone agrees that it's very worth it in the end. It's not like other classes where the homework's really hard and it's a big jump from the lecture and textbook content and it feels unnecessarily hard. But maybe that might also be because I enjoy the content more.
Do you have any advice on how to take notes and study for classes?
I started doing iPad notes last semester. It depends on the class; for math classes I like handwriting notes, whether that's iPad or using notebooks. For CS classes, I don't think notes help as much, maybe just downloading the slides and annotating them. I feel like in CS classes, you just have to practice, and it's better if during lecture you don't just spend all your time taking notes and instead just try to absorb the content so you can apply it later. Something that's really helped me for CS 70 and 170 was doing the readings twice, the first time just highlighting and reading for understanding, and then after that, re-reading it, and looking at what I highlighted, and then writing the important stuff down on a kind of cheatsheet/list of important theorems and things to remember. So that's kind of a way to study for midterms as you go, because I feel like classes like CS 70 and 170 you can't really cram for it; it's more like are you paying attention, are you doing your work throughout the semester, are you understanding the concepts throughout the semester, so that's been a good way for me to keep up and start studying earlier. I feel like a lot of people like grinding past exams, but I'm not super big on that. I feel like you have to understand the concepts first, especially in math classes, so I usually just re-read notes first, make sure that I understand everything, and then maybe do one or two practice exams. But I don't like to start with practice exams. Also, for humanities and social science classes, I just take laptop notes. A hack I've found is like, if the professor has slides then just type notes or annotate the slides because they go way too fast. But if they handwrite notes, like usually in math classes, then that means you can keep up if you handwrite. So usually my notetaking style is whatever the professor does. I think in general, making sure that you understand your strengths and weaknesses, understanding exactly what areas you need to focus on, and when you get something wrong, understanding why you got it wrong. If you know you're pretty strong in one class, and you know that maybe the midterm isn't super hard, you don't need to over-study for it, maybe just reviewing notes and making a cheatsheet should be enough. Just making sure you don't spend unnecessary time doing things that you really don't need to.
Where is your favorite place to study on campus?
I really like Esh, especially Esh third floor. I used to have keycard access, because SAAS had a cubicle there. It depends on when you go, though — if you go during the day, it's very quiet, you can be very productive, and you can sit anywhere. Clubs have designated cubicles, but you can go anywhere. Some clubs will have a sign that says "don't sit here if you're not in this club", but otherwise it's pretty much a free-for-all. But then at night, maybe starting at 5 PM on weekdays, except for Friday, it gets really loud, so sometimes I've had very unproductive study sessions there, but other times going during the day has been productive. Also Main Stacks, I go to Main Stacks when I really need to grind and be productive. SAAS used to have a lot of study hours there as well. I also study in the Blue & Gold office in MLK, it's a nice private location, and pretty convenient too since I live Southside. I think those were the main places I studied. Bancroft Library I went to a lot freshman year. I'm not even sure if that's the name, but it's a part of Doe I think, it has like the brown tables and the chandelier lights. There's an entrance right across from Evans and the Campanile area.
In your opinion, what are the prettiest and ugliest buildings on campus?
I think Evans is pretty ugly, and Wurster. Wurster, well I haven't been there enough times, but Evans I have to go to a lot, and I hate it there. I think Bancroft Library is pretty, mostly the inside. I guess if we're lumping that in with Doe, then Doe is pretty nice. Also, I once saw someone's snap story that was a picture of Evans from inside Moffitt, and they were like "views *heart eyes emoji*" and I was like what views?
Oh, Berkeley Way West, that's not on campus, but I mostly like the interior. I've studied there a few times, but it's very far because it's all the way downtown/northside so I don't go there that often.
Do you have a favorite bathroom?
I have a least favorite bathroom, that's for sure! I hate the VLSB bathrooms; I feel like they're so dirty and the lines are so long. Also Moffitt 3rd floor, kinda gross, but it's convenient so I actually do go there a lot. Favorite bathroom though, I don't know. 3rd floor Esh bathrooms are nice, they're not dirty, I guess. I don't think one bathroom stands out, it's just that the bad bathrooms really stand out.
What is your favorite restaurant?
Ooh, okay, I have a whole spreadsheet. I like T-Toust on Southside, I mostly get the galbi short rib, which is expensive but it's really good. So yeah, love T-Toust. Gypsy's is always good, a classic. Sliver has good pizza. I like Berkeley Thai House's special — you can get a main course, a drink, and a side dish for $10. That usually buys you one main dish, so the portions are a little smaller, but it's enough for me. And any brunch place, honestly; I like brunch places in general. Tasty Pot is pretty good too. Oh, Toss Noodle Bar in downtown.
What is your favorite boba shop?
I like UCha for boba, I like honeydew milk tea. I just really like honeydew milk tea, and UCha is pretty much the only place that has it.