About Choice

In my first Sociology class, our professor asked us why we were enrolled at UC Davis and not doing something else. At that time, the first answer came to my mind was that UC Davis was the only college that accepted me. I chose to enroll at UC Davis because I had no more choice. However, is the fact supposed to like that? It sounds ridiculous that I come to UC Davis because I have no more choice. At least I can still make choice between going and not going to UC Davis. If I said that I had no more choice but go to UC Davis, there must be a reason to explain why. I sink into thinking.

Two years ago, when I still was a high school student, I got a chance to have a campus tour in Davis. Very different from the city I lived, San Francisco, Davis seemed to be a quiet but clean city. Moreover, the most fantastic thing I appreciated was that people could bike freely here. I was a bike girl, but I had never had a chance to bike in my home city (everyone should knows that San Francisco is well known for its crooked streets and undulating surface). There was a moment that I heard of a sound – may be UC Davis is the place that I am looking for so long. To be honest, UC Davis is not my first choice on my college application. I am an ambitious girl and I hope I can enroll in the best public university, UC Berkeley. It appears extremely common that human beings tend to prefer stuffs that are the best but not suitable for them rather than stuffs that are suit for them but not the best. In this case, UC Berkeley is the best choice for me, and UC Davis becomes the most suitable choice to me.

It is very hard for me to make choice between these two colleges. Similarly, not only me, but also people in the world make thousands of choices during their whole lives. Some of them are not important, and some of them relatives to humans’ interest and benefit. No matter what kind of choice, it is always accompanied with sacrifice. For this reason, people always make their choices to maximize their interest. In addition, with the “help” of the media world, hedonism deeply embeds in people’s minds. People fall into a trap and believe that they should pursue and enjoy the best things because they have limited lives. They say that they praise their lives and in the next second, they step into the shopping malls, buy the most expensive clothes and sit at the fancy restaurants to have the most luxurious dinners. They spend lots of time and money in pursuing the so called “best interest” but suddenly they find that they are still lonely and not satisfied. In this case, they sacrifice their internal feeling when they choose the external materials. When people pursue the best interest, they will easily ignore their inside desire. In my own view, making choice is like choosing a husband for myself. To me, the best stuff is like a rich man but I do not love, and the suitable stuff is a poor man but I deeply want to engage to. In the real life, it is much easier to meet a rich man than a suitable man. However, most of people still would like to choose the former.

In a sense, I was lucky enough that I got rejected by UC Berkeley. It makes me realize that things turn into the best because they are suitable, and this is the reason that I choose to enroll in UC Davis.