If I didn’t know better, I’d think this Saturday was Christmas morning — or at least it’s what I imagine Christmas must feel like, considering I’ve never celebrated it.
Anxious in anticipation, I will lay out my clothes at the foot of the bed. Shoes propped in the corner, my purse packed and alarm set to jump out of bed. On Friday night, I’ll tuck myself in the way kids do when they can’t wait for the morning, ready to spring up at dawn and run down the hall yelling, “It’s Big Game day!”
This Saturday, when the Cal faithful makes its trek to Stanford for the Big Game, I won’t just be celebrating the rivalry. I’ll be marking my last game day and my last Big Game as a Bear.
And yes, people say you’ll always be a Bear — but there’s a difference between belonging to a place and returning to it. A difference between being part of the roar and standing just outside it, visiting for a moment, looking back through a window in time.
I know this is my last moment before I start searching for that window in time. It’s not just the Big Game — it’s my big game.
Even though I’m sad that this is an away game, and I can’t spend my final hours as a student wrapped in the echoes of Memorial Stadium, I know it will be an amazing day. It’s happening at a moment where I feel settled at UC Berkeley, grounded enough to actually cherish it.
When I went to the Big Game at Stanford during my sophomore year, I was a different version of myself. A bit less rooted and a lot more unsure of what the day would bring.
Most of my friends had decided not to drive, so I ended up staying with a girl I’d met randomly at a frat party the year before. In exchange for not having to wake up at 6 a.m. and drive from Berkeley, I traded a night with a near-stranger for a bed to crash on. She, in turn, traded her time with a near-stranger for the Big Game with her boyfriend — which, to be fair, I completely understand in hindsight.
I spent the day getting lost in the labyrinth that is Stanford’s campus, only finding my way to the center once I got to the Ink Bowl, the annual flag football game between The Daily Californian and the Stanford Daily. It was the one part of the day that felt familiar, the one moment where I knew exactly where I was supposed to be.
While I plan to keep the Ink Bowl as part of my game day experience, I’ll be scratching out the “time with strangers” portion of the agenda and replacing it with a day spent with my closest friends. Cramming into cars, blasting music down I-280, taking too many photos in blue and gold and finding our seats together as the stadium fills.
This will be the first — and the last — Stanford game day my friends and I travel to as a group. These are the friends I met during the very first month of freshman year, the people who have shaped every season, day and memory I have as a Bear.
And this is our Big Game — the final one of our senior year and college careers.
After this, there will be no more tailgating, no more chants of “roll on you Bears” or watching the crowd try to wave their arms to spell C-A-L all at once. And although I know we’ll come back someday to peer through that window and remember what it felt like to have these moments together, I am ready to cherish these memories now.
I am ready to take in what it means to not only have these people in my life, but to have spent four years of game days rooting for a school that now feels like home.
