Mariana Parreiras
M.C.P./M.S. Transportation Engineering ‘10

Mariana Parreiras moved from Brazil to the United States with her family in 1989, when she was 16. She finished high school in Florida and two years later came to Berkeley to study architecture on a Regents’ Scholarship. She fell in love with the Bay Area and never left. Having lived in places as diverse as Niterói in Brazil; Miami, Florida; Venice, Italy; and the east and west sides of San Francisco Bay, Mariana was always intrigued by how environments affect the way people move about. Thus, she came back to Berkeley to study both city and regional planning and transportation engineering.

Her main goal is to improve traffic safety on city streets so that walking and bicycling become real, attractive options for short trips. With her two degrees she hopes to bridge the gap that often exists between planning and engineering.
 

Thank you Dean Wolch.

Hi everyone; on behalf of all of my peers up here on the stage, thank you for coming to celebrate our graduation with us.

It’s hard to believe it’s been three years since I started graduate school. I remember orientation, just before the beginning of classes, like it was yesterday. Now, most of orientation consists of giving students useful and important bits of information, like who your adviser is and what classes you need to take to graduate and so on, but there’s another part of it where all the important people in the college, like the Dean and the Department Chairs, welcome the new students to Berkeley. We sit in a big auditorium, and one after the other they file through the stage and say a few words of welcome. And it goes something like this: “blah blah blah blah blah, but the thing that really makes Berkeley what it is, is the students.” And one after the other, they say the exact same thing, and they urge us to learn from each other. And we sit there and we think “well, that’s pretty cheesy” and we feel a little awkward because they are talking about us.

Then classes begin, and you start getting to know your peers. You hear about their backgrounds, and where they’ve been, and what they’ve done. We take classes together and you get to hear their insights, their experiences, their plans… And pretty soon it hits you, and you go “Huh.” [pause] And you understand why all those people at orientation really had to tell you about how amazing the students are. It may sound cheesy, but the bottom line is, they were right. It is as if the students were all these bright shining stars scattered all around the world, and they’ve all decided to come and spend some time here at Berkeley. Somehow I got in here too, but I keep thinking that must have been a glitch in the process… Anyways. And so we get together here at Berkeley for a while, and sparks fly — you can almost see it. We share our knowledge and our ideas, and we build connections and communities. Then comes the time for us to spread out again, but as we go, we’re a bit brighter, and we have acquired new tools, and new ties.

It is both a great time and a terrible time to be graduating. It is certainly not the best time to find a job, and that’s scary; but on the other hand, it is an exciting time, full of possibilities. Just think: changes that might have seemed impossible just a few years ago, like health care reform, are becoming reality today. Discussions that used to take place only in advocacy circles now take place at the federal government level, and in public. My personal favorite came from Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood: He said that people who value bicycling should have a voice when it comes to transportation planning, and that it is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized transportation. That’s crazy talk, or is it? Not only was it not crazy talk; it wasn’t just “talk,” either. He followed right up with a policy statement. Even just two years ago, we would not have heard any such thing from a government official, but now we do. Best of all, we’re just getting started. Soon we may see changes in how we generate our energy, how we treat our immigrants, and how we run our finance system.

But progressive reforms will take a lot of work. It’s a bit like shifting the course of a big, massive ship that’s been on autopilot in the same direction for a really long time. That’s where we all come in. It is the perfect time for us, new graduates, to help turn the ship. There are hurdles in our path — lack of funding is the first one of them — but we are all well-equipped to find creative solutions to get around the hurdles. It’s a big task, but if each one of us picks up a piece of the puzzle, then we can do it. If we each set out to change the world a little bit, together we can change the world a lot.

I’d like to end with a few words I borrowed from one of my peers. I attended his studio presentation a few weeks ago, and at the end of the review he spoke on behalf of the class in appreciation of their professor. He said that she had pushed them, and inspired them, and nurtured them, and he thanked her for it. His words really stayed with me, because it seemed like just what we need going forward. So as we leave the Greek Theater today — all of us, not just the graduates — I hope that we will always challenge one another, inspire one another, and nurture one another in our work, and in our personal lives. Now let’s get to work. Thank you.