By Atmika Iyer
College is hardly the best four years of life and what comes after is not worse, just different —bringing both opportunities and obstacles, says UCSB alumnus Dhishal Jayasinghe.
UC Santa Barbara’s Writing Program invited Jayasinghe, a former Global Studies and Philosophy double major and Professional Writing minor, to deliver a talk on the realities of life and career after graduating from college.
After graduation, Jayasinghe was an intern, staff assistant and legislative correspondent with Senator Bernie Sanders’s office in Washington D.C. Currently, he is a program analyst with the State Department.
The recent discussion was part of an annual Writing Minor graduate speaker series. The event began with an introduction by Ljiljana Coklin, who teaches in the Civic Engagement Track of the writing minor, which Jayasinghe completed in 2019. She outlined his professional accomplishments during and after college.
Dhishal Jayasinghe spoke to faculty and students at a Professional Writing MInor graduate speaker event. He now works for the State Department.
“I had the pleasure of working with Dhishal four years ago in the civic engagement track,” Coklin said. “Around the time of the graduation, students were talking about their post college experience, and they really stood up and said, ‘Well, have you heard about Dhishal? He's going to D.C. He's going to work with Bernie Sanders.’”
Jayasinghe was born in Sri Lanka and immigrated to the U.S. as an asylum seeker. After coming to UCSB, Jayasinghe participated in student government as an Associated Students senator and worked to pass local measures, specifically Measures E, F and R, that helped usher in local governance to Isla Vista through the Isla Vista Community Services District.
Following his graduation nearly four years ago, Jayasinghe hopped on a flight to D.C. as a part of the UCDC program where he interned with Senator Bernie Sanders’s office for a summer. Jayasinghe found himself promoted within the office and stayed on as a staff assistant and later became a legislative correspondent.
“Three thousand dollars to my name, that's all I had,” he said. “That summer was nothing short of absolutely incredible. I worked in that office for Senator Sanders, that’s when I met AOC, Ilhan Omar, Ted Cruz.”
Now, he is a program analyst with the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration working on “protection, security, and mitigations” — President Biden’s primary goals with the State Department — in the western hemisphere.
Jayasinghe said he’s largely focused on a predicted influx of migrants following the expiration of Title 42 — a public health measure invoked by the CDC at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to bar migrants.
His time at UCSB revealed his affinity for philosophy and politics despite initially pursuing a pre-medical school path.
“I was a philosopher. And I knew that that's where my heart really was, philosophy and politics. But I still decided to do pre-med stuff. Anyways, come fall quarter I failed both chemistry and math. Probably because I didn't really enjoy it so much,” Jayasinghe said.
Jayasinghe decided to abandon the pre-med track in favor of pursuing his passions.
Dhishal Jayasinghe, who graduated in Philosophy, Global Studies and Professional Writing, stayed past his recent talk at UC Santa Barbara to enjoy alumni weekend on campus.
“And instead of continuing on pushing on, I remember that I took lots of courses in the summer leading up to my fourth quarter, and I did so well on those and I decided this is something I wanted to talk about in this chat,” he said, referring to his talk with students last week.
After taking a one-unit course with a professor in the Professional Writing Minor, he decided to pursue the minor.
“I loved all my classes pretty much,” Jayasinghe said. “I liked it so much. I think back then there were three [Writing Program] classes that you needed to take to get into the minor. I took five because I just had such a great time.”
Jayasinghe said he had a “phenomenal” experience while at UCSB in a grassroots effort to help create local governance.
“To be able to be part of this grassroots sort of movement — real grassroots like in the grass somewhere—was so phenomenal. And I think an important part of that for me is to remind you guys: the things you did here do 100% matter and people want to hear about it,” he said.
He hoped to impart raw honesty regarding the realities of life after graduating with the audience. He described a rough transition, saying he was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome and also had to briefly move into his friend’s basement.
“It’s great that I got to meet and insult Mitt Romney and have Matt Gaetz stare at me and watching the Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings,” Jayasinghe said. “But I also want to talk about taking the LSAT three times, getting rejected from law school twice.”
He even had a roommate that the FBI was searching for.
“The FBI calls and they're like, ‘Hey, do you know if your roommate is doing drugs?’ And then they start describing my home … They said he was a witness. They’re lying,” Jayasinghe joked.
The Writing grad’s final bit of advice was to enjoy college, and know that life is not a race.
“Try to enjoy what you already have right now because once upon a time all these things were a prayer and a hope, right?” Jayasinghe said. “As the time goes on. There's just so many people who you haven't met that will love you. So many activities that you haven't done that you will follow up with. It's very much not a race.”
Atmika Iyer is a third year UC Santa Barbara student majoring in History. She wrote this for her Digital Journalism course.