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Hi, I'm Wendy and I'm from East Palo Alto, California. I'm a first year majoring in Mechanical Engineering.
I chose to come to Berkeley because it seemed to have everything that I wanted
in a college. It was in a good location, it had an amazing engineering program, and a
lot of activities and student groups all the time. On top of that, since I'm in state,
it was probably the best bargain I could get. I had a very relaxing summer before I came
to Berkeley. I spent a lot of time working at the frozen yogurt shop that I had worked
at since I was a sophomore in high school, and I just spent a lot of time with my friends from home.
So I actually moved in a day late, but I'll get to that later. So when I moved
in, my parents came, they helped me move my stuff to my room. My roommate was already
there, and she was really nice and welcoming. And then, I got to meet my whole floor the
rest of the day, and we went out to dinner and it was really nice. I moved into Ehrman
Hall, which is part of Unit 2, which is south of campus and I live on the fourth floor,
but on the other side of the building. So this is my room and as you can see, I have
a beautiful view of the bay. It's a little foggy today, which is not uncommon in Berkeley.
But usually I can see the Golden Gate bridge from my room. So my welcome week experience was a bit
different. I joined the marching band before school started, so I was very highly involved
in that during welcome week. And so I didn't really get to go to Convocation or Calapalooza, but I
had a lot of fun with my marching band friends.
So here we have Crossroads, which is the dining hall that serves Units 1 and 2. It has a lot
of variety for one day and it's an all you can eat style buffet. And everyday we have
organic salads and a lot of healthy options.
And over there we have the Den. It's a great place to grab a coffee or a bagel every morning before class.
One of my favorite places to eat in Berkeley is Berkeley Thai House. It has really good
thai food, as you can tell from the name, but it's also very representative of the food in Berkeley.
There are a lot of different options from a lot of different places and it's all pretty cheap.
So here we are on the south border of campus. On the south of the campus we have
Bancroft and to the north of me is all of the classrooms on campus. Usually I should allot
20 minutes to get to class. So here we have Sproul plaza, which right now it's a little
slow because it's still pretty early in the morning, but by lunchtime there are going to be tons
of tables, with tons of groups trying to recruit new members, especially during welcome week.
Everyone's going to be asking you to join.
Over here we have the main entrance to Doe Library, which is also known as the main library sometimes.
And then behind me we have the engineering side of campus, which is also referred to as north side.
So I usually study in the Kresge Engineering Library, but right now we're in the reading room of Doe Library,
which is you can see, a great quiet place to study.
So here we are at Bechtel, which is the heart of engineering at Berkeley. Over there we have the
Engineering Student Services office, which is where you can meet with your advisors.
Here we are inside the engineering student services office, which is home to your assigned advisor and peer advisors.
So my first semester at Berkeley was really great, except for the academics. I didn't try as
hard as I should have and it took me a while to realize that. So Chem 1A, I thought it
would be easy, but it definitely wasn't. After the first midterm I realized I had to try
a lot harder than I had been. But, if I had absorbed the information from the beginning,
it would've been a really great class and we had a lot of fun labs. My personal favorite
of my first semester was Engineering 10. Although it didn't go through a lot of mechanics like
I thought it would, we got to learn about how to design and test apparatuses. E98 was
a one unit pass - no pass seminar that was titled, "The Insider's Guide to Berkeley Engineering,"
and it had lessons on how to be a leader, how to do well in job interviews, how to find
housing for next year, and how to write a resume. So that was really practical for all
engineering students. I highly recommend it. I actually took Math 1A my first semester,
which was also calculus. I didn't think it was that great. I already knew the material
from high school and I technically didn't even have to take it. But what I learned from
that was even though I did know the material, I still had to try to do well in the class.
Rhetoric R1B was to fulfill the campus wide R&C reading composition requirement. And in
that class, it was much more than just writing. We read articles on racism, sexism, and gender
issues. My first semester academically wasn't the best. I quickly realized that my habits
of just doing what I needed to get by in high school weren't going to get me far here at
Berkeley. I realized that I actually really do need to take time to study the material
and really practice and apply it to extra problems. Before my first semester, I talked
to people in the marching band, because they were recruiting, and then I got involved.
Before school started, I went to training camp, did that, and that was a really, really
big part of my first semester. We had practice everyday so it was pretty time consuming,
but I made a lot of great friends, learned a lot about the university, and I'm proud
to say that I can represent the university. I actually live pretty close, so if I did ever
ever want to, I could go see my family. What I did was I made a pact with my mom that I
would call her every Sunday and every Wednesday, and that seems to work for both of us. She
understands that I have a busy life, but I still make time to talk to her when I can.
Being in Berkeley is different from home definitely, but I must say that it's a really great place
to go to college. It has tons of people our age around and just a lot of things to do, and
a lot of places to see. The hardest part of my first semester was adjusting to the fact
that I had friends all around me, but I still had to do my schoolwork. The best part would
also have to be having everything around me at all times. My best advice is to get involved,
but don't lose track of what's important, which is school and relationships.
And just have fun while you do everything.