are people happy at berkeley?

<p>That’s what you get for sugarcoating your college apps. People walk into college acting like they’re all that, and then whine about getting destroyed later. Unrealistic expectations.
As for being so hard it ruins your life… some people work so hard that they hurt themselves, but the majority of people probably aren’t at that point. Just depends on whether you see learning or partying as more important.</p>

<p>Somebody will probably flame me for being a jerk, but from the technical classes I’ve taken, there’s very little busywork, and even though I do homework extremely slowly, I still have time to hang out at least a couple times a week. You’ve got to put in the work into understanding the concepts; I don’t really see how there’s any way to making it easier except slowing the pace down.</p>

<p>“Essentially if you choose one of the more competitive majors, the time you spend enjoying college is equivalent to points you lose on your GPA”</p>

<p>You have 168 hours in a week. Say you go to lecture for 12 hours. You spend another 5 in discussion. (I’m being very liberal with the numbers, most people don’t spend that much time in class.) You spend 28 doing various random tasks–eating, cleaning random ****, walking to class. You need about 42 hours of sleep. That’s 87 hours right there. That’s only half the time you have–81 hours left after spending 10 hours a day sleeping/eating/doing your telebears, 2.5 in scheduled academic activities. Say you spend 40 hours just on doing homework. I don’t know that many engineers, but 40 hours on homework seems excessive (if that’s true, might want to change your major to Haas, way better payout.) Either way, you still have 41 hours to “enjoy college.” Get off CC, get off facebook, and stop whining. </p>

<p>Of course, this applies to engineers/pre-Haas kids fighting for that last GPA point/pre-meds. Few other people have an excuse to complain, unless they work also.</p>

<p>A senior physics major once told me, “you all will fall on your ass.” I’m not living it at this moment but I’m already expecting it.</p>

<p>that’s probably cuz he’s a physics major lol</p>

<p>^bartleby: thanks for the breakdown…wow I really think I waste a lot of time since I never get these 41 hours! More like 5-10 of them. Although I do spend ~25hrs in class and waste lots of time on fb, watching tv, and texting. i’ve been enlightened all of a sudden…lol</p>

<p>I was pretty happy when I was at Berkeley, although the academic work was very stressful at times. I think the workload is the reason why so many people feel “less happy” at Cal, but I could be wrong.</p>

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<p>Danny
University of California, Berkeley '09</p>

<p>too many asians make me unhappy too. i read those posters about diversity and i think to myself…yeah if diversity means different parts of asia. sure!</p>

<p>Whoa WHOAA THERE BATMAN JUST PULLED THE RACE CARD!!! U a racist, batman?</p>

<p>No, he used the “diversity” buzzword, so he’s in the clear for now.</p>

<p>I can understand batman’s frustration with the university advertising itself as extremely diverse, but there being a glut of white people and asians versus the latino, native-american, and black populations does not help diversity any, if we are going with the genetic/ethnic make up of the student body. That’s kind of a ‘liberal-PC’ watered down version. Have a group of 100 people, have 65 of them be white, 15 of them be black, and the rest the other various races, per percentages of our country’s racial makeup, and call it diversity, nevermind we belong to the same overarching culture and for the most part, people are pretty interchangeable at the end of the day. Boo if you want, just bear with me. </p>

<p>The lack of diversity at Cal has little if anything to do with the genetic/ethnic makeup of the student body and more to do with the globalization of culture and compartmentalization of identity into bland, easily digestable chunks. It’s kind of like Holy Cow! (Indian place in LA), Sushi Mac, or Panda Express, or any other number of chain franchises that specialize in ‘ethnic foods’ that recreate the dishes in a way that is easily palatable to the white-bread masses by cutting back on the spices and amping up the sugar basically.</p>

<p>In fact, I found students that added to real social and cultural diversity, either through quirkiness, unique interests, difference in culture or opinion, and/or stepped out of the expected, rather than being accepted by the majority of their peers were ostracized as weird and/or too difficult to get along with. The lack of diversity comes more from an ingrained cultural laziness and suspicion of the ‘other’, rather than any fault of the school. There is also a major culture of “What Can You Do For Me?” without expectation of reciprocity, not just at Cal, but in the culture in general. Saw it a lot in the fraternities, people would come buy and drink our booze, use our recreational aids, and eat our food, and never commit to joining or an actual friendship. Why? “Because Greeks were lame.” – well, if you think we are -that- lame, don’t come to our house and freeload off our crap. I’ll get off on a rant here in a second, so let’s get back to the topic at hand. </p>

<p>Basically, my thesis here is that in my experience, the student body is pretty fearful and intolerant of what they don’t understand. A lot of them come from pretty cloistered suburban, rural, and upscale urban areas where pretty & polished versions of complicated issues are spoon-fed to them and they do not know how to deal with differences when they are confronted with them, even if that difference is beneficial and mindblowingly awesome. It’s the natural instinct to retreat to what is familiar and ignore/mistreat the ‘other’ in hopes they will bend to our homogenized version of the world. Okay, I’ll get off my self-righteous soap box. Just saying that the racial make up has little to do with our lack of diversity, because I found a lot of people pretty interchangeable despite phenotypical differences, and the lack of diversity is born more from the overarching McStarbucks culture we have cultivated for ourselves. We have developed expectations of how things are going to be, we expect to go into these familiar institutions and have things be fundamentally the same everywhere we go, and when we are confronted with difference or unfamiliar situations, we tend to Tetstudo (turtle up) and hide. Just saying.</p>

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<p>This. Games are not a good choice, because any games that allow you to get competitive will add in a serious emotional component and get you more stressed. This is why I no longer allow myself to play regular Starcraft games and instead stick exclusively to interesting custom stuff people have put out with the map editor.</p>

<p>Lol I live with a latent aryan, talk about diversity and acceptance there…</p>

<p>Are they from Orange County and a member of the BCR?</p>

<p>“bartleby: thanks for the breakdown…wow I really think I waste a lot of time since I never get these 41 hours! More like 5-10 of them. Although I do spend ~25hrs in class and waste lots of time on fb, watching tv, and texting. i’ve been enlightened all of a sudden…lol”
Out of curiosity, how do you spend 25 hours in class? 16 lecture units is 12 hours of lecture, I believe. You have 13 hours of discussion/lab a week? </p>

<p>But yeah, people who complain they don’t have enough time to “enjoy college” in many cases are just awful at managing their time. I am too, but I have an easy major that doesn’t require me to spend too much time working, so I can waste plenty of time, still enjoy college, and do decently well in school.</p>

<p>“3. Fake People. Again, say what you want about Los Angeles, but I met people that were far more afraid of confrontation and actually dealing with beefs and into the ‘nice to your face, nasty behind your back’ stuff who were from Northern California. Los Angeles is a lot more like New York and Europe in where you **** someone off, they’re likely to come talk to you about it and you know what? Usually after that, you both get over it, have a beer, and actually become friends or come to an amicable concordance. Here? I just find that grudges run deeper and deeper until they explode and people go out of their way to escalate things. All of this “we’re chill here in the Bay,” etc, is a bunch of #@%@^@ in my opinion.”</p>

<p>Possibly the most accurate description of Northern California I’ve read on the internet.</p>

<p>You just made my week, forget. LOL. I doubt many people really see it that way, but that was my experience.</p>

<p>What is it with guys afraid to show who they really are in Cal? I have met some of the most pretentious people there. Always reserved and trying to act perfect…</p>

<p>^^ Stick to the small subset of people who’re too crazy to care about pretense.</p>

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<p>pretentious –adjective

  1. full of pretense or pretension.
  2. making an exaggerated outward show; ostentatious.</p>

<p>Are you sure you know what that means? you seem to be contradicting yourself when you say they’re reserved.</p>

<p>Yeah, I’m fairly reserved, quiet, always very polite and respectful to people (maybe you’d call that trying to act perfect? I don’t know)…does that make me pretentious? I don’t think so…:-/</p>