<p>^ thats cool. Personally, I tended to talk more with the TA's and professors after class, and studied with my circle of friends. I can't even begin to tell you how much my friends saved my ass on a lot of class stuff. Discussions in classes were cool. Its interesting to see other people's perspectives on issues, especially if they are super passionate about stuff. As far as physics and math, I tend to do well in matrix algebra because its so conceptual and abstract, but I get too lazy for other types of math because I am not headed in that direction anyways. So I can't really speak for the math and sciences departments at Berkeley, but for the poli sci/econ classes, I can say the same thing you said. But I was usually too busy smoking out and having fun to be a good group contributor my freshman and sophomore years... hehe.</p>
<p>THANKS FOR SAVING MAH ASS TO ALL MY FRIENDS OUT THERE WHO WILL NEVER READ THIS! I WILL MAKE IT UP TO YOU IN THE FUTURE!</p>
<p>But I will tell you this. I took a course called " Governance in the E-conomy" before I graduated. It was taught by pre-eminent professors in the field of intellectual property issues in the New Economy. (this was 1999). There was no classes like this taught at any other university. What I learned in that class was prophetic, because later when I was working in tech investment banking, all the issues he was speaking about came to reality later on about 2-3 years later.</p>
<p>One lecture I remember was when he likened the Silicon Valley venture capital companies to communist technocrats that keep pumping money inefficiently to state enterprises. It's pretty amazing to be kept in the forefront of academic thinking at the areas where breakthroughs are made, especially by people who are very close to the industry. This was an upper division course, with about 15 students, and half were grad students. I would say that most of my courses in my latter years at Berkeley were taught by very very good professors and had 15-20 students or less. Total out of 32-35 courses I took, about 4 were 400 or more, 5-10 were 150 or less, and the rest were 50 or less. Unfortunately, I did not hang out much with the students in my class, (unless it was a pretty fine girl who was a good note taker...hehe) and my friends were all from my social circle instead. But yeah, I had a lot of friends, and there was always a lot of people that I knew in my classes. So I'd meet them that way, and study with them later and stuff. The bad part about studying together sometimes is that you usually talk about other stuff, and its very easy to get distracted. I remember the Berkeley Moffitt library was like a social club when i was there, so strange now that I think about it...</p>
<p>are the people generally easy to talk to and friendly at berkeley?</p>
<p>sure, if you agree with them =P</p>
<p>No, they are. You don't have to be a democrat either. I'm not. Why else is BCR (Berkeley College Republicans) the #2 largest club on campus. BTW #1 is AAA, not Cal Dems.</p>
<p>Discussions are just awesome. It's amazing how we have so much discussion compared to the other UCs. I don't see anyone else with 3 hrs of math discussion a week, 4 hrs of physics discussion (when ther'es no lab) a week. The TA's do a great job. Most of my professors have been awesome too. <em>cough</em>CS61A<em>cough</em></p>