<p>Hi guys!
I will be starting school at UC Berkeley in less than a week. And I`m a nervous wreck!
Those of you who have been through this already could you please answer these questions.</p>
<p>1) What did you bring with you on your first day of college? </p>
<p>2) Did you buy your books before or after classes started?</p>
<p>Also I want to major in sociology, if there are any sociology majors from UC Berkeley could you please tell me what to expect. How heavy is the workload for this major? Are the professors good?</p>
<p>Thank you?</p>
<p>Are you a commuter?
DD took her backpack, laptop, phone. She purchased her books before classes began, and her sister helped her find cheaper books online.<br>
Studying in college, especially Berkeley, requires good time management skills. </p>
<p>Yes I`m a commuter. Did she purchase her books at UC Berkeley?</p>
<p>Buy books after you’ve gone to class. You (most likely) won’t need them the first week of school, and then you can get a feel for which classes you ACTUALLY need the books for…or which classes you can just buy cheap non-custom books from Amazon for. And if you can avoid it, don’t buy textbooks from the student store. Look for WAYY cheaper alternatives–my favorites are Amazon Textbook Rental with amazon prime (which you can get 6 months free for since you’re a student, amazon prime gives you free 2 day shipping) or bigwords.com (which basically does all the hard work of finding the cheapest textbook for you).</p>
<p>My daughters always read ahead in the text before classes began.</p>
<p>I always take a backpack, laptop, notebook, pencils, etc. with to class, along with the usual essentials (phone, id, keys). I mean, it’s school. It might be college instead of highschool, but you know what you need for class, you know how you take notes best. So, bring the same things you’re used to having in school.</p>
<p>I usually got books before class started. In my experience Cal is pretty good at actually using the assigned readings, and I liked being able to shop around for good prices. But I know a lot of students wait until they need books to buy them, so it’s really up to you.</p>
<p>On the first few days of class, give yourself plenty of leeway on commuting time to reach campus well before you have to be there for class, since you may underestimate commuting time.</p>
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<p>Doing that will help the student stay on top of the class instead of falling behind.</p>
<p>If you’re commuting, bring the junk you THINK you’ll need, and leave that in the trunk of your car, but you’ll need your backpack and essentials with you. When we visited Berkeley, we saw a girl take her bike out of her car. It’s a hilly campus so she must have been used to biking there.<br>
If you do BART, you need to bring what you can carry and what you need for that day.</p>
<p>Did you buy your books at the cal store?</p>
<p>@QuirkyGirl Did you buy your books at the cal store?</p>
<p>I actually compared prices for my books between Amazon and the Cal Store and I saw that some books at amazon were priced higher than Cal Store’s and vice versa.So, I bought some books from the Cal Store and others from Amazon 
Thank you Aunt Bea for your suggestion, I will definitely try to fill my bag with the stuff I needed :)</p>
<p>@anny123 For your first two questions, this post answers it all!
<a href=“http://blog.admissions.berkeley.edu/2014/08/your-foolproof-guide-to-the-first-day-of-school/”>http://blog.admissions.berkeley.edu/2014/08/your-foolproof-guide-to-the-first-day-of-school/</a> </p>
<p>I’m not a sociology major, but my former roommate was one. She LOVES all her classes and does the reading for fun. She says it isn’t too difficult and the professors are mostly cool. </p>
I thought I was the only one