<p>...at least be thankful you weren't around 20 or so years ago.</p>
<p>An undergraduate student's comments, printed in "Berkeley: Inside/Out" 1989 edition, pg. 62::</p>
<p>*"I go to Cal" - this simple statement stirs both love and hate within me. Outside campus boundaries, I bask in the glory of my dignified and reputable institution. Yet when that same institution laughs at my requests for books, money, or classes, I grow to despise Cal - the distant demi-god that looms threateningly over my education.</p>
<p>I remember the night campus police armed with billy clubs threw 30 students out of a campus building. Since we were waiting to enroll in required English courses, we had to sleep overnight on the steps in the cold January rain. Such atrocities stem from the overcrowding and underfunding that also create the dreaded large lecture courses. In these anonymous classes the professor becomes just a grade-giver, the student becomes just a grade, and interaction seldom occurs.</p>
<p>Cal's most positive quality is an overwhelming excellence. You find that your freshman chemistry professor wrote your nationally applauded chemistry textbook between Nobel Prize-winning research sessions, and your roommate got perfect scores twice on the college entrance exam. With such participants, classroom discussions can become exchanges of wisdom that compensate for any bureacratic hassle. </p>
<p>In the end, a feeling of intellectual fulfillment will never march up to you with a welcoming smile at Cal - you must chase and catch it yourself. This chase to learn devastates some students who drop out or transfer. Yet I believe I speak for the majority of Cal undergraduates when I say that despite our premature gray hairs and subconscious yearnings for the organized ease of Ivy League schools, we are glad to be here. It is quite an experience.</p>
<ul>
<li>[Female senior English and Mass Comm major]*</li>
</ul>