im sitting in the security monitor booth at norton right now, and although i have tons and tons of homework to do, i'm in the blogging mood. so anyway, why am i sitting in a security monitor booth? BECAUSE I'M A SECURITY MONITOR! wooohoo. for a seemingly simple job, its actually been a long road to get here. I've applied 3 times; the first time my application was lost, the second time the hiring coordinator had already hired enough people, and i guess third time's a charm because here i am :)

Continue reading "october update" »

Posted by Angela Hsu at 1:41 AM | Permalink

As a junior, I've been very concerned with what I'm going to do after Berkeley. As I may have already stated, I'm switching over to the CRS major with a focus on environmental education & ecology. Some careers I'm quite interested in are teaching at the college level, restoration ecologist and possibly law. With this looming over my head, I've decided to ask those who have already been in my situation and discovered their true calling. I began with interviewing my professors. Along the way, I've found numerous other resources of experienced wisdom including GSI's and class presenters who were in a field I was interested in. At each opportunity, I would jump onto asking for a couple minutes, maybe over coffee (although I myself don't drink coffee), to go over their educational and career paths that brought them to where they are today.

Continue reading "Gaining wisdom through others' experience" »

Posted by Maria at 10:58 PM | Permalink

Talk about a long time, but time here at Cal really does fly by pretty quickly. It seems like just yesterday I was moving in and now I’m taking mid-terms (the SECOND mid-term for Chem 1A is in about 2 weeks). If I could do anything different I would probably space out my classes rather than being clumped in a couple of days. My schedule is that on Tuesday and Thursday I only have 1 class and on Monday and Friday, I only have 2-3 classes. But dang when Wednesday hits…It hits really hard. I have classes from 8:00 am to 7:00 pm with about 3, 1-hour brakes that are often spent eating or getting ready for my next class. The thing is that all my homework is due on Wednesday so I spend all of Tuesday and up to the wee cracks of dawn doing lab write ups and other assorted work.

Continue reading "Where does the time go?" »

Posted by Fabian Collazo at 2:22 AM | Permalink

For my microbial biology major, I'm taking Techniques in Light Microscopy, which is an upper division elective PMB course. There's one hour of lab each week where we get to use different microscopy techniques to look at everyday items. For example, today we practiced polarized light microscopy (PLM) and looked at corn starch, cellulose, and sand. Then, we looked at Safeway's 100% Parmesan Cheese. It was definitely not 100% cheese. Using the microscope, we saw that it was more like 30% cheese. What's the other 70%? Starch and cellulose. The ingredients list on the parmesan shaker does list cellulose, but does not mention starch. What if you were allergic to corn starch?

Continue reading "Is that really 100%?" »

Posted by Victoria Eng at 4:53 PM | Permalink

I am thinking of changing my major to MoTox and minoring in N.S. Pretty much, for undergrad, both majors have overlapping courses, so those who are thinking of which major to do, try taking NST 10 and 11 to get a better feel of the different fields. Anyway, If you are thinking of minoring, your advisor has all these great resources about what requirements are needed. So, it seems, to minor in NS, you need to take NST 10, NST 103, NST 106, NST 160 and NST elective of your choice. Mind you, it may seem like a little amount, but don't forget to sign up for courses for your degree and other classes that you need to get into grad school. And, of course, Mo Tox minoring will require a different set of classes, as well as for other minors in CNR. Anyway, seemed like something informative to share. Hope it helped!

Posted by Casey Wang at 6:05 PM | Permalink

I know everyone's really stressed out about midterms and papers right now, but I just wanted to tell you guys to take a break. You won't fail your midterm just because you didn't study every single possible minute. Trust me, pulling an all-nighter does not work. You end up zoning out a third of the way through the exam.

So, when you're feeling overwhelmed and you feel like you can't shove any more information into your brain, take a break and relax for a bit...not too long, but long enough to destress your system so you can study some more! Here are some things you can do to destress:

Continue reading "Destress" »

Posted by Victoria Eng at 11:13 AM | Permalink

This comparison is strictly in retrospect to my personal experiences both at Ohlone College and here at UCB.

1. Opportunities
This is one of the first things that hit me. There are so many opportunities that UCB has to offer, which quite honestly I find overwhelming. They have everything from independent research to study abroad to classes about pretty much everything there is to have a class on. But as a junior I feel at a slight disadvantage simply because I, ideally, only have 2 years here which doesn't give me enough time to experience everything I would like. So my suggestion to people coming into to Cal as freshmen is to take advantage of as many of the opportunities as you can because you have no idea at how much of an advantage you really are.

Continue reading "University vs. Community College" »

Posted by Maria at 10:27 PM | Permalink