As my first week at Berkeley comes to close, I’ve had many revelations and new experiences. Among them are experiences with living with a roommate in a dorm, new classes, and eating food. Despite all my planning and preparation for starting my freshman year, I really had no idea what I was getting into. Hopefully, these thoughts and tips can help those of you who start in September and those of you not yet in college. At the very least, you can laugh at my general lack of knowledge.
Move-In Day:
No matter how much you plan for this day, it is going to be a mess. I made a college packing list by June and slowly checked off every item on my list by August. I planned what storage I would use, how I would take my clothes, and what I would use to decorate. Even still, on the first day, I was literally entering my van before I realized I had forgotten to pack my shoes. And toothbrush. And a lightbulb for my lamp.
Once we got to campus, the real fun began. My roommate and I were moving into our room at the exact same time. So all of our things were stacked on top of each other for a good 2 hours while we tried to get our room set up. Three hours later, I finally got my room set up the way I wanted it. My parents left and I was officially in charge of myself, which is a really weird feeling.
First Day of Class:
Waking up for a 9 AM class is completely different from waking up for school that starts at 8:30 AM. Primarily, because you really just don’t want to go and there’s no one forcing you to go to class. No one takes attendance in a class of 300 people. And every single class that day went the same way: an intro to the class and the professor, an explanation of the grading distribution, and a lecture about the syllabus. Also, its really difficult to remember to eat breakfast when you need to make your trek to a class 25 minutes across campus in 20 minutes.
First Week of School:
My campus is huge. How am I supposed to get all the way across campus in 10 minutes? Do they expect me to teleport to Sutardja Dai or Etcheverry Hall? Dining Hall food is interesting if you try, but its also really easy to fall into bad habits and eat ice cream and pizza every single day. You do not want the Freshman 15 to be a reality, so vary the types of food you eat. In Berkeley, there’s a huge variety of places to eat, so you don’t have to try all that hard. Speaking of which, I need to head out to dinner now, so I wish you all the best of luck with your first week of school. Bye!
