academics

How Trial & Error Helped Me Find My Passion

March 6, 2024
Madison K.

I’m an English major, but how did I get here?

When we are young, there are a plethora of things that we want to be, but as we get older, dreams change as we do. What I wanted to do when I was younger is vastly different from what I want to do now, but to get where I am, I went through what I like to call phases, until I found something I truly wanted to pursue.

You see, when I was in elementary school, I wanted to be a fashion designer. Although that idea died as quickly as it was formed. Not only was I a terrible artist, my ideas were...

Constructing Educational Resiliencies: My Education Capstone & Attending AERA's Conference

April 15, 2024
Ethan C.

This semester, I embarked on a journey to complete my Education Research Capstone Project, a requirement for the new Educational Sciences major on campus. You have to two take two classes to fulfill this requirement: a core field research class and an elective. This semester, I took EDUC 150: Advanced Seminar in Education – Teachers of Color in the United States. Initially, I took this class as a research elective. However, it has been approved as one of the core requirements for the capstone project. Taught by Dr. Travis J. Bristol, this course taught me more about all the modern...

What I Read: For School vs For Fun (as an English major)

April 8, 2024
Madison K.

I love to read.

I loved reading when I was growing up, but it all stopped when I got to high school. In high school, reading became more of a chore than anything else really and that just sucked all the fun and joy out of it. Although during the covid years when we were all stuck indoors, I started reading again to pass the time and it reignited my love for it.

When I started college, I was originally a psychology major, but after that first year, I changed my major to English, when I realized psychology wasn’t for me.

So...

Designing a Four Year Plan: How Triple-Majoring Helped Me Find My Academic Niche

April 5, 2024
Rohit J.

The release of enrollment time is one of the most dreaded moments in any Berkeley student’s semester. Walking out of Moffitt Library, I often overhear the same conversations every year: “Is April 24th Day 1 or Day 2?”, “Why aren’t they offering this class next semester?”, “Yo, what are you taking next fall? After many semesters of bad enrollment slots, I finally got the coveted early enrollment time I’d only heard fables of my freshmen year.

Putting the novelty of it all aside, it’s difficult to find classes that are currently offered, fit within your time/major...

From Small Town to Big City

April 1, 2024
Anna H.

Taking the 215 to San Diego or LA, you will see a suburb of Riverside County called Menifee, CA. This little city was established in 2008 and now has a population of just over 100,000. It is about 30 minutes southeast of UC Riverside, an hour north of San Diego, or an hour south of Los Angeles. There is a really good chance you may not have heard of it.

I grew up in the small, quiet town of Menifee, California. My mom was an elementary teacher, so I was enrolled in the school she taught at up until I was in 5th grade. From there, I went to a public K–12 charter...

The Value of a College Education: Contextualizing the World

March 18, 2024
Nichelle W.

“What do you like the most about college?”

Every college student who has faced this question from siblings, relatives, and friends from home may have frozen up momentarily, wondering what to say (or whether there’s anything to say at all). There are a plethora of answers: the independence from home, the people they’ve met, the professionals they’ve been able to network with. But over the past year, I’ve developed a new insight: the value of college is to expand your worldview and complicate your implicit assumptions.

A simple example is from...

[Re]Finding My Academic Passions

March 8, 2024
Ethan C.

Coming into Cal, you’re thrown into a university with much to offer. With six undergraduate colleges, there’s definitely a lot to choose from for your academic pursuits. In the College of Letters and Science alone, there are over 80 different majors to explore and 500 courses you can take alone. Constantly, new majors and minors are being unveiled, and students can engage in a wide variety of different academic departments and programs. When I started at Cal in 2021, I came in as a pre-law student interested in a whole bunch of majors. I switched around a lot (and I mean… A LOT)....

Asks from the Past: Answering Random Questions From My Freshman Year

March 4, 2024
Nichelle W.

Incoming college students are often told that the answer to any specific question is just to Google. But what if there’s no Reddit post or YouTube video with your specific query? In my freshman year, I compiled a list of my questions so my future self could respond. And here I am as a sophomore, providing answers to both arbitrary and serious asks from the past.

First up, we have the dorms: I lived on a single-gender floor in Unit 1 my first year.

1. Can we bring a hair dryer? Can we bring a kettle?

Yes, you can bring...

The Breadth Class That Took My Breath Away

February 28, 2024
Melina T.

Berkeley’s College of Letters and Science has a unique requirement called the Seven-Course Breadth. Essentially, L&S students must take at least one course in several distinct subject areas, regardless of their major. The hope is that through taking a diverse course load, students will be exposed to more perspectives and areas of intellectual curiosity. As a humanities student to my core, I can’t say I was thrilled about fulfilling the Biological Science requirement. Taking a semester-long class completely irrelevant to my major seemed like nothing but a waste of time and energy...

Berkeley Bucket List – Library Edition

September 30, 2021
Cordelia Varona

Editor's note: This article was published in 2021. Some changes have taken place at the libraries since the article was published.

I’m on a mission to visit every single one of Berkeley’s 24 libraries during my final year at Cal. As the first month of school comes to a close, I’ve decided to highlight some of these spots that aren’t as popular as, say, Doe or Moffitt. Let’s take a look!

Anthropology Library (Anthropology and Art Practice Building)

The Anthropology Library sits on the second floor of the Anthropology and Art...