Trapped at Berkeley

My fifth semester at UC Berkeley is drawing to an end. I have finals on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Monday — two materials science courses and one each of chemistry and chemical engineering.

I’ve spent the past few days alternating between sleep and studying, but once Wednesday hits, I’m going to be able to count the hours of sleep I get until the end of this madness using my fingers.

Let’s see how this goes…

UPDATE: It seems my performance on finals has a positive derivative. I’m hoping it holds out until Monday.

I’m going to be inundated with midterms and projects in the coming weeks:

09/26 MSE 120 Midterm
10/04 ESPM 167 Project
10/06 Chem 104A Midterm
10/06 MSE 102 Midterm
10/10 Chem Eng 141 Midterm
10/18 ESPM 167 Midterm

I really wish the university would establish rules for the staggering of midterms. Wish me luck!

I think the time gap between this post and the last post is the longest such gap this blog has ever seen.

Many things have occurred since the last post, and most of them have been keeping me very busy. Here’s some of the important stuff:

I moved back into the dorms. This will be the first year where I haven’t lived in Bowles Hall and where I’ve had a roommate. While I have nothing against my current living conditions, I still wish I was able to return to Bowles Hall — I really miss the atmosphere and short walk to classes. As an aside, I was recently quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle about the changes in policy regarding my former dormitory.

My third year at UC Berkeley started, and I’m as busy as ever. I’m taking five upper-division courses, and they leave me with very little free time. I’m feeling a lot of pressure to become more efficient with my time. We’ll see how that goes…

Along with my friends Ryan and Dima, I’m currently trying to bring back the Berkeley GNU/Linux Users Group. This week, we held a speech by Richard M. Stallman, who turned out to be pretty interesting. Pictures are posted here.

I’m acting as a co-teacher/teaching assistant for CS 198: System Administration for the Web. It’s an interesting and educational experience to teach people. I’m having fun, and I think it’s a great way to develop my skills at presenting information.

I’ve also had some computer problems, and, as I type this post, I’m attempting to recover data from a broken backup. The one lesson that I’ll never forget from this experience is to always test my backups before going ahead with a possibly destructive task. Though nothing vital was lost, the information I did lose was of considerable value.

Katherine and I broke up about 3 weeks ago, her doing. As of today, she has a new boyfriend. I know I don’t usually post very personal things to this blog, but I do think this is profound enough to merit an exception.

Truthfully, I still want to be with Katherine, and I hope I can win her back. The odds are against me, my friends tell me to move-on, and I can’t help but feel that this is in some way related to the way I treated my high school girlfriend Emily. I feel bitter and angry, for a variety of reasons, but I remain hopeful.

To those who read this blog, you’ve probably sensed that I believe in a higher power, or a fundamental law. I find this law in the Bible. I do consider myself a Catholic, but I rarely mention it here. The reason I do bring it up today, though, is that, with my understandly mixed and confused emotions, I’ve felt drawn to read the Bible for something entirely different from the law — inspiration. I feel lost, and I find guidance in the Bible.

I just finished my last final, Engineering 45. Now, time to get packing…

May 13 — Friday

May 16 — Monday

May 17 — Tuesday

This is going to hurt…

Today, I selected my dorm room for next year at the Berkeley Housing and Dining Room Draw. I’ll be living in Foothill Hillside 7A30A with a (currently) freshman Chemistry major.

It’ll be interesting living in a Foothill Hillside double — I’ve lived in a Bowles Hall single for the past two years. I’ve loved Bowles Hall for its proximity to the College of Chemistry, but Foothill Hillside isn’t much further away. Furthermore, while singles offer the most privacy and personal space, they also tend to get lonely. I look forward to the new experience of living with someone else.

I’m still angry at Housing and Dining though…

I got this email today:

Dear Bowles Resident:

All current Bowles Hall residents who have applied for a 2005-06 housing contract and indicated a preference to return to Bowles Hall next year will not be able to return to Bowles.

Next year, Bowles Hall has been identified as a First Year Experience (for freshmen only) pilot program. This program is designed for new students to the University, with a particular focus on their successful transition to the University as leaders and scholars.

I’m upset that Berkeley Housing and Dining didn’t notify me sooner. I’ve been living at Bowles Hall for nearly two years, and I had wanted to live there for another year. Students were only able to specify five housing preferences on their housing applications, and I indicated Bowles Hall as my first choice. It’s too late to provide Housing and Dining with a revised list of preferences because housing decisions have already been made. Furthermore, I probably wouldn’t have applied for housing if I had known Bowles Hall wasn’t available. Now, Housing and Dining has pocketed my application fee, and I’m stuck in housing limbo.

The First Year Experience sounds totally stupid — some underworked staffer probably came up with this brilliant idea during a lunch break. One of the great things about living in the dorms is meeting returning students who have had experience with the university system and knowledge of the local area. For freshmen, these dormmates are often much better (and more easily approachable) advisors than the ones the university officially provides.

Why couldn’t the university make a theme program for this? Most of the freshmen who are going to be living at Bowles aren’t going to be interested — the success and popularity of similar programs at Bowles attests to that. Furthermore, Bowles Hall is probably the worst dorm for such a program: half of the residents live in singles, and we have the least common space of any dorm. Bowles Hall is not the best dorm to foster bonding between freshmen.

I’m betting this program is going to be shelved after a year.

I’m in love. With a girl. This girl.

More to come.

Curves get a little scary when the score distribution [WARNING: PDF] on a midterm fits an exponential curve. I still can’t believe 23 people (16% of the class) got a perfect score on the test.