I remember Eva St. Clair mentioning the start of Fresh Faces to entering freshmen and junior transfers at CalSO 2006. I thought it would be fun, but I knew I had no time for it! See, back then, I was training 2-4hrs/day six days a week for the Olympics, of all things. Not only that, but I was about to start my first semester at Berkeley. That school where all the super-smart people go with their 5.00 GPAs, perfect SAT scores, and where classes are challenging in the worst ways possible: trick questions. What's best is that all of your classes will be graded on a normal curve -- you know -- because Berkeley students are normal, so you'll need a 96% to earn an A. At first, I was surprised at the number of students who introduced themselves as pre-Med/Pharm/Law/MBA, but there's nothing wrong with thinking ahead. The people here are really great. I’m glad to say I’ve enjoyed almost every aspect of the past 12 months at Cal (with one brief exception during my experience in the black hole that is Cal’s statistics department). Anyhow, after a year, it's time to catch up with my readers out in the not quite infinite cyberspace. It’s been a long time, and you don’t what you’ve been missing.

In case you’ve noticed, I’m very modest. I guess my ego-of-gold is a bit heavy, so it tends to sink down towards my digestive tract (don’t think too hard on that one, I’m not quite sure myself). If you’re still following along, your mind is probably stuck on thinking about you, me, or something that both relates to us. Well, stop thinking about that, let’s jump into another tangent.

I was just reading this blog to get a sense of what I should write. When I’ve read it, it seems like a small porthole into someone’s life, where I can identify with others, learn something new, or get some advice. I plan to write about usual blog posts of random thoughts , first days, exams, study groups, graduate school, undergraduate research, etc. Furthermore, I’ll be a rebel and try to have some fun telling a bit of my life too, even if some creepy stalker girl is reading this. If my posts suddenly disappear, blame creepy stalker girl. Really though, I’ll be comparing and contrasting my first year at Cal as a junior transfer with my current one, as a senior.

Back to me… the modest one. I was born in San Francisco, and moved to Marin just in time to start first grade. I don’t remember those years, don’t ask me why. I just ran into a dude from grade school, at a Kappa Alpha rush event last night. We were in band together, and he started sprouting all of these crazy detailed memories of childhood. All I can remember is that the playground was black. Moving on, twelve years later, I graduated high school and began full-time enrollment at College of Marin. Why? I already had 12 units from taking free classes under a concurrent enrollment program while in HS, and I realized $12/unit for a 30-student class was pretty cheap compared to any 4-year college. I also got to skip college admissions, SATs, and the associated stresses. Plus I got to live at home, rent was pretty much free, and boy was I excited. As an economist (at heart, before the declared major), I did a quick 30sec. CBA (cost/benefit analysis) in my head and it was decided.

After talking with some friends who happened to be business executives in the Tri-Valley. I was recommend to try Business Administration – go figure. So I asked around to find the best business schools, found Haas, figured I would do my best and shoot for it. (Haas, yes that’s right! Sure, Stanford's GSB wns but they don’t have UGBA! muahahaha… go ucb superiority complex! ;-), Remember those 12 units? Well, apparently I had signed up for a few more and forgot to drop them (read: F). My GPA in Fall 2004? 1.42. As a backup UC Davis and UCSC have guaranteed admissions given a few requirements, so I wasn’t worried. In retrospect, I felt safe shooting for a major with an 8% acceptance rate. My economics professor recommended I major in the broader major of economics. He did work for Arthur Anderson before the Enron scandal, but he was a biased economics professor in my book… so I kept Haas up top for a while longer. I still think I would have gotten in if I applied to Haas… but I’m soooo glad I didn’t.

// Don’t get me wrong. Haas is fabulous. Except for accounting/finance, I just don’t understand the concept of a pre-experience management degree. I love the cohort model, not just for the MBA program but for the undergraduate one as well. I’ve only heard good things. I took a phenomenal class last semester. The curriculum is just too focused on business for my interests. The academic plan simply isn’t flexible enough to study what I want to, and write a thesis to see what grad school will be like. Still, Haas is right up there at the top for what they do. If anyone at CNR speaks multiple languages and is interested in a Masters in Management or European Business, I recommend checking out ESCP-EAP – a top school in Europe.//

By fall 2005, I had cleaned up my ‘mixed record’ (what admissions calls bad grades) and discovered the world was going to hell in a handbasket because of peak oil (I’ll write up a post about it later). Around the same time I discovered a College within a College. What the hell, I thought. Why is there a ‘College of Natural Resources’ within another college. (Obviously, I’ve since figured out that UCB is a ‘University’ and that CNR was the original land grant college. Yup it’s true, go read the flyer, some of it is actually cool). Within CNR, I saw Environmental Economics and Policy. Awesome, I thought. I like the environment, and had a feeling I’d get to study how we’re destroying it. I wasn’t sure, so I nervously scheduled an informational interview to ask more about the major with Gail Vawter, the awesome advisor of EEP. To make this long blog post *slightly* shorter, EEP was a perfect match and my application showed it. I got in, but it’s taken about a year for the fact to really sink in. For the first 12 months it was sort of hard to believe. How the hell did I end up at Cal?