So as summer is coming to a close I am preparing for fall 2009 and all its difficulties grrr. I’m currently planning to take Bio 1A/L, Physics 8A, Near Eastern Studies 18 and EALC 105. I’m pretty scared for Bio as I have heard plenty of rumors about the labs and professors and as a Bio lover I’m freaking out. Even though I want to take physics I am not enrolled and am like hawk status checking the schedule every minute to see if anybody has dropped. Haha its’ even on my favorites for maximum speed. NES 18 is about ancient Egypt and I have heard is a rather chill class and the material seems rather interesting. EALC 105 is a film class that I am taking with a friend purely for fun and it is suppose to be easy and who doesn’t want to learn about movies?

Continue reading "Plans for Fall" »

Posted by Fabian Collazo at 5:26 PM | Permalink

Looking for a spontaneous adventure around Berkeley that does not consist of grabbing boba and chilling at the Asian Ghetto? Are you limited on funds and time? If so, check out the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden!!! With aromatic flowers in full bloom this summer, our botanical garden is the place to explore with a few buddies or that good looking lab partner. The 30 minute hike up the hill to the garden is a fabulous way to bond and warm up before touring our:

"...worldwide collection [that] features plants of documented wild origin from nearly every continent, with an emphasis on plants from Mediterranean climates (California, Mediterranean Basin, Australia, South Africa, and Chile). The arrangement of the outdoor collections is primarily geographic by continent of origin or by region including Asia, Australasia, California, Eastern North America, Mediterranean, Mexico/Central America, New World Desert, South America, and Southern Africa. The Garden holds one of the largest and most diverse collections in the United States."

Admission : $7 for adults, $5 for seniors and $2 for children ages 3 through 12. The Garden is open daily from 9 AM to 5 PM year round, Tropical House closes at 4:00. However, UC Berkeley students, professors, and staffs get in for free :)

For more information, please visit:
http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu/mission.shtml

Continue reading "Best place for the first date... and it's FREE!" »

Posted by Amelia Nguyen at 5:29 PM | Permalink

So as I have previously stated I am now declared Molecular Environmental Biology, but I have always thought about getting a minor. After taking NST 11 (Intro to Toxicology) and finding it really interesting, in general, I am thinking of minoring in Motox. The minor requires the following classes.
- NST 110
- NST C112
- NST C114
- NST 120
- NST 121

Continue reading "Class frustrations with minors!" »

Posted by Fabian Collazo at 10:34 PM | Permalink

So I just checked bearfacts and I am now officially declared MEB yaya!!! It feels so nice having something to strive for instead of being confused all the time of what I want to take in terms of classes. So excited =)

Posted by Fabian Collazo at 10:03 PM | Permalink

So my Phase 1 has passed and Phase II should come up in a couple of months meaning that I have to start preparing for Fall 2009 and so far my plan is:

Chem 3B – So I heard that this is a killer class that challenges those who completed 3A and frankly I am kind of freaked that the guy who wrote the book is teaching the class. I was really considering taking Pederson in the spring, but his class tends to be at 8am and apparently he refuses to post up his notes. Event though I heard Pederson is a better teacher there is no way I can function that early in morning and I can’t really learn if I am sleeping.

Continue reading "Fall 2009" »

Posted by Fabian Collazo at 11:39 PM | Permalink

Environmental Science 10 – The beginning half of the course in my opinion is rather dry since we learn about soil and chemical cycles, however the last half gets really interesting and begins to picl up with many guest lecturers and learning about global issues with the environment. The discussion for this class has been one of the most engaging I have had yet at Berkeley. I think many people come into the class expecting it will be an easy “A”, which it is not! Overall I am glad I took this class and am kind of sad it will be over, yet I won’t miss those 9am lectures errr.

Continue reading "My ratings of classes I took in Spring 2009" »

Posted by Fabian Collazo at 3:05 AM | Permalink

So I have already passed the storm of finals that, for the past couple of days, has caused me to do nothing but study in my room. While I do still have Toxicology on Thursday morning I have already completed my more challenging finals. It seems that for me around midterm season and especially during finals I have a powerful craving for coffee with me having around 1-2 cups of it on a daily basis just to keep me awake past 4 am and for the taste that I have grown fond of over my time here at Berkeley.

Continue reading "Anecdotes about my time during finals!!!" »

Posted by Fabian Collazo at 2:22 AM | Permalink

So way back in November of 2007…WOW that seems like such a long time ago O.O! Well anyways that was when I was applying for colleges and at that point my focus was more on essays and SAT as I knew pretty much that I was only going to apply to UC schools. Well when the day came when I actually had to submit my application I was confronted with the idea of what was I to major in college. For me I knew from the get go that I wanted to study biology so on all the UCs that I applied to I marked “biology”….well until I got to Berkeley. After looking at all the majors I was shocked that there was no generic and straightforward “biology” and there was no way I was going to do MCB because honestly cells bore me. I was pretty distraught but decided to apply under CNR as undeclared because I was not sure what I wanted to major in but there seemed to be plenty of science majors. Now that I think about I guess it was a good thing that I wasn’t thorough in my search because If I did carefully search I might have applied as an IB major in L&S which would not be good.

Continue reading "Don’t get it twisted…Its MEB not MCB!!!" »

Posted by Fabian Collazo at 2:57 AM | Permalink

So today was the ESPM Ice Cream Social. I was planning on making an announcement here sooner, but I totally blanked on it yesterday. Sorry about that. For today, the ESPM department was giving away free cones of Ben & Jerry's ice cream to anyone who stopped by outside of Mulford. Some of the professors were scooping cones for people; it was pretty cool get a cone from Keith Gilless, acting dean of CNR. I wasn't able to stay for too long (I had to go to class), but just getting the chance to enjoy the beautiful weather and talk with some friends was great. The Strawberry Kiwi sorbet was pretty good, too. This event reminds me of why the ESPM department is pretty cool (and CNR as a whole).

Yeah, CNR is a pretty chill place to be.

Posted by Joel Kim at 3:02 PM | Permalink

I went to talk to the MEB advisor this afternoon since I really need some advice on planning for my upper division curriculum. I guess some students would probably roll their eyes and like: “it is just continuing in a bunch of science classes as the introductory ones we have been taking.” But trust me, the upper division requirements are quite different! In lower division, you would take Chem 1A, Chem 3A/3AL and Chem 3B/3BL to fulfill the chemistry requirement. For the biology requirement, it is Bio 1A/1AL and Bio 1B. For the physics requirement, it is Physics 8A and Physics 8B… You know all those mandatory, huge and competitive courses…

However, you have a variety of courses to choose from for the upper division requirements. For example, I am majoring in Molecular Environmental Biology, and there is the Upper Division Biology Requirement where I am going to take a course from each of the seven categories. In addition, I would have to choose an area of concentration and take another 12 units from a list of approved course.

Continue reading "Schedule Planning" »

Posted by Yang Cao at 9:41 PM | Permalink

So this afternoon, I went to my first RPP appointment. For those of you who do not know this, RPP is the Research Participation Program that gives undergraduate students a chance to participate in some of the research being conducted by graduate students and faculty researchers in the Department of Psychology. Since I am taking Psychology 2 this semester, I am required to participate in research experiments for a total of 5 hours.

I didn’t want to sign up for those experiments that would require putting wires around my head to measure some kind of brain activity, because what can I do if something goes wrong?! So I was trying to find survey-based experiment from the list of available studies online. Finally I decided to give a try on Experiment 73.

The experiment was scheduled in Tolman, and it was specified that the experiment would start right at the hour, not 10 minutes after. Tolman is that strange building that you can never figure out where you are. As I wandered around on the fourth floor, I thought that it would be such a good idea to just let us search for a room that does not even exist and record how long it takes us to figure that out! Anyway, after spending five minutes wandering around on the fourth floor, and I finally found room 4105.

Continue reading "My First RPP Experience " »

Posted by Yang Cao at 7:42 PM | Permalink

Today there's a guest lecture on campus that many will find of interest!

Dr. Edward F. DeLong is visiting from MIT to discuss his work on Genomics in Microbial Oceanography.
His seminar will be from 4-5 today, January 31, 2008 in 100 GPB.

Here is a link to one of his papers, to give you a better idea of his research:
http://pmb.berkeley.edu/~taylor/pmb290cg/pdfs/DeLong_2005.pdf

Posted by Christina at 2:27 PM | Permalink

Hi Guys!

My name is Amy Lin. 4th year MEB major currently studying abroad in Singapore! I was one of the CNR peer advisors and I thought it's be nice if I can share my experiences abroad with you guys! I'll be updating some pictures and my daily happenings on this blog. So stay tuned!

Today was the third day of school in National University of Singapore, NUS, where I study Life Sciences. I can't believe I've lived in Singapore for 10 days already. I spent the first part of my winter break in Taiwan and then I went to Singapore straight. Upon arrival in Singapore, the EAP program provided us a week of touring from Monday to Sunday last week. Everyday we woke up at around 8 and got home around 10 at night and we still have not yet finished touring and exploring Singapore! No, it is actually not that small, surprisingly.

There are 30 UC students studying abroad in NUS for Spring 2008, mostly are from UC Berkeley. 9 of us did not get assigned to the on campus housing and thus we live in the apartment- Boon Lay Block 190- arranged by the school. I live with Tiffany Berkeley, Cindy from UCLA, and Katherine from Hong Kong. We've met international students from many countries around the world, Canada, India, Malaysia, Poland, France, Brazil, Germany, England, Japan, Australia, China, Taiwan, Japan... No country, however, tops the 30 people we have from the UCs, California =)

Posted by Amy Lin at 2:16 AM | Permalink

I guess the title of this post has already revealed what I want to share with you guys. And here it goes…

Even though I finished my last final last Friday, I didn’t get to go home till yesterday since I still had to work. Everything before Tuesday was good, because I did not have any finals left and grades were not out yet. However, when I got back Tuesday night, I found out that the wireless network at my place was not working. I tried and tried, but I still could not get my laptop connect to the network.

I was not that willing to go to sleep early. So I decided to go to a place where there is Internet. But then I was too lazy to go out in such a chilly night and I stayed in my room. So what could I do?

I first organized my room and recycled all the scratch papers I had used when I was reviewing for my ochem final. After I clean my room, it was barely 9:00 pm and that was still early for me to go to sleep. So I borrowed magazines from my roommate so that I could have something to read. Even though those magazines were not the ones I would read, I still sat there and read them word-by-word, line-by-line, paragraph –by-paragraph and page-by-page.

I thought Wednesday would be better but I was wrong. The wireless network was still not working. So I spent that night reading the papers I have written for my English class this semester and went to bed really early.

Continue reading "What can I do without Internet?" »

Posted by Yang Cao at 11:29 PM | Permalink

The No. 1 thing people would warn you when you are about to enter college is: “Oh, be careful about ‘freshman 15’!” For me, I was really careful last year keeping a healthy lifestyle and consequently, I did not get my ‘freshman 15’.

But this year, it has been difficult. First of all, I moved out of the dorms so I am basically on my own for meals. As a result, I eat out much more frequently than I did last year. Secondly, I have developed bad study habits as I start to stay up late much more frequently than I did last year to finish my papers and cram in for exams. Consequently, I have to eat snacks (unhealthy ones) to fight away the hunger! Thirdly, since my vigilance toward ‘freshman 15’ has diminished, I do not go to do exercise as frequently as I should.

Here are a few tips I am going to give a try:

1). Go for vegetables and fruits whenever you can
2). Try not to develop the habit to drink sodas because once you get used to them, you would have one almost every meal.
3). It is hard to push yourself to go the gym on a regular basis. So you may want to find things to do with friends that are “hidden exercises”
4). Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to “diet” because this may make you feel left out when you are hanging out with friends who not are not dieting. Have some unplanned days when you can eat whatever…
5). Try to maintain regular eating and sleeping times!
6). Never skip a meal, especially breakfast!

That’s what I have so far. Any suggestions?

Posted by Yang Cao at 1:00 AM | Permalink

What is a "jerk"?

Definition 1:
The third derivative of position, the second derivative of velocity, or the first derivative of acceleration.

Definition 2:
Imagine that your friend was driving and you were in his car. Your friend saw the traffic light turned yellow and believed that he could make it. So he stepped on the gas pedal and you experienced a pull forward. Suddenly, the traffic light turned red and your friend had to stepped on the brake. You felt being pushed back and were like "Shoot, what a jerk..."

This is from my math professor when he was trying to explain higher derivatives and how useful they are in kinematics. So I guess the moral of the story is do not be intimidated by the huge lectures and do approach your professor during their office hours. They are very friendly and willing to help.

Posted by Yang Cao at 9:48 PM | Permalink

Actually, this was supposed to be posted yesterday. But anyway, here is an account from a procrastinator. Oh, by the way, I am a first-year intended Molecular and Environmental Biology Major (MEB) at College of Natural Resources (CNR).

Yesterday (Monday, August 28, 2006) was my first official day at Cal. What I mean by “official” is because even though I have been living here since last week, it is the day when instructions begin. I woke up pretty early in the morning since I was kind of afraid that I might need extra time for this very first day. But everything turned out to be ok.

My first class started at 10:00 AM but I arrived there (1 Pimentel) around 9:25 AM, so I was able to oversee the last part of Chemistry 1A lecture where the professor did some “explosion” stuff (Hydrogen gas + Oxygen gas + sparkle, I guess). 1 Pimentel was a really huge lecture hall, and its front stage can be rotated so that the settings for each class would not disturb the other. I encouraged you all to check this out!

Then I was commuting between different buildings since I have back-to-back classes…

Even though most of the lectures I am in are huge and intimidating since you are sitting with hundreds of people, the professors were really trying to make class atmosphere as dynamic as possible.

Or by the way, the Freshman Seminar I am taking is really engaging since there are only 20 students there – allowing a more intimate and approachable environment. It is nice to be such a small class within the context of a public research institute, namely Berkeley.

That is about my first day, and I am really looking forward for my first semester of college life. GO BEARS!!!!

Posted by Yang Cao at 11:13 PM | Permalink