We're at Berkeley and it's inevitable that we will encounter tough times from time to time. One particular hard time I had was second semester if my freshmen. Being an ignorant freshmen, I decided that I was going to do 16 units of technical classes. I had lots and lots of trouble with these classes since I was still getting adjusted to the Berkeley life, and basically for that semester I barely had any extracurricular activities besides going to the gym once in awhile. It wasn't so much that I took a lot of science classes at one time, but it was more of the difficulty of each class. However for that semester I really buckled down and really studied hard. I went to office hours, and I participated in the student learning center study groups (at the Caesar Chavez Center @ Lower Sproul) and it turns out that although this may be the toughest semester for me, I actually did the best in in my whole 4 years as a Berkeley student. My advice from this experience would be to carefully plan out your 4 years as a college student, even though it is quite likely that you will change it every semester (I sure did). By doing that, you can plan ahead and knopw what classes you should take now, and classes you should take later. Most major requirements have it so you don't have to take more than 3 major requirement courses per semester, so by carefully planning out your 8 semesters you can be avoid unneccessary stress! Be sure to come to PAL office hours if you need help planning your courses!