Dealing with Challenging Classes
There are many difficult classes at Berkeley that we all have to struggle through. It is almost a right of passage for the science majors to take Organic Chemistry and Bio 1A, but it wasn't until I took my Environmental Modeling requirement, Energy and Resources 102, that I really met a challenge. Some people went through this class very easily, but I had never taken a subject where I had to draw on all of my knowledge gained from the big Chemistry and Calculus classes. I had to answer questions such as: “What would the pH of rain be in the absence of anthropogenic sources of sulfuric and nitric acids?” and “If the burning of fossil fuels were to cause the CO2 concentration in Earth’s atmosphere to become twice what it was at the beginning of the industrial revolution, how would Earth’s surface temperature be affected?” The problem sets became my third job as I began to spend and average of ten or more hours a week on them. So how did I deal with this difficult material? Here are some tips!