| msagaski - Do you live in one of the coops? I don't remember anyone in the dorm smoking weed, because the RAs were pretty strict about that. You mentioned that you found engineering too tough and now are in L&S; did you decide to do sociology or something? If you didn't and are still in the sciences (or polysci, english or history - the humanities majors that seem to draw the best people), I'm surprised that the students would be slackers.
I really enjoyed Berkeley and wish everyone else did. The truth is, though, that if you are a shy person, you will have a hard time at Cal or any other public school (two exceptions: if you are interested in the natural sciences, CNR has some good majors (NOT ESPM) and is very small; also, you will inevitably have small classes in any language department); particularly in the UCs, to get what you want out of the administration, profs and other students, you have to be outgoing (almost to the point of being outright pushy). If it is absolutely imperative that you have smaller classes, you might want to transfer to an LAC.
One tip if you are having trouble in some courses is to approach other students in the class and ask if they are having trouble and want to study. In freshman year classes not too many people did this; by my jr. year (engineering), working in small groups was sometimes a requirement for being able to finish problem sets in a reasonable amount of time. A good place to start in finding motivated people who might want to form such groups are the TA's office hours (which tend to be very informal). |