Oh, how the fabric of your life can quickly change

Colleges & Universities University of California - Berkeley
1

<p>As an incoming freshman, I almost lost my housing(dorm) offer just now.</p>

<p>Today(or as it is now 12:30AM, yesterday) was the day before the last day of school, and I had 4 finals followed by putting the finishing touches on a boat race project after school. By 11PM, I had pretty much concluded that I was done with senior year as I told some friends to bring some weights to balance our boat, and did a quick, required minireport of our cardboard boat detailing its maximum buoyant force.</p>

<p>Back on subject, after talking with some of my friends through AIM and checking FaceBook, I felt an urge to listen to songs from the movie Donnie Darko(which I recently watched) to soothe me before I went to bed; I pretty much thought I deserved this after such a tiresome day.</p>

<p>However, for some reason(11:30 now), I decided to check my email first-- specfically my housing email that told me to check my housing app for my housing offer(the only thing I cared about upon receiving the email originally). Now, I was interested in knowin’ the deadline of when I had to respond, and, to my grand dismay, my response plus an advance payment of $300 was due today(yesterday, June 3rd).</p>

<p>PANICKIN’, I was. Quickly turned on my MacBook Pro. Put my cursor over the battery icon that tells the battery life and it said 30%. Boy, was it crazy. I had to wake up my dad, who yelled at me because he thought I was procastinatin’ on this, and then he had to generate a MasterCard ID using Citibank. We found out that there is a delay between the number generation and the useability of that number. Anyways, my dad kept on typing the number wrong in the billing form, and then he finally got it right and our housing application was secure 10 minutes before the deadline.</p>

<p>Sure, I could have emailed them about not being able to send the advance payment at this time yet still accepting the housing contract(my dad had read the terms), but I mean…anything could have happened that could have changed how I would live my first year and, consequently, the rest of my time at Berkeley.</p>

<p>I would have had to rent an apartment, and this means that I would probably end up with a different group of Berk friends. I would also get a taste of what it is like to live under a landowner, and to be responsible for the utilities I use. I would have never been able to experience and be spoiled by the dorm life, and all these changes would have set up a chain reaction of more changes that would place me in totally different circumstances.</p>

<p>If I never suddenly decided to check my housing email. If I succumbed to listening to the music first…</p>

<p>Scary, huh? It makes you realize that it’s the minutes that count.</p>

2

<p>wow, intense.
the minutes sure do count. here’s a good use of 5 of them: [YouTube</a> - this drummer is at the wrong gig](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItZyaOlrb7E&feature=popt00us01]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItZyaOlrb7E&feature=popt00us01)</p>

3

<p>transfers ftw!!!</p>

<p>haha jk. good job mr last second</p>

4

<p>actualllllllllly - i completely forgot about that deadline 2 years ago. I was ****ed I got a triple instead of a double and didn’t want to deal with it so I just ignored it. Saw like at least 5 days after the deadline that I had missed it and I freaked out and called them and they said it was ok. Still got my unit 3 triple haha but it was definitely a different one that what I would have gotten otherwise. Didn’t get the roommate I requested and ended up with 2 FPF kids… so yeah it’s good that you got it in on time haha.</p>

5

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<p>Wait… FPF kids get preference over fall admits for housing???
How come some of us have to go to Bowles when FPF students get spots in the units?!
That’s such ********</p>

6

<p>Some people don’t accept their housing offers or otherwise decide to move to a coop or apartment. To deal with this, housing has to allocate rooms to the fall admits who apply, even though some will drop out and return that room to the pool for reassignment. </p>

<p>By that point, they can’t really go back and reallocate every room. They use any open rooms to satisfy requests for others - fall admits that didn’t apply for rooming by deadline, fall admits that gave up their room due to missing deadline, FPF, and room change requests. </p>

<p>It could be a nightmare to have a large percentage of the incoming students request room changes and have to do an entire second lottery to shuffle it around - probably why they try to discourage change requests until the school year starts.</p>

7

<p>It has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world.</p>

<ul>
<li>Chaos Theory</li>
</ul>

8

<p>@Handle: Don’t get too upset before you locate the facts. I was FPF and did not receive housing AT ALL. FPF gets last dibs at housing after the fall admits.</p>