<p>Okay, I will try to address all the questions asked so far.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>I am not living on Campus. I am living on the Berkeley/Albany line about 2 miles from campus. It is either a 10 minutes bus ride or a 45 minute walk to campus. I am an older student, so I am living in a one-bedroom apartment with my girlfriend. We found this place on craigslist while I was still in San Diego. Finding apartments was a real pain, but eventually it worked out fine.</p></li>
<li><p>As far as meeting friends, it is a little different for me. I usually make friends with older transfer students pretty easily, because that is just something we connect on. Surprisingly, there are a lot of students over 25 and over 30. Berkeley is such a bustling place. There are students EVERYWHERE and classes are packed. It is super easy to make friends just by the sheer numbers of people you are surrounded by everyday as long as you have the basic minimum of social skills. Besides classes, there are clubs and other venues to easily meet people at anytime. </p></li>
<li><p>Berkeley is a big step up from CC. I wouldn’t say that it is “harder”, but it is for sure more intense. For example, most of my CC classes had 1-3 books. In my 4 classes this semester I had 17 books. Some of them are readers. Readers are collections of Academic Journal Articles your professor has put together. No more textbooks or scantrons at Berkeley. All primary source journal articles or primary source books, and blue book essays. You are expected to have read and understand these articles, but there almost always is discussion or lecture about the hard pieces. My blue book essays were sometimes graded like research papers were in CC. My first midterm I studied my ass off, and I thought I had hit it out of the park. I got it back and it was a 74. My first C in college! But the good news is I met with the professor, the reader, and some tutoring to make sure I improved. I worked really hard in that class to improve, and this morning I got my grade. It was an A. So it is possible to do good here, but that is the hardest A I have ever worked for. There is a saying here at Berkeley that “Bs are easy to get but As are extremely difficult to get” If you are a good student and do everything you are suppose to you will get a B. If you want an A here you have to go after it.</p></li>
<li><p>The transition was rough. I had moved up here from San Diego 2 days before classes began. The stress of moving, being in a new place, and getting slammed with a lot of school work in the first week was tough.It took me until after midterms to really understand how this place works. As a transfer you are at a disadvantage because the students who have been here are already used to the rigor of Berkeley. My advice to everyone is to just be patient with yourself, ask as many people as many questions as you can, and understand that your first semester at Cal will be your hardest out of all your time there. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>I’l answer more throughout the day. Keep asking if you got questions.</p>