<p>@CollegeDropout1 </p>
<p>Not everyone at Berkeley espouses liberal beliefs. I’m sure there are many people there who may be more conservative, consider themselves “independents”, and there are definitely a lot of Republicans at Berkeley. Diversity of viewpoints is something that Berkeley has plenty of, despite what some people think about the school.</p>
<p>@Cayton To have a campus of diverse ideas and opinions it is not enough for a group of certain individuals to simply have them, they also have to be free to express them. This is something that has been increasingly difficult to do on American universities, especially Berkeley. It seems like you can only express your opinion if it falls within certain parameters, and anything will get you hung by a lynch mob. I don’t know why so many people at universities are afraid of hearing opposing points of view. </p>
<p><a href=“University of California, Berkeley | The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression”>http://www.thefire.org/schools/university-of-california-berkeley/</a></p>
<p>@CollegeDropout1 </p>
<p>Freedom of speech still exists at Cal, you know. No one is stopping anyone from expressing unpopular views.</p>
<p>@Cayton People can express unpopular view points, but when they do, the lynch mob comes after them! I guess that is a more accurate representation of Cal.</p>
<p>@CollegeDropout1 </p>
<p>They really shouldn’t give a ■■■■ if a bunch of Cal students vehemently disagree with them and belittle them in the process. Those kinds of people don’t deserve one’s attention. This doesn’t seem to be that serious of a problem.</p>
<p>Admittedly, though, I feel I should mention that I myself am a very liberal person, so I might be biased. </p>
<p>@Cayton Yeah, it is a problem because that mentality is pretty common. Universities are supposed to be a place where people are exposed to new ideas, but how can that happen if these self righteous people drown out dissent? I am willing to listen to other ideas and I am also ready to change my mind if I am proven wrong, but I can’t say that about a lot of people in universities. It is hard, Cayton! </p>
<p>@CollegeDropout1 </p>
<p>And are you saying all of this after your visit from Berkeley? Or are you just making generalizations from what you’ve read off the Internet?</p>
<p>@ocnative HAHAHA, I actually visited Berkeley before, after all, I was a member of there TAP program. Also, my statements were geared towards Cal and other American universities. 
</p>
<p>@failure622, thanks! Berkeley was also my top choice (even if it was hard saying no to UCLA’s neuroscience department), I simply fell in love with the school… it has a nice social/academic balance plus it’s pretty close to SF and 1 hr away from home 
And it doesn’t hurt that it has good connections with UCSF haha :). How many more semesters do you have left? </p>
<p>@ucastell I’m actually sorta graduated… this summer is my last semester, and that’s only so I could TA this summer. I finished all my requirements and walked in the Spring. I just stick around here and try to answer questions now cause this place helped me so much when I was transferring.</p>
<p>@failure622, congratulations!! It was probably very difficult to get used to the academics at Berkeley, but you made it that’s awesome!! </p>
<p>Hey @music1990 I recall mentioning to you that literary criticism at UCB is sometimes hard to fathom, and there was a prof I dated after I graduated who said the key was to make it indecipherable. I just by accident found something he wrote - a reply to a review of his book in the NYT around 1987. His name is Joel Fineman. It’s the first response. Enjoy!!
<a href=“Yonder Shakespeare | Joel Fineman | The New York Review of Books”>http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1987/mar/26/yonder-shakespeare-2/</a></p>
<p>@lindyk8 </p>
<p>Thank you for sharing! So I read it and found it interesting, although much of it went over my head. Did you understand all of it? Is this the type of thing I should be able to fully understand if I were to double major or minor in English? Because if so, this is perhaps a sign that I should not…Although I might understand more of it if I had read the book or the review. There are just so many layers to it: A letter, responding to an article, which is about a book, which is about an author. I’m guessing this type of “analysis of analysis” is common in English academia?</p>
<p>@music1990 in terms of how convoluted, it depends on the prof. I get their alumni English dept quarterly newsletter and I did notice a lot of younger profs. It isn’t as bad as I make it out. Even though some may write like that you’re mainly reading literature and then researching an angle to present. There are a lot of eccentric profs in English - one noted Shakespearean Stephen Booth would spend three weeks analyzing the first seven lines of Othello. I never took a class with him but was really good friends (in terms of student-teacher) as he was the advisor for a renaissance theatre group we started. I really really liked him a lot, although he was very quirky. If you managed to find Joel’s response intriguing, you’ll do fine in English. Most just all do a hell of a lot of intense analyzing, deconstruction, all that. I think I left there with a 3.5 and I was never more than doing what was necessary. </p>
<p>And no, I basically had no clue what he was talking about, except that he was disagreeing with the reviewer. He kept making all those circular statements with some words I didn’t know. </p>
<p>@failure622 Hey there, I have a question: does the university automatically add the Housing fees to my CARS statement? My August statement doesn’t look like it has housing on there. </p>
<p>@moriartee Mine was just always on CARS. I think they might spread it out over the semester so it’s not all paid at once, though. Can’t really remember the exact details, sorry. But the bill should just appear at some point.</p>
<p>@failure622 was it a seperate bill from the registration fees?</p>
<p>Classes begin a month from today 
</p>
<p>!!!</p>
<p>@ocnative </p>
<p>What classes will you be taking? </p>