I remember my first day in Berkeley after my parents left for home. I remember the giddiness I felt as a newfound sense of freedom washed over me. I remember mapping out a route from Unit 2 to my classes. I remember experimenting with various ways to organize my books on my desk as I anticipated my classes with a quiet excitement. But I also remember how alone I felt at the end of my first week here. There’s something very scary about realizing just how big this place is, and how small you are in relation to the massive student body. Finding yourself awash in a sea of students just as talented and hardworking as you are in a 300 person lecture is quite the humbling experience.  And part of this experience is figuring out how to reduce those massive lectures to just you, the professors, and a few select friends.

What I’m talking about is, of course, how to make Cal a more personal experience. I believe this is a key element to becoming comfortable on campus, and ultimately to consistently being able to succeed in classes and in other ventures throughout your career here. Personally, I found dealing with daily stresses much more manageable once I found more and more people I could talk to on a regular basis.

Within the student body you have various ways of finding such people. Be it a student living down the hall from you, a student who sits a row behind you in lecture, or someone who you just see somewhere on campus almost everyday for some reason, college is one of the few times when it is perfectly acceptable to randomly invite these people to coffee or a library session and slowly become friends with them. One of my closest friends at Cal is actually a direct result of me spilling my tea on them the first week of Math 1B, so friendships occur randomly and frequently.

But beyond creating a friend circle, there are more ways to make Cal a more personal experience. The professors and grad students may seem intimidating but it is important to remember that they too are just people. More importantly, they are all people who have been exactly where you are now. It is a bit of a strange idea to some people, but I highly encourage people to go to professor and GSI office hours towards the beginning of the semester just to introduce themselves. I’ve done so with a lot of my professors and it really helps make lectures more bearable. Beyond the possibility of gaining mentors and even the chance for a small grade bump is necessary, a rapport with a professor or lecturer can actually be beneficial for you as professors may start to teach slightly more in a way that works for you. For instance, during Math 54 (typically not a very fun class) I developed a very good relationship with both my GSI and my professor, both of whom I still keep in contact with, and I once brought up during my professor’s office hours that I find comparison tables and flowcharts to be very useful to understand algebraic structures and their differences. To my surprise, the professor started to incorporate more such tables and charts in his lectures! This is obviously just one example, but it does show that professors do care about students learning, so if you develop a good relationship with them, they can actually help you learn better.

Lastly, student organizations are the last way to get involved on campus and make the campus seem smaller. Personally I joined only one organization my freshman year, a slam poetry group, and that alone had a tremendous effect on my first semester experience. I went from feeling completely alone on a massive campus to recognizing people everywhere in a matter of weeks, and I can’t tell you how much of a help that is. I joined three more organizations soon after my second year started and I noticed the same thing occurring on a much larger scale soon after. Even without developing close relationships with every single person in those groups, just the ability to recognize so many people walking through campus does a very positive thing mentally by making campus feel familiar, and almost like a home.

I suppose at the end of the day my personal Cal experience is very defined by the inter-personal relationships so I highly emphasize capitalizing on opportunities to create such relationships when talking to prospective and first year students about this topic. There are obviously many more ways to create these relationships (for example seeking out mentors through dedicated mentorships programs within your major, e.g. BUMP for math majors or mcbUSA for MCB majors, etc.) so it is very much up to each individual how they’d like to tackle this issue.

Best of luck!