Chapter #16
[1] Berkeley was a validation that being a nerd was ok. Marilyn was extremely excited when I told her I got into the school. She said I was now going to be surrounded by people just like me. Barry said I should have enrolled in his university instead. I calculated my average pace of reading and understanding as twenty pages per hour. That included scribbles on the page margins. Most of them, just like the notes I took during the class, I could not read but it didn't mater. The fact of writing my thoughts alone seemed to be enough for the information to sink in. There were classes I enjoyed the most, like International Relations with Professor Weber, and the ones I felt like I was always behind. Like the Middle East History, a class I took to understand the region better but seemed to be lost in bunch of complicated names to which many people in the class nodded their heads and I didn't have time to retain before the name ones came in. I borrowed most of the books from the Moffit and one or two I managed to buy only to return them twenty four hours later.
[2] One of the main differences between college and Berkeley were the open ended questions. No more quizes with the green answer slips and [HB] pencils. The system of grading wasn't that disimilar except that almost every question on any exam required a written answer. And then there were papers, the one or two pagers written overnight usually with a minus added to an A for the various typos and gramatical mistakes. The good thing was that most of the grades were 'curved' so the final scored were adjusted to the class average. Unlike in college, the final grade would come with a minus (or plus) and looking at my results from the Middle East History class, my straight As streak was coming to an end. As for my econ class, I decided that it would be safer to take it on a pass or no pass basis. At first I felt defeat and internal dissapointment. Later however, I felt a massive relief that I could just sit at the class and inhale all the knowledge without the pressure of the judgement. After all, as the only political science major in the room, the material was a big enough challenge already.
[3] The underground of the Moffit Library was my usual studying destinations. Wooden desks, computer lab, late nights, all underground. The collections of books were measured in millions. The Polish section seemed to have more books in the langage that I had ever seen or heard of. The final exams period was a time of studying when library (and the Freedom Speech Cafe) were opened for twenty four hours. There was a sense of comerady and of almost a social event. Because of the parking times I could now park the car on the [Hears] avenue and walk in through the Northern Gate. My method was quite simple. Read as much as possible on the topic, take some notes, do not return the source books before the grading and then finish the actual paper on the night before it was actually due. I could do it on my oversized Sony laptop (and upgrade from the old Compaq) or on one of the computers in the lab. Then there were the final exams. Three hours of non stop writing. Putting down on your thoughts on the paper as quickly as possibly so you could just be done with it and go home.
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