Of the first week

So I started my first semester at UC Berkeley this week, and while it makes no sense for me to be blogging right now, the time sensitive nature of my opening means that I must post. Here are a few of the lessons I learned, in varying levels of detail...

1. English majors are not friendly, but totally worth befriending- I am an English major, so I could have probably told you this a while ago, but English majors tend to be a sarcastic and somewhat insular bunch. This was made rather clear to me because while waiting for a non-English class to start, I couldn't help but notice how many people were freely engaged in meeting new folks. This is a marked difference from my English classes in which people walked in and proceeded to either sit in silence or carry on a convo with someone that they clearly already knew. Whatever causes this, I won't speculate, I just know that it's true. Maybe, I'll be able to do a list of majors by congeniality one day, but I know that at least Linguistics ranks above English, (I'm hoping to be a Linguistics minor, so...)
2. Everyone here is really, really smart- Okay, so I probably don't need the second "really", but the point is the same: people at this level are way more prepared than those at the juco stage. I am very used to casually being the smartest guy in the room, and establishing this fact quickly, but my first 4 days proved that, even if it's still true, it may only be by inches.
3. They expect you to work hard- This is the reason I shouldn't be blogging at the moment. As it stands now, I have to read some 700 pages by Wednesday, in addition to other coursework. This is a problem for me because, owing partially to the "smartest-guy-in-the-room" thing, I have terrible study habits. I might have ADD, but I think I'm just really lazy. Anyway, no one warned me that I was going to have to work hard once I got to Berkeley, so I blame everyone but me.
4. and lastly, This is the only place where Blackness is not a disadvantage- In the entire 38000+ people of Cal's student body there are 1203 blacks, (I say blacks with the assumption that people who are not from America still identify as such, meaning that it is not the same as African-American, plus I'm black so it's cool. Also that figure is exact because I took it from last semester's enrollment numbers, but isn't this a long parenthetical aside? crazy). During the opening week of each semester, student organizations look for new members, and this leads to a lot of hassle for people walking through the main thoroughfares of the school, unless you're black. Apparently, the larger portion of these orgs at Cal are various Asian communities, meaning that this is the only time when nobody pays attention to a 6 foot tall black guy, which after all these years, is all I ask.

So that's about it from the first week, I may check in with these every so often, but don't start expecting them, I can't be tied down to a regular blog schedule, I'm not ready for that kind of commitment yet.