Settled down in Berkeley!

After three weeks of holidays with many wonderful trips in Berkeley's neighborhood, my parents returned to Switzerland. But before leaving, they helped me move into my new apartment. It was so much work! But they left me with a truly wonderful apartment. You can find some photos of the apartment here.

Now, I had one day left to buy school supplies and get ready for the start of university. Buying the textbooks for the courses is so easy here: I went to a bookshop near campus and was thinking that I would spend a long time in there looking for good textbooks for the various courses. However, here in the U.S. even for Ph.D. students the professors already tell the bookshops which textbooks the students will have to buy for their courses and so the students just have to pick up the books. Individual thinking is not allowed... However, I have noticed that this system leads to serious drawbacks as many American students are not able to go to the library and look for helpful books by their own. However, like this I got my textbooks very quickly and was ready for university.

I already knew the campus of UC Berkeley from my first visit here in March. It is just wonderful. But I was quite shocked when I first saw my office and the classrooms. Have a look at my pictures! By then I started to appreciate the equipment of the University of Zurich a lot. But as I have such a nice apartment, I spend very little time in my office and study mostly at home. And here in Berkeley the weather is always so nice that many students study sitting in the grass somewhere on campus.

There are so many different courses offered here at university that it was hard to choose. In addition, most professors do a great job in teaching. And if you don't like a class, there are so many others... This semester, I am taking three classes and they are all so interesting. In one of these courses we are about 200 Ph.D. students! Not imaginable in Switzerland!

Although I knew that a Ph.D. in the U.S. is very school-like, it took me some time to get used to it. Here I have weekly homework in every course and 2 exams per semester, a midterm and a final. During the first week I asked my office mate what the rules were for the homework. I wanted to know what percentage of the points I needed as I was used to be required to get 50% of the points. But my office mate was very confused by my question and finally explained that I have to solve 100% of the problems... I again got aware: I'm in Berkeley now! ;-)

Please check out my pictures about my apartment and university!