What’s Up | 09/07/10

What a week. Last week was the first full week of my second year of college, and it was quite an experience. I feel like I’ve been in school for a month. Seriously.

For one, clubs were getting into full swing. And the first week is always the most intense for ABA, my business club.

I’m the Professional Chair this semester, so most of my Cabinet responsibilities were the same as last semester’s, namely handbilling, fliering, tabling, chalking. Getting up at 6 am. Sleeping at 3 am. You know, the good stuff.

We had our First General Meeting on Wednesday, and it was a pretty big success. We worked hard to prepare for it, and it paid off handsomely. We had a packed house in 145 Dwinelle, and lots of freshmen signed up for membership.

I got to talk to a lot of these freshmen during First Gen and Buddy Pizza Night, and I was very impressed. Smart group. The weekend was committee interviews. Lisa, my co-chair, and I interviewed close to 60 kids for our committee.

In the end, we picked eight of the best-qualified, and it’s safe to say that we’ll be having an awesome semester in ABA.

Oh, and I’d like to give a shout-out to my Prof kids Vicki, Angela, Stephanie, Ellen, Cody, Daisuke, Thomas, and Jason. Here’s to the Fall 2010 Professional Committee.

The Daily Cal definitely picked up last week as well. Coming off two of our biggest issues of the semester, we now had to push for our Game Day Issues. Overall, work has been pretty good. It’s been pretty much the same stuff, but we now have a complete sales team. It’s been great meeting all the new people.

What about school, you say? To be honest, last week wasn’t exactly academically-focused. Plus, since it was the start of semester, most of my classes have been pretty chill. I can say that I enjoyed about half my classes so far.

Development Studies has been interesting, slightly repetitive, but the professor is so passionate that everything he says, even announcements seem interesting. Watts likes to yell obscenities and wave his arms wildly in the air, denouncing poverty and spurring students into action.

UGBA 105 (Organizational Behavior) is my upper-div business class. I’ve only had one lecture with Professor Kass, but I already know that I’ll be looking forward to class. Kass reminded me of a motivational speaker, and just introducing that class to his students made me happy that I had chosen BA 105.

Now to the eh classes. Poli Sci 1 has been so-so. The professor looks like Jim Carrey, says “um” a lot, and lecture slides pretty much cover everything he talks about. We’ll see how this one turns out, but from what I’ve heard, even though the professor is pretty young, he’s one of the best political scientists of his generation.

Finally, there’s Econ 1. Sorely disappointed so far. Professor DeLong is brilliant, there’s no doubt about it. He even has his own Wikipedia page, so you know he’s legit.

But his lectures so far have consisted of reading paragraphs from his slides. Plus, his lectures are all written down and on his website, so it’s far less motivating to attend lectures. Fingers crossed that this class will turn out better than expected.

Other than that, I’ve enjoyed my week. It’s been really tiring, and I think there were days I was getting 4-5 hour’s sleep. But the start of school is always the most exciting time of college, and just seeing everyone on campus, seeing my friends again, and heading from one place to the next, makes me look forward to this semester at Cal.

Just say no to sophomore slump at randomtidbitsofthought.wordpress.com.