school

School has -- apparently -- begun. Loaded with homework assignments, labs to look after, papers to grade, I am now fighting to maintain some semblance of good habits. I hate it when courses start out super-easy, because I'm lulled into apathy until I suddenly realize the course has gone somewhere. Courses that scare the bejezus out of me are much prefered. I was terrified of Math 104 (I had been told it was the "hardest math class at Berkeley" -- hardly true, but a good warning to receive!) and therefore received a good and solid A. Ditto for Physics 137A. Other courses, where I knew I could scrape by, writing up the homeworks just hours before they were due (or sometimes even afterwards!) I fared not nearly as well; or maybe I'd still get a decent grade, but learn little.

I think I was only a good student for three years, but I even doubt that assertion. My first three years at Berkeley I was very studious, but I think a great deal of my success in the courses during this time was due largely to my pre-existing familiarity with the subject matter, where most of my peers had quite little. After my year in Sweden, with the newfound sociability of the co-ops and a wholly relaxed attitude due to a year of travel, it was nearly impossible to be so studious. At this point I'd simply refuse to do the 36-hour hacking sessions, cramped in the basement of Cory Hall, that the EECS program periodically requires. One of my current roommates hasn't received anything less than an A- since eighth grade. This sort of thing puts me completely to shame.

Good study habits are so hard to keep, and now they are obligatory. My professors this semester are not teaching from any textbooks (not that there aren't good text books to teach from), which makes attention to lectures, something I've never been particularly good with, rather important. My math methods lecturer deserves some kind of prize for his lectures, but I am vastly less enamored by the QM and EM lecturers, and in those cases would prefer to be following a text, on my own.

berkeley co-op stories: living on boats

The housing shortage caused by the veteran’s return was not solved by Cloyne Court and Ridge House alone. Board members of the U.C.S.C.A. sought other means to put up all the applicants. ... [O]ne abortive project deal[t] with surplus Navy barges then in mothballs at nearby Port Chicago.

These barges had stainless steel kitchens and facilities ideal for a floating co-op. The first deck had a huge mass hall, the second quarters for the men, with officers’ or managers’ rooms at one end. “We got awfully excited about this.” Davis said, “We learned that we could get these things for nothing. . . We went up and inspected them two or three times with the head of the U.C. Naval department, Captain Bruce Canaga, who was very much interested. . . Our idea was to bring them down and board them at the Berkeley Yacht Harbor somehow. We would hook-up facilities, water and so on, and run these things as long as we needed them in order to get over this critical housing shortage.” Norton and Davis figured out that the co-op could run the barge-co-ops for $35 per month per person, room and board. It was also figured that disposal of the barges after the crisis was over would be no trouble. They could be sailed out to sea and scuttled, if need be.

The deal itself was scuttled because of an uncooperative, indeed competitive, attitude on the part of the University. U.C. had just built a veteran’s center in Richmond and officials feared that the co-op barges would siphon applicants from it, and put pressure on city officials. They in turn pressured the co-op with such city type weapons as fire protection and drummedup sanitation objections, all of which could have been solved. The barge idea never came off.

— The Green Book

(no subject)

I wandered downtown this evening to complete a few errands, and ended checking out some neighborhoods. It's not much of an exaggeration to say that every house on Meigs Avenue between Park and Monroe has a "FOR RENT" sign out front. Indeed, Rochester seems to be a renter's wonderland. I'm not sure how this bodes for the co-op project -- on one hand, there is no housing shortage, but on the other, it will be a lot easier to find a house.

Check out http://www.homesteadnet.com/ and you'll see what I mean. For less than $200,000 you can get yourself a gigantic old house in a good neighborhood. Try that in California.

The online calculator gizmo for one particular five-bedroom prospect puts a mortgage payment at $1500/month. With five people living there, a rent of $300/month (the same as we presently pay) would cover the mortgage payments — not only would this cover "rent," but it would be a gradual accumulation of ownership too. Of course there's a lot more to it than that, but I think it shows back-of-the-envelope feasibility.

The people at NASCO are wonderfully supportive and very encouraging. Ryan and I are scheming to attend their annual Co-Op congress in November in Ann Arbor.