ESS 1006: Don’t Try to Do Everything: Start Here

[Laura Vogt]
[upbeat music] Your first semester at Berkeley can feel like a lot. So what actually matters most? Hello, and welcome to The Not So Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. I’m your host, Laura Vogt. In this episode, we’re breaking down what to focus on, what can wait, and how to set yourself up for success. This week we have three awesome ESSP peer advisors joining us, Isita Talukdar, Xenia Chen, and Gabrielle Diroll. Thank you all for being here. I really truly appreciate your time. I know we’re recording this during RRR week as you’re getting ready for finals, and you’ve got so much going on. So let’s start off with getting to know you a little better. Please take a moment to introduce yourselves and tell us why you’re peer advisors.

[Isita Talukdar]
Hi, my name is Isita. I am the electrical engineering and computer science peer advisor, and I am a senior. I’ve been doing peer advising for three years now, and I think it’s been a really great highlight of my time at college. I love getting to talk to new students and help people of all different years, whether it’s helping a freshman figure out their first classes or talking a senior through job recruitment. I think it’s been a really great way to get to know my major as a community and also the engineering school as a whole.

[Xenia Chen]
Hi, everyone. My name is Xenia. I’m the IEOR peer advisor. I’m currently a senior, and I’m from Colorado, and I’m a peer advisor because like Isita said, I like helping people. I feel like I’ve learned a lot about being a Berkeley engineering student over the past few years, and I want to give back.

[Gabrielle Diroll]
Hi, I’m Gabrielle. I’m an environmental engineering science third year, and so I’m the engineering science peer advisor. I wanted to be a peer advisor because I realized that my experience in my first two years, I was quite worried about my opportunities and taking advantage of them. I was pretty anxious about some of the choices that I was making, and I realized that I could be a source of support for students like me who probably went through those struggles or are going through those struggles.

[Laura Vogt]
Awesome. Well, thank you all for being here, and correct me if I’m wrong, but Xenia and Isita, you’re both graduating, right?

[Isita Talukdar]
Yep, that’s correct.

[Laura Vogt]
Well, congratulations.

[Isita Talukdar]
Yep.

[Laura Vogt]
I know you get to walk here in a couple of weeks. I would be remiss, and I realized this while we were discussing things before the podcast, to talk about what the Engineering Student Services peer advisors are and what you do for students. Why do you think it would be important for students to come in and start meeting you in their first year?

[Isita Talukdar]
Yeah, so we are part of the Engineering Student Services. So you would have your engineering student services advisor. That’s the real college advisor who you’re going to be meeting in your Golden Bear advising right before orientation, and we are the peer counterpart to that. If you ever need advice on how a certain class is like, a lot of us have taken all of your lower division classes and a decent portion of your upper divisions. We can offer more of a student perspective on a lot of things while also knowing a lot about the general policies and rules of the College of Engineering. That’s why we’re a pretty good resource. Again, we are really helpful for freshmen, especially if they want to start thinking of a four-year plan. We can help students figure that out, especially because me, as a senior, I’ve done all four years, and the other peer advisors are also going to have at least finished their lower divisions. And also just adjusting. We have a good lay of the land when it comes to different resources, like academic support. We can refer you to the right people, and overall, we’re a great stop for you to kind of just figure out what are the resources you have available to yourself and also get a student perspective on a lot of things.

[Laura Vogt]
And how can students find you during the semester?

[Isita Talukdar]
We are available at 120 Grimes Engineering Center, so that’s in the big engineering center. We’re in the office along with the ESS advisors, and we are also available for hours online.

[Xenia Chen]
To add on to Isita’s answer, I think peer advisors are a great resource to learn about extracurriculars offered at Berkeley since there’s over 1,000 clubs on Cal Link, which is the general resource you can see every Cal student group on. And so a lot of times students will come to me and be like, “I’m interested in XYZ,” and I can direct them to clubs that I’ve heard my friends or just heard people join that I think could be a good fit, and it’s a great way to just meet people.

[Laura Vogt]
When you think back to your first semester, what felt the most overwhelming?

[Gabrielle Diroll]
Honestly, I think for me it was the people. I went to a really small school, and I can remember being dropped off at the dorms. I lived in Unit One, and going to pick up my Cal ID, and my parents just were staying behind to leave to go home, and I was just walking across the street, physically separating myself from them and moving with this huge mass of people along Sproul to pick up my Cal ID card. And just the first day as well, being surrounded by a massive lecture hall with 500 plus students felt overwhelming. But I will say that because these bigger lower division classes have smaller discussion sections, so 20 people per discussion section, it made me feel less alone, and I definitely have gotten used to that bigger school environment.

[Isita Talukdar]
Yeah, for sure. For me, I grew up in the Bay Area as well, and I went to a school– I lived in San Jose, and so there was a lot of exposure to tech and CS when I was growing up, and so coming in, I felt really intimidated by all of the different tech clubs. I was kind of freaked out about, “Oh, I want to get into research. I want to do this club.” I remember I applied to almost 10 different coding clubs in my freshman year, and I think that was definitely something that I felt was going to totally change my trajectory when I was a freshman but didn’t end up being too serious in the end.

[Xenia Chen]
Yeah, my take on this is the lack of structure. I think in high school, we all did a lot to be able to get into Berkeley. We probably had rehearsals or practices after school, and you were spending hours doing homework or other things. And once you get to college that first semester, you don’t really have all those extracurriculars scheduled already. You kind of just have class, and that doesn’t take up too much of your time. Learning how to structure when I’m going to go to the library and do my homework, and when am I going to go to the gym and go eat, things like that, that I just hadn’t necessarily had to plan before because it was already set into my schedule. That was something I kind of struggled with.

[Gabrielle Diroll]
Mm-hmm.

[Laura Vogt]
What’s something that you wish you had done earlier but didn’t?

[Isita Talukdar]
I think definitely, I would say gone to office hours, for sure. I think it was something that in the beginning, I didn’t go to too often because I thought I was expected to be able to finish all of my homework on my own. When I was in my fall semester, after the first couple of midterms, I realized that I actually did want help, and I wanted to be able to get through the homework and understand things on a better level, and I really started making the effort to go to office hours, and I felt like it was a really amazing choice for me. Especially in electrical engineering and computer science, office hours are a very collaborative space where you’re often working on the homework, and it’s very much, I think, a rite of passage and also part of the Berkeley culture to be with all your friends huddled in office hours trying to figure out the answers to your homework, and the TAs are giving you hints, and then suddenly it clicks. And I think that definitely helped me get more confident with my own problem-solving skills, and also definitely encouraged me to be really good about time management, just because I would have to make sure that I was accounting for, “Oh, I’m going to go to office hours at this time.” And so I would be able to prepare by reading the questions and trying them on my own before it, and I think that was also a very good side effect of just learning to time manage.

[Laura Vogt]
Office hours I know seems like something that’s really overwhelming for students because they don’t know how to do a face-to-face maybe with a faculty member, or they don’t know what kind of questions they’re having to go in and do. How do you approach office hours, then?

[Gabrielle Diroll]
For me, I usually prepare some questions or maybe just a starting question. As well, if there’s a lot of folks in office

[Gabrielle Diroll]
hours, say, if it’s a really challenging homework, sometimes you can just sit in, and professors will let you do that. Obviously, if it’s a little bit more one-on-one, it might be a little bit more intimidating. So I usually try to prepare something with respect to the lecture, a question that I had, or with respect to the homework, something that I was confused about, but ahead of time. And I train myself to be like, “Okay, what am I going to ask this person?” So that way, I come in a little bit more prepared.

[Laura Vogt]
You both mentioned that office hours can become a really collaborative space, and it also seems like that’s where a lot of students start meeting people in their classes. So if you’re hoping to build a study group, how do you actually go about doing that?

[Xenia Chen]
I think a great way for IEOR students to form study groups is going to IASE general meetings or any social events they have just to meet other students in the major because, being in the same major, you do tend to take the same classes at the same time, and that’s how I met most of my study groups. As well as during office hours, there might be the same few students that go every week, and so you all know that you’re all on the same page about wanting to do well in the class and getting help. And so that could also be a great resource of students to form relationships with.

[Laura Vogt]
Once you’re with the study groups and you realize that you’ve met with faculty, you’ve met with study groups, maybe you need a little bit more help, or even if you don’t do the other two and you’re like, “I need to start getting some support in this course,” what’s the best thing to do at that point?

[Isita Talukdar]
At that point, I would actually say come talk to one of the ESS peer advisors. We can definitely help you find all of those resources because each different types of classes have different resources available to them. For example, if you’re taking a lower division engineering class, we can direct you to the Center for Access to Engineering Excellence. If you’re taking a lower division non-engineering class, like an English class or something, then the Student Learning Center can be really helpful. Each department has tutoring. For example, for EECS specifically, the Honor Society of EECS, HKN, does lower division tutoring as well. And if you just generally need help with studying overall and just getting academically on track, there’s the SLC, the Student Learning Center, does academic coaching. We understand that that’s a lot of resources, and that would definitely be a good time to talk to a peer advisor so we can work through which one of those resources makes the most sense for you.

[Laura Vogt]
And so you brought up the CAE, Center for Access to Engineering Excellence, and I want to talk a little bit more about that because I think it’s such an important resource for students, especially in that first year. Can you tell me more about it?

[Isita Talukdar]
Yeah. So the Center for Access to Engineering Excellence is located in the Grimes Engineering Center. They’re pretty much right across from us in the main office. They are a great resource. They have so many different things. They have tutors for a lot of, again, lower division engineering and STEM courses. They have workshops that they’ll do for professional development during the final week before your finals or R’ Week at Berkeley. They’ll do free dinners and different de-stress events. And overall, they’re a very great resource. They also do free snacks and free coffee when they can, and I think that they’re a very amazing resource. They’re open to all undergraduate students, so not just engineers, but also undergraduate students from other majors. And I would definitely suggest even just going into the space to study. You can meet your fellow engineers, strike up friendships, see if people are working on the same thing, take a meeting in there. It’s just a really great communal space.

[Laura Vogt]
I know many of the students coming into the College of Engineering were providing the tutoring in high school and their community college, not receiving it. So how do you move from feeling like you are the one who gave the support to it’s okay that you’re the one who needs the support now?

[Isita Talukdar]
When I was a freshman in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science 16A, my TA told me, “You guys are going to have to get used to not being straight-A students, and whether that takes you one semester or three years, it’s going to happen.” And it was a pretty strong piece of advice that I think was very important for us to hear because it is true, Berkeley has some of the best high school students in the country coming to it, and it is a very rough adjustment to go from being somebody who could just cruise through school to having to put in a lot of effort and sometimes not even doing particularly well. I am definitely no longer a straight-A student. I think I have learned a lot, and I do think one of the good things about that is that you no longer feel as attached to doing perfectly. I think it’s once you let go of the idea that you’re expected to get an A, you’re expected to get perfect grades in classes, you can focus more on learning. And the exams definitely are meant to really challenge you. Getting that perfect score is very much not an expected thing. And definitely as an engineer, you’ll see some pretty crazy raw score averages. So, when your class gets an average of a 22% on an exam, don’t feel stupid. It’s very much part of the journey here.

[Laura Vogt]
Do you remember the first time that you got a bad grade, and what did you do to come back from that?

[Isita Talukdar]
Oh, God. I remember it was for Computer Science 70. I don’t exactly remember the grade I got, but it was dismal. I decided that I would just take a day to stop thinking about classes entirely. I went to the marina. I sat at the oceanfront for three hours [chuckles] and I ate ice cream. I was totally torn up over it, and now it’s two years ago, it looks so inconsequential. But it’s a tough adjustment. Definitely, I think trying to build a strong foundation mentally about not using grades as a way of self-worth, and especially trying to avoid comparing scores with people, that will help all of that get a lot easier. But definitely take some time to process your feelings and then go back and start going to office hours, re-strategize, and then do all that problem-solving.

[Laura Vogt]
I really like that you said that grades are not your self-worth.

[Xenia Chen]
A quote I like to think about is that you’re not growing unless you’re challenged. And so if you’re

[Xenia Chen]
the dumbest person in the room, that’s a good thing because you can learn from everyone else.

[Gabrielle Diroll]
I remember that it was for Math 1B, which is now Math 52, and I remember getting the email for it and seeing the score and totally freaking out because I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is terrible. I’m going to fail this class. This is bad.” And then I didn’t see– So the score was up at the top of the email, but I didn’t see that further down, they had made comments about the bins, so about what scores were what, and it turns out [chuckles] that I did relatively fine, average compared to the rest of the class. I think it is definitely a period of adjustment that you have to go through, especially for those lower division courses that you might find that you’re maybe not getting something that you might’ve been used to getting as compared to perhaps where everyone else is in the class, because these are challenging classes. You’re doing okay.

[Laura Vogt]
We had talked a little bit previously, or you had mentioned previously about your time management, making sure that you have that structure. What do you think students should realistically be putting on their calendars?

[Xenia Chen]
Yeah. Regarding time management, I’m definitely on the extreme end of using Google Calendar. I detail basically everything I do the entire day. But I think it’s really helpful for me to just have a reference of when I’m in an objective state of thinking of what do I actually need to get done and not what do I feel like doing right now, and I just go by that schedule. I’m more productive. So a lot of times, you’ll have these small, maybe one-hour breaks between classes where if I don’t plan anything, I kind of just sit around and doomscroll or [chuckles] I just don’t really get anything done. Whereas if I say, “Oh, this one hour, I’m going to Main Stacks and I’m going to do this exact homework,” I do tend to do it more often.

[Laura Vogt]
And I know this is a question, the answer’s going to vary greatly depending on who the person is. How long do you think it would realistically take you to figure things out and be comfortable in your first year?

[Gabrielle Diroll]
Honestly, I would say my sophomore spring semester to figure out what was going on and how to settle in. I think my first year was just overwhelming in the big classes, lot of work, wasn’t doing as well as I wanted to. Some of my coursework and seeking help and really going to office hours and pushing myself to do that. I kind of continued. I felt a little bit better my freshman spring semester. I think my hardest semester personally was my sophomore fall semester. I felt very lost in myself and in my coursework. I think I had put a lot of pressure on myself to take these really challenging classes together. And so coming out of that and really being tested by that in how I study and how I allocate time, and how I de-stress and build in those pockets of fun alongside my studying, I think I felt a lot more at home and relaxed in my sophomore spring semester. Definitely was taking classes that weren’t as rigorous because I had gotten over a lot of my lower division courses, and started to reach up into my upper division courses feeling like, “Okay, I’m getting somewhere. Something’s happening.” And I also felt more involved in clubs and was looking to pursue further opportunities in research and in jobs. Things started to fall into place. I think that definitely now as a third-year student, I’m feeling a lot more at home and having built these communities a lot through ESS, through peer advising and having our friend group and everything, and then also through clubs like Hispanic Engineers and Scientists or through research groups and even just in my co-op, having that community I think has made me feel more at home.

[Isita Talukdar]
I would say that after, I think at my sophomore spring was the semester that I finally felt like I sort of had it on lock. I think it had been a full semester of living in my apartment with my roommate. I think I had experimented a lot, I think, during the semesters of seeing what I wanted to commit to, how much time I have for different things, and learned important lessons about basically going to office hours and how to study. And I think definitely by sophomore spring, I felt like I sort of had it down, even if things went– I mean, after that, everything wasn’t perfect. I still felt a lot more equipped, and I definitely wasn’t feeling out of place by that time.

[Xenia Chen]
I would say it took me until my junior or senior year to really figure things out because I think each semester there were ups and downs that I went through, and you grow from all of those challenges. And so I think by the time I was an upperclassman, I could look back and see how much I had grown through all my semesters, and that’s when I feel like I settled. It wasn’t like, “Oh, I feel settled now.” It’s like looking back, I can see how things have changed.

[Laura Vogt]
So to hear that it took you … three who are peer advisors who are there to support students right now, that time to be comfortable and know where you’re going and feel like you were getting it, that you finally got it, that it took you some time, that it’s okay. I’m glad that you guys shared that. Talking about the mental wellness aspect of being a Berkeley engineer, I’ve now worked here for 15 years, and the first year that I was there, one of the things that they showed was a picture of somebody from the movie “Fight Club” just looking completely haggard and destroyed, and they were like, “If you don’t look like this, then you’re not doing engineering right.” And I’m really glad that in the last 15 years, we don’t want you to look like that. We need the mental health wellness aspect of this, of you taking care of yourself. So what have the three of you done to really make sure that you’re taking care of yourselves while you’re here?

[Isita Talukdar]
I think that I’ve made it a priority in my time here to develop an identity outside being a student and being an engineer. So I really tried to make sure that I do things completely either outside of the college or more focused on the city, just so that I feel like I’m not just constantly hustling for electrical engineering, computer science. I think that’s a big pitfall a lot of people in my major have, that they’re very focused on just whatever makes them more career ready, and not really doing much else outside of that to just kind of round themselves out as people. So I’ve been a volunteer at the Berkeley Animal Care Services for the past three years, and I’m now a senior teaching volunteer, so I now teach new volunteers as well, and I think that’s been really gratifying. It’s been really great to just take a break during the week to go to the animal shelter and play with some kittens and cats and walk some dogs, and I think it’s been really meaningful to be a part of that journey for animals in need.

[Xenia Chen]
Yeah. For me, I would say meeting people outside of my major and outside of engineering was really eye-opening to just see how everyone is on a different journey. And so you really shouldn’t compare your life to anyone else’s at Berkeley. And so one thing I did was joining extracurriculars that are more social. Greek life, I think, was great for me to meet people who weren’t just talking about school all the time, and it gave me some more fun things to add to my schedule.

[Gabrielle Diroll]
I think just embedding social activities within the week. Obviously, it’s important to have a balance, but now as a third year, having a little bit more experience with knowing how to study and how to study effectively, and not taking as much time up with maybe things that weren’t as effective. I can kind of include more fun things scattered throughout the week. So normally, my freshman or sophomore year, I might have done something on the weekend, but now maybe I’ll watch a movie on a Wednesday night and be able to allocate my time appropriately so that way I can do the things that I need to do, and really just keeping updated and keeping in contact with my friends, even outside of the College of Engineering.

[Xenia Chen]
Yeah. Thanks so much for asking this question. I think mental health is definitely so important. I can definitely say my freshman year, I struggled a lot. I probably called my mom every single day for the entire first and maybe second semester. But some strategies I had to combat that is meeting people outside of engineering, and so joining Greek life, joining my consulting club, joining cultural clubs, more social things. And I think my consulting club gave me an outlet to have opportunities that I wouldn’t have otherwise, like going on trips. That really lowered my cortisol, but also finding a group of people who are driven but also know how to have fun, and feeling like kind of I have a friend group through that. And for some people, it’s their consulting club or also their dance club or anything like that. But it also doesn’t necessarily have to be a club. I think just finding a community of people there to support you is really important.

[Laura Vogt]
You’ve mentioned so many great resources throughout this conversation. If students are listening and wondering where they can find all of this information in one place, where should they start?

[Xenia Chen]
Our website is engineering.berkeley.edu/peer, and if you just type that in, there’s a Google Calendar where you can see all peer advisors’ schedules. Specifically, if you want to go to a peer advisor in your major, you can see when they’re working. There’s both in-person and Zoom hours.

[Laura Vogt]
And so if you wanted somebody to listen to this podcast and walk away knowing the one thing that they should do when they get here and start school, what’s that one thing that you want them to take with them?

[Isita Talukdar]
It would be really cheesy if we said talk to a peer advisor, but-

[Laura Vogt]
[laughs]

[Isita Talukdar]
… I think one thing that I would want you to do is just take a deep breath. It’s going to be an adjustment, but thousands of students do it, and tens of thousands of students have done it over all of the years that this school has existed. It’s going to be okay, and it’ll be rough at times, but in the end, you’re going to do four years, and you’re going to come out a more knowledgeable, wiser, and kinder, ideally, person, and I think you should be excited for it.

[Xenia Chen]
My parting words are to do your research because there’s so many resources that already exist out there that you just need to find to take advantage of, and definitely find mentorship opportunities. There’s EMP, the Engineering Mentorship Program, that I was a part of freshman year and also am still currently a part of as a mentor, that really helps, but whether it’s a formal or informal system, finding mentors and utilizing your resources.

[Gabrielle Diroll]
I would say if you’re in lecture and the first day you sit next to somebody and they seem chill, turn and say hi. See what comes out of that. I think that so many folks that I’ve met in office hours, in lecture, in clubs, have really changed my experience here.

[Laura Vogt]
I love that. If there was one thing you hope every new Berkeley engineer remembers during their first semester, what would it be?

[Gabrielle Diroll]
I can completely understand how it might be daunting to do that, but making that connection at least once on the first day really changes your perspective, really build these relationships, and I found that there are certain folks who I’ve known since freshman year. Someone said hi sometime during an office hours, and we’ve grown since then.

[Laura Vogt]
Thank you all so much for taking the time to be here today. I think one of the biggest takeaways from our conversation is that it’s okay if your first semester feels overwhelming, because that’s part of the experience for so many students. So thank you for sharing your stories, and best of luck with finals.

[Isita Talukdar]
Of course. We’re so glad we could join you.

[Xenia Chen]
Yeah. Thanks so much, Laura, for having us.

[Gabrielle Diroll]
This was great talking about it.

[Laura Vogt]
Thank you for listening to “The Not-So-Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer.” If there’s one thing we hope you take away from this episode, it’s that your first semester is just the beginning. Give yourself time to learn, adjust, and settle in. You don’t have to figure everything out right away. Lean on people around you. Take advantage of the resources available to you, and remember, asking for help is part of the Berkeley experience. If you’d like to learn more, explore the rest of the series for guidance as you get started. We look forward to welcoming you to the College of Engineering soon. [outro music]