No. 18 - Adapting

8/18/2025 - Early move in
8/19/2025 - Official move in
8/20/2025 - Check in for GBO (Golden Bear Orientation)
8/21/2025 - Got cooked inside the Haas Pavilion with 5k other people in the 90 degree weather + Carnival + Karaoke
8/22/2025 - Bear Pact
8/23/2025 - Silent Disco
8/24/2025 - Poster Fair, Caltopia, Walked to Oakland to check out a Safeway with SX and WL, Failed White-out (Long story short the club we were going to go to said free RSVP then charged us $20 at the door so we all left)
8/25/2025 - Caltopia, Went home
8/26/2025 - MPS Scholar Launch Day

My words are really not wording today so I have no idea if this post is any coherent.

It's finally been one full week at UC Berkeley. Looking down to my room from my upper bunk has been pretty nice.

Believe it or not, I have no friends at Cal other than JH and SX (my roommates)... I live in a suite at the end of the hallway with two continuing students in the "Unit 1 Slottman Hall Mini-Suite Triple (Small)" -- yes, this is the full title of my dorm. For the past week, I was fully convinced that our floor was socially dead due to the hall being full of suites; turns out, I was wrong. I was recently told that our floor is a PARTY FLOOR??? full of people who DRINK??? and PARTY??? Full of those people who don't talk to you if they don't qualify as the "cool kids."

Honestly, the cool kids in context really just means that you are willing to party 24/7, so I'd prefer to not hang out with them. Not that they would hang out with me either, but yeah. This is like when SX and I went to walk through the Frat row on the 24th just to check out the Sigma Xi party from the outside and JH was like "yeah I mean it's not like they would let you guys in." Yeah ok, sure, I mean, you're not wrong.

Alongside that, I was also told that our floormates don't know us; they said "who are the girls living at the end of the hallway I've never seen or interacted with them." Hearing this was beyond embarrassing. Also I was in complete shock to the extent that I was in disbelief. I swear we went outside?? This may be because we have been skipping all of the small group portions (the small groups were based on our res hall) of GBO since the "Beat Pact" with mandatory attendance which happened on the 22nd. OR maybe because we have been skipping all floor wide events (There literally is an event hosted by the RA happening right now -- watching Superman in the floor lounge -- which, obviously, we are not at). OR maybe because we have been hanging out with JH's preexistent Haas friends rather than making new friends. Whatever the reason is, it's completely understandable because it's all since we haven't been the ones actively socialize.

Like I mentioned before, people in my community currently obsessed with partying and drinking while I'm in my room or the study room doing math everyday. I don't think anyone really started locking in since the lectures haven't even started yet, and beause I tend to lock myself up in a room when I do work, it seems like I never have any chance to go out and talk to people.

Even more so, I haven't been able to find anyone that I actually vibe with at school yet. Today at the BMT table during the MPS Scholars Launch day, I said hi to a girl that also went to JS WiSE. Long story short, I immediately found her annoying... Sorry...! BUT I SWEAR IT'S JUSTIFIED the moment we started talking she started talking about how she had a connection and her connection got her into the BMT team (it's open to all... was it all worth that hassle). Like girl I only asked if you were going to do it, just answer yes or no.

I have been told so many times from my brother that college friends never last and they are very shallow. During the Carnival on the first day of GBO, a group of girls approached us complimenting our fits. One of the girls turned out to be an applied math major taking Math 55-115 (I'm also taking it), and we were talking about how we should study together, but as expected, I haven't heard from her since then. Which is fine because honestly I don't even remember her name nor what she looks like. Maybe the prejudice I have towards college friendships is blocking me from all the possible socialization.

In high school, I didn't think too much about making friends because a) I already had a set friend group going from VCJH to VCHS, and b) I just didn't have a fully developed frontal lobe to think through it. But now that I am in college and I have learned that just having a lot of friends or knowing a lot of people does not help my life, I have been very careful with who I interact with. Especially having to live on an alleged party floor, I do not want to be interacting with people on my floor. But then who do I go find if not my floor? Maybe my discussions and/or seminar... Definitely not my lecture as they are 800 and 400 people lectures...

JH repeatedly tells me to go out and socialize but I'm starting to think whether it's really that deep. Honestly, I wouldn't mind only have a few friends throughout college. As long as people I actually care about keep in contact with me.

Few things that are making me uncomfortable so far though:
1: My bed sheets keep shifting outwards.
This is all on me because I keep sliding down the bed through under the bar of my bed, so my sheets also slip down with me. (Let me know if you're curious, I can show you)

2: Making bed
Making bed is very annoying at the top bunk. I can never live without making my bed immediately after waking up (it helps me to not go back to sleep because my OCD kicks in and annoys me even more if I mess up the clean and organized bed). But having a tiny bed (Twin XL) and a lot of plushies and two whole blankets is not helping my case too much. At home, I normally have my blankets cover up my entire bed, but here at Cal, I just fold all the blankets as if I were to store them inside the closet.

3: Why is everything uphill??
This is a cardio hell. How is freshman 15 an actual thing when I've literally never walked this much everyday before. I almost cried walking to Foothill the other day to check out JH's friend's dorm. It was actually in the middle of the woods. Bleh

4: Amazon locker is always full.
And the mailroom closes at 8pm so it's soooo inconvenient to mail things as for now.

I'm sure there will be more as I start my school year; we'll see.

Either way, whoever said Berkeley's social life is dead, you're wrong. This place is crazy.

PS: You might have wondered who WL that SX and I walked 1 hour roundtrip to a Safeway from 8/24/2025 is. And that if you were able to walk for that long with pure yap sessions you're friends with them. But no, you're wrong. Because I don't think he even knows my name.

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18/100