ESS 607: New student balancing act

Laura Vogt:

Hello. Thank you for joining me in The Not So Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. I’m your host, Laura Vogt, the associate director of marketing and communications in the college of engineering. This week, we’re talking about the balancing act of being a student, a friend, a family member. And to help us talk about what that looks like is one of our engineering student services advisors, Mayra Rivera. Hi, Mayra, thank you so much for joining us today. Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about yourself and your history here at UC Berkeley?

Mayra Rivera:

Hi, everyone. My name is Mayra. I am currently an ESS advisor. I advise for materials, science and engineering students, a portion of mechanical engineering students, and I’m advising for the new major, the aerospace engineering major this fall semester. I am excited to be here today to talk to you a little bit. I am originally from LA, so just to give you a little bit of background. I came over to Berkeley when I actually was admitted as a freshman to UC Berkeley. I’ve been living in Berkeley for like the last, I don’t know, 10 years now at this point. I did a double major when I was here, and I have been working at the college of engineering, let’s see, since 2017 now. I don’t know how many years that is, five? Five years now. That’s pretty much a little bit about me.

Laura Vogt:

I feel like if you were a double major, then you’re kind of the perfect person to talk to about how to balance being able to do stuff.

Mayra Rivera:

I was a double major. It’s history and poli sci actually. It was a lot of reading. Basically I used to wake up at five in the morning to do homework because that was the only time that worked for me.

Laura Vogt:

Oh, that has to be so much reading.

Mayra Rivera:

Yeah, it was terrible, but it was fine.

Laura Vogt:

Well, thank you so much for being here and joining us today. When you hear me or anybody else talk about a balancing act as a student, what does that mean to you as a student advisor?

Mayra Rivera:

When I hear just anyone just talking about balancing anything as a student, I think of balancing academics, so that means classes and studying, maybe office hours, tutoring hours. Also, balancing extracurricular activities, so that would be work, clubs, research, if you’re involved in research. Your relationships also, balancing relationships, so that would be friends, family. And then I think one of the most important things is also just your personal time, so that could be hobbies, things that make you happy on a daily basis, or even just doing life things such as chores, right? You need to have clean laundry for the next day, and you have to figure out when you’re going to do laundry.

Mayra Rivera:

For me, it just means when you spend time in one area, you know that you’re going to have less time than other areas, so that’s what we mean by balancing act. If one week you’re going to spend a lot more time in extracurriculars, you’re going to have a lot less time for the rest of these things, and you have to figure out what’s going to work best for you. And that can change on a week by week basis. If you have, let’s say for example, midterm, right? You’re going to spend a lot more time in your academics that week versus a lot of time in maybe your personal time or extracurriculars.

Laura Vogt:

I think some of what the balancing of learning this new… Learning how to balance where you’re going to be at, at UC Berkeley. Our students are all coming in brand new. Some of them have never been in college before, so that’s already a change from what you had and what you were doing when you were in high school. As you start to tick things off, and you had the great list of all the different things that students are going to have to do, I feel like homework is almost going to be at one of the top ones, especially right here off the top. How much time does an average engineering student spend on homework?

Mayra Rivera:

That actually varies per class, per person, maybe even per major. You might find that you need to spend more time in one subject area versus another. But if I had to give you an actual number, one unit on average is about three hours of work. And that work includes lecture time and anything outside of class. Our minimum number of units that students take here at the college of engineering is 12 units, so that would be an average of 36 hours at a minimum that you would have of combined lecture time and outside work time. The outside work time would be homework.

Mayra Rivera:

You are looking at a minimum of 36 hours a week of just like your academics in general. It will vary, like I said, based on everyone. It also depends on what type of classes you’re taking. If you’re taking a lot of lab courses, right? You’re going to spend a lot more time, a lot more homework time at least in your lab based courses, because you may have lab reports, but basically full-time job is what you’re looking at for studying.

Laura Vogt:

How many clubs or organizations would you suggest a student look at joining their first year here?

Mayra Rivera:

For your first semester, I actually recommend not joining a club, at least until you kind of settle down. The reason for that is like you mentioned earlier, it’s going to be the first time a lot of students are coming to Berkeley. Maybe it’s the first time you’re away from home. Maybe you’ve never done laundry before and you just got to figure it out. Your first semester, there’s a lot of transitioning that’s happening and you’re going to be spending a lot of time trying to figure out what’s going to work best for you. It does take a little bit of trial and error. I remember the first time that I started cooking, it was absolutely a nightmare. I couldn’t even make rice. It did take a lot of time. I didn’t realize that there were all these other things that I would need to do.

Mayra Rivera:

For your first semester, I definitely recommend not joining a club. You can still see what’s out there. You can maybe go to a meeting, check it out, see what you like, what you don’t like. But after your first semester, that’s when I would say you can get involved one or two clubs is usually what I recommend. It also varies if you’re joining a club that’s competition team, maybe only stick to one and try to find out when the peak times are for that competition team. At some point, you’re going to be traveling if you’re in a competition team, or you’re just going to have a lot more workload that one week where it’s a competition season.

Mayra Rivera:

Keep that in mind, as you’re looking at a club and try to figure out what club is going to be best for you, just because some of them will require more time than others. But I would say one to two is really good. For your first semester, hold off. I know you’re all super excited and you want to get involved in a ton of things, but you really got to make sure that your basics are down. Once you have that figured out, you know where the tutoring center is, where all the buildings are, then I would recommend start looking into a club and start getting more involved, but you’ll have plenty of time.

Laura Vogt:

That first semester, it’s almost you can do the research into the clubs, like talk to them at Calapalooza or one of the events that we have, or go to just like a general meeting to see what they’re like, but you don’t have to jump all in.

Mayra Rivera:

Right. Yes, definitely. I would say, even if you go to a meeting, if you don’t like it, it doesn’t mean that you have to do it just because you want to go check out one of their events. I would definitely say explore, see what you like, where you want to invest your time in. Maybe one semester you decide that you really like this one club and then the next semester you wanted explore something different, it’s okay to be part of multiple clubs. Just be really careful with the time commitment for each club, because it can look different depending on if it’s a club that you’re volunteering your time maybe in Oakland, right?

Mayra Rivera:

You’re going to think about a commute time to Oakland, because I used to volunteer there and I didn’t realize that I would have to take a BART. I was like, oh, that’s another hour of my day. Just be careful with what you choose and just try to do some research to see what you’re going to like.

Laura Vogt:

You mentioned the tutoring center. When do you think students should start making time to go to a tutoring center?

Mayra Rivera:

I would say as soon as your class schedule is finalized. Your class schedule usually is finalized maybe by the fourth week of the semester after the drop deadline. You can go as soon as you want. We’ll have tutoring in the college of engineering at CAEE. You can go to tutoring there for a lot of your classes that you’ll be here. There’s a lot of tutoring in SLC too, the Student Learning Center. But basically as soon as you need it, you should go. Maybe even before you even need it, you should just go see where it is just so it doesn’t seem so unfamiliar.

Mayra Rivera:

When you actually need it, you already know where the tutoring center is. It doesn’t seem as scary. Or if you’re frantic about one particular subject a certain day, you know that they have tutoring. You know how to get there. Really it can be as soon as you want. But I would say as soon as your schedule is finalized, at least know where it is just in case you need it.

Laura Vogt:

What would you suggest when it comes to that time management with your peers?

Mayra Rivera:

Oh, time management with your peers, it can be tricky just because a lot of you I know are super excited to get to know each other, want to spend time also just exploring the city around you. I would say don’t be afraid to set some boundaries, especially with your peers. Know that like you can say no if your peers are asking you to hang out every single day, but you know that you have a project that’s due, you’re going to have to tell them no at some point, or actually plan out a time where you can all hang out. When I came to college, it was the first time that I had ever scheduled lunches with someone. Before I had never really scheduled out a lunch in advance. I would have to check my calendar and be like, “Oh, let’s have lunch on Thursday a week from now,” right?

Mayra Rivera:

You do have to plan out your time. If you’re having a hard time trying to set some boundaries with your peers, try to find things that are in common. What I used to do when I was a student is if I really wanted to hang out with a friend, we both needed to do some studying, I would say, “Why don’t we just both go and study at the library?” It was a way for us to still hang out and still get the things done that I needed to get done. I tried to be kind of really intentional about hanging out. If I had to do grocery shopping, grocery shopping alone can be sometimes boring, I would just tell one of my friends, “Hey, do you want to hang out, but go get groceries with me so that we can still chat and do things?”

Mayra Rivera:

Just be careful with hanging out with friends. It is a really exciting time for you to get to know a bunch of people, but it could be a double-edged sword, right? Hanging out with your friends too much can also be bad because then you have less time for other things. That’s where like that balancing act comes into play, right? Just know if you spend more time on like your social life, you’re going to have less time in your academic life. Just be careful with that.

Laura Vogt:

Is there a time management tool that you found to be effective?

Mayra Rivera:

Honestly, just a calendar alone is super effective. I use Google Calendar for pretty much everything. We use it on campus a lot. We call it bCal. I personally recommend that you use the Google Calendar that you have access to because you can subscribe to calendars across campus through your Google Calendar. The office of the registrar has enrollment deadlines on the Google Calendar itself and you can just subscribe to it. You can just see the deadlines there without you having to navigate to a webpage. A calendar alone is probably the most effective thing. If you really want specific organizational tools, the Athletic Study Center has they call it an academic skills resource library.

Mayra Rivera:

They have some templates there that are useful for time management in an organization. A lot of the templates are calendars, whether it’s like a week by week, a semester, a checklist of things to do as you get the semester started. The SLC, the Student Learning Center also has a really great webpage on just success strategies. They also have some templates for calendars that can be really helpful and even just managing time and procrastination. But for me personally, I think a calendar, it already makes a huge difference.

Mayra Rivera:

You just have to actually go through the process of organizing your thoughts, figuring out what you do on a daily basis, and then doing the best that you can to manage your time based off of that calendar that you know these are the things that I definitely need to do, and then you kind of just go from there.

Laura Vogt:

I know a big question, especially for students that have their family nearby, is how can you control your family’s expectations?

Mayra Rivera:

Oh, this one’s tough. It’s really tough just because it’s going to vary based… Everyone’s going to have different family, right? But the biggest thing I recommend is a lot of communication. It’ll be hard, but clearly setting some boundaries. To your family, it might seem weird that you’re going to be spending your nights at a library studying until 2:00 in the morning, or you’re going to be spending your weekend on a project on campus. I know when I first started here, my mom would call me and I wouldn’t answer her because I was at the library, or I had an 8:00 PM discussion. She just didn’t believe me that I was at a library all night long and was like, “What are you doing? Are you partying?”

Mayra Rivera:

It’s like, “No, mom, I literally am studying. We all just study here until… That’s basically all we do.” It was really hard for her to understand that. The best thing that I did was just communicate with her like, “Hey, mom, I’m busy during these times. If you really want to talk to me, you can call me. But if I don’t answer, don’t get hurt that I’m not answering you. I’m not avoiding you. I promise you. It’s just now I have all these things that I need to do.” I would tell her, “I would call you back as soon as possible,” or just give her a designated time. The other thing too is especially if you have family nearby is they might expect you to go visit them every weekend or every single time that you have some free time.

Mayra Rivera:

You do really need to communicate with them and just let them know like, “Hey, this is basically my full-time job. It requires a lot of attention. I do need to study during these times.” It’ll be really hard at first because your family might feel hurt, like, “You don’t want to hang out with me. You’re doing other things now.” But I think the important part is just to make sure that you communicate with them, let them know what you’re going through, what you need to do on a daily basis. Once I explained to my mom like, “Hey, mom, this is literally how much I need to study. I wake up at 5:00 in the morning to do homework because this is the time that I have.”

Mayra Rivera:

The more I talked to my family and got them to understand what I do on a daily basis, the more understanding they were, but definitely it did require some time. It wasn’t something that just changed from one day to the next. I just had to constantly be like, “I can’t do it at this time. I have these things going on. I’m I’m sorry that I can’t answer your call.” And then eventually they understood and instead would call me or text me and ask me if I’m busy or to give them a call when I’m not busy, because they understood that I had a lot of things that were on my plate. But it can be really difficult.

Mayra Rivera:

It’s a work in progress for a lot of people. I would say even now it’s a work in progress because my mom expects me to be home for her birthday every single birthday and sometimes it can’t happen.

Laura Vogt:

I am 45 now and feel that to my bones of like how much the expectations are of your family, and you can’t go home to see them as much as they want.

Mayra Rivera:

You just constantly need to work on it and just be really clear about it. Eventually they’ll come around.

Laura Vogt:

I really agree that the communication point is just key. The more you communicate… You feel like sometimes you’re over communicating, but that’s what they need.

Mayra Rivera:

Agreed. That’s definitely what helped with my mom. I think the more I told her, the more she understood. And also, I definitely had times where I was stressed out and I would tell her, “Mom, I’m really stressed out. If I don’t study right now, I’m not going to feel good.” And she would be like, “Oh no, no, I want you to feel good.” I really try to reframe it to her. It worked out in the end, so that’s good.

Laura Vogt:

I know we don’t have a ton of student parents, but we do have student parents that at times require some different resources. Do you know what resources are available for them?

Mayra Rivera:

Yes. The biggest resource I recommend is actually the Student Parent Center. It’s a center on campus where student parents can kind of gather. They have events. They have academic advisors too specific for student parents. They also offer some transition courses that can be really helpful. They’re usually around two units. They’re courses that will talk about different topics like getting adjusted to campus, getting the most out of their experience here while they are a student parent, and preparing for just life after Cal. Something else that exists is childcare. UC Berkeley has the Early Childhood Education Program

Mayra Rivera:

There’s a way to get a certain number of seats for student parents so that children of student parents can have access to kind of like a subsidized childcare. There are some eligibility requirements that students need to keep in mind, so it’s better to check out their webpage and kind of just learn a little bit more. The other big thing I definitely recommend is talking to your advisor. Talk to me, right, if you are having a lot of family obligations, because there is a way for you to appeal for reduced course load if you have a lot of family obligations at a certain time. Like I had a student parent who literally had a newborn and that requires a lot of time.

Mayra Rivera:

There’s a way for us to help you make it work for your classes. And for that student at that time, they just did two classes for that semester because they literally had a newborn and just needed that extra time. There are definitely ways to make things work. I would say talk to your advisors if there’s additional resources that we can help you with, we definitely will.

Laura Vogt:

One of the things that I really like that the campus has a resource for is learning how to balance a budget through Bears for Financial Success. And that’s actually your peers. You can go to classes with students that really understand what you’re going through and have learned already what they’re passing on this knowledge about budgeting and how to make ends meet throughout the semester and the resources that are available if you need some extra help. Have you ever gone to any of their classes or heard anything about them?

Mayra Rivera:

I haven’t personally gone to their classes, but I have heard of students going to their classes, like their events too, but I don’t have a lot of experiences experience with them. Yeah, mm-hmm (negative).

Laura Vogt:

We actually did a podcast with them last year. If anybody wants to hear one of the students that works with Bears for Financial Success talk a little bit more about the program and the opportunities that they have available, you can check out the podcast from last year. As a matter of fact, you can check out any podcast from past years if you want to learn more about different subjects. But is there anything else that you wanted to add today?

Mayra Rivera:

Oh, the other thing too that’s available besides like Bears for Financial Success is there are some really useful decals out there that I definitely recommend that you check out. There is an Adulting DeCal that’s been really popular recently and that one will cover a lot of kind of life skills, whether it’s personal finance or creating your own budget or even just figuring out your own personal sleep schedule, right? I’ve also seen a DeCal specifically on personal finance, but a DeCal I took when I was a student was just learning about taxes, right? It’s going to be something that you’ll have to do at some point in time. I did it. It was one unit, pass, no pass, just to learn a little bit more.

Mayra Rivera:

There are really useful DeCals that can help you while you’re balancing academics, while you’re balancing hanging out with friends, or even just like your own personal things that you have to get done. I think there’s also a cooking one. I probably should have taken that one when I was here. It would have been helpful. Just all just keep in mind that things are going to change. Be flexible. Always revisit your schedule. You’ll have one week where you really just need to spend more time in your academics and that happens and that’s totally okay. But just remember, get back to your basics. Make sure that you’re doing well. You have your sleep covered. If you don’t sleep well, you basically can’t learn well, right?

Mayra Rivera:

Your brain just doesn’t want to work. Make sure that you’re taking care of yourself. If you ever need anything, feel free to reach out to people. I think that’s one of the biggest things with being a student here is… Everyone’s going through similar experiences. Everyone’s trying to figure out college, figure out life. Try to reach out to friends, peers, your advisors. We’ll try to help you as much as we can.

Laura Vogt:

Well, thank you so much for being here today.

Mayra Rivera:

You’re welcome. It was nice chatting.

Laura Vogt:

Thank you everyone for tuning in to The Not So Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. I look forward to podcasting with you next week. Thank you.