It's Thursday evening and I am E-X-A-U-S-T-E-D. School finally decided to get tough and that has kept me pretty busy lately. This week, I spent and average of 10 hours per day in Davis Hall. That made me realize that it is time to start introducing you all to some of my classmates, probably the people I spend more time with here in Berkeley.
Who else could I start with other than Barb? No one. Barb (Barbara Simpson) is definitely my study buddy and closest friend in the entire Structural Engineering, Mechanics and Materials Master Program (SEMM). She's so smart, so determined and such an hard worker that makes me be humble and realize that there's people much better in what they do than me. It's funny how we became close friends. When I first met her, she seemed too American to be my friend. She was born and raised in Kansas, which is definitely not as international as California, and her parents are both strictly republicans. She doesn't really care about what others might think about what she says or does. You cannot believe how many times a day we laugh out loud about stuff she does. She's truly genuine! Now that I think about why we became closer and closer I realize we have a lot in common: we study a lot, we like succeeding, we are both obsessed with working out and eating healthy (if we can consider eating American food healthy...) and all of our classmates make fun of us because we work too much. I actually don't know how successful I would be in this program if I hadn't start hanging out with her... Barb is staying in Berkeley for five more years to get her PhD. She is actually planing to do it in only four years and, although no one ever does that, I actually think she might be able to do it. Way to go Barb...
Talking about smart people, Ahmed Bakhaty comes to my mind. Ahmed is an Egyptian guy, who has been living in the US for a long time. He's probably the smartest person in our class, specially in what concerns to programing. He's a little genius... He is one of the few people in SEMM who did their undergraduate degree in UC Berkeley and, thus, knows all the professors and gives lots of useful hints on how to survive here. He also helps us surviving in the sense that explains us whatever doubt we have in whatever homework assignment we're trying to solve. Although he's always busy, either studying, doing research or working, he's always available to help us out. Way to go Ahmed...
Now it's time to describe the group Zahra-Niko-and-Brendan as only one classmate, because it is rare to see them apart from each other. Ok, I'll describe each of them separately but I wanted to make that joke anyway. Haha. Zahra, whose family is originally from India and some surrounding countries, is probably the only texan in our class. I like her! She's very well travelled, not only because she has family around the world and travels a lot, but also because she has worked before applying to this program. Actually, there are a bunch of people with work experience in our class. Brendan, for instance, worked in design. I think he scored 100% in all of our Concrete exams last semester. He knew every little thing. He's from the Bay Area but did his undergrad degree in Can Poly, in San Luis Obispo. He's a cool shy guy, typically American. But more American than Brendan is Niko. Fresno-American! You look at him and he's all into sports and fast-food but actually he is super, super smart and has tremendous engineering skills. It's impressive how he thinks about the physical meaning of everything and knows a bunch of stuff I've never thought about. I like this group. Barb and I end up working a lot with them. They are the ones who make fun of us more often. We always have a good time together.
There's much more people in the class I wanna talk about but I'll leave that to another post. I gotta go now. It's 10:30 already and I have to send a few e-mails before going to bed. The alarm clock rings at 6 am tomorrow morning, as every morning.
Talk to you soon!
Marta
Talking about smart people, Ahmed Bakhaty comes to my mind. Ahmed is an Egyptian guy, who has been living in the US for a long time. He's probably the smartest person in our class, specially in what concerns to programing. He's a little genius... He is one of the few people in SEMM who did their undergraduate degree in UC Berkeley and, thus, knows all the professors and gives lots of useful hints on how to survive here. He also helps us surviving in the sense that explains us whatever doubt we have in whatever homework assignment we're trying to solve. Although he's always busy, either studying, doing research or working, he's always available to help us out. Way to go Ahmed...
Now it's time to describe the group Zahra-Niko-and-Brendan as only one classmate, because it is rare to see them apart from each other. Ok, I'll describe each of them separately but I wanted to make that joke anyway. Haha. Zahra, whose family is originally from India and some surrounding countries, is probably the only texan in our class. I like her! She's very well travelled, not only because she has family around the world and travels a lot, but also because she has worked before applying to this program. Actually, there are a bunch of people with work experience in our class. Brendan, for instance, worked in design. I think he scored 100% in all of our Concrete exams last semester. He knew every little thing. He's from the Bay Area but did his undergrad degree in Can Poly, in San Luis Obispo. He's a cool shy guy, typically American. But more American than Brendan is Niko. Fresno-American! You look at him and he's all into sports and fast-food but actually he is super, super smart and has tremendous engineering skills. It's impressive how he thinks about the physical meaning of everything and knows a bunch of stuff I've never thought about. I like this group. Barb and I end up working a lot with them. They are the ones who make fun of us more often. We always have a good time together.
There's much more people in the class I wanna talk about but I'll leave that to another post. I gotta go now. It's 10:30 already and I have to send a few e-mails before going to bed. The alarm clock rings at 6 am tomorrow morning, as every morning.
Talk to you soon!
Marta
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