Adapting to Being Back – Initial Worries and Frustrations, but I would do it all over again!

So Many things have changed! I can’t believe how many big shops have closed down and clubs have changed their music and style and new things have opened. You really have a heightened awareness of everything that is different, so it almost feels like you are coming forward to something new rather than back to [...]

Californian Home sickness

I never got home sick when I traveled out to California, but I definitely got dose of it when I arrived back in Scotland. There are many things to adapt back to once you return home, I’ll just mention a few and how they affected me:
Firstly, the weather… In this case I was very lucky, [...]

Enjoying my Californian home before saying goodbye

My Visa ran out the day that the term officially ended. That was the 21st of May (I actually finished on the 19th)… so I booked a ticket home 30 days later on the 20th June (you get a 30 day grace period on your visa which allows you to stay in the country).. I [...]

California…

I have completed one semester here and have had a whole month off over Christmas to explore California, which I absolutely love. Yet, I was still more than happy to come home to Berkeley and my City across the Bay – San Francisco, at the end of my travels. Here is a brief Photo summary of my [...]

Research at Berkeley

On top of being an incredibly prestigious University and having many of the best Professors and researchers in the world (including in my subject area, Psychology), Berkeley also offers research opportunities that are not easy to come by elsewhere. Berkeley itself is renowned for its cutting edge research projects and URAP provides an opportunity for [...]

Scheduling Classes in Berkeley

Ok.. So I have now officially settled into my class schedule, but it was by no means an easy process to get it sorted.
Berkeley’s Telebears system begins before you arrive in the country. I managed to get the telebears site (the site you sign up to classes with) working and immediately found big problems with [...]

Visa

As a few other people have said, the visa appointment actually only lasts a few minutes. The waiting takes around an hour, but if you have all your forms ready and printed off from the computer (e.g., the emails sent to you, the DS156 and DS158), financial proof, the photos and the self addressed envelope, then [...]

Becoming Real

The first step was when I recieved my confirmation, which suddenly allowed me to really start imaging going out there without restricting myself and allowing doubt to creep in. Then I got my results back, which confirmed that there wasn’t anything standing in my way. But it all seems to become more real when the [...]