Dear Prospective Berkeley Graduate Student,
Hello and welcome! This page is an attempt to convey some aspects of life as a graduate student in political science at the University of California, Berkeley. It is meant to give you a feel for some of the specific reasons why a graduate education here may be right for you, as well as some of the fringe benefits of living in the San Francisco Bay Area. My one caveat is that it is written from one graduate student's perspective, though I've tried hard to generalize from the opinions and experiences of my friends and colleagues. Please feel free to browse through the graduate student pages, and get in contact with people that more exactly share your particular interests and perspectives.
The Department
The Berkeley political science department is a unique place, because it maintains a wide range of perspectives, frameworks and areas of interest and gives you the freedom to explore and find your own intellectual identity through your work, your seminars and your conversations with faculty and students. This freedom is precious; it is the source of graduate student life here. Because the Berkeley program has few formal requirements other than a series of evaluations on your way to dissertation writing, there is no one perspective that is officially privileged over others.
Because of this openness and this freedom, there is a spirit of collaboration and discourse among graduate students. At Berkeley, graduate students learn from one another over coffee at cafes, in seminar, while studying for comprehensive exams, in presentations and practice job talks, and even over drinks or dinner at the end of the day. I have not met people as intellectually engaged and as ready and able to simultaneously criticize and support your ideas anywhere.
The Political Science Graduate Student Association, formed to give students some input into the faculty hiring process, both gives us a voice and organizes everything from conferences to picnics and a colorful election process. We also have close friends among our colleagues: clumps of grad students play softball together, cook food together, meet up in exotic locations while on fieldwork, drink, dance, bike, do yoga. Some even live together.
The quality and range of faculty resources in this department speaks for itself. Faculty members are truly committed to graduate teaching and constantly make themselves available for help and guidance, as teachers, advisors and senior colleagues. There is, however, the keen sense that your graduate education is yours to create. Most graduate students work with several professors simultaneously and produce work that is original; few graduate students at Berkeley ever write dissertations that are simply carbon copies of their advisors' work.
Thus, graduate students here are forced to create their own intellectual persona, their own interests and approaches, and their own way of thinking about political science. This prospect can be daunting and disorienting at first: I remember during first year wishing that someone would tell me how to do political science. But it is part of the freedom that we live for here, and there is, for most of us, no better way of finding your direction in a discipline as eclectic, amorphous and vast as this one.
The University
Berkeley is a world-class research institution with a universe of resources. Many graduate students work closely with outside faculty members and take classes in departments as varied as anthropology, rhetoric, economics and statistics, not to mention professional schools like law, public policy and journalism and affiliated institutions such as the Graduate Theological Union and the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Almost all of us take advantage of the communities and the resources of Organised Research Units (ORUs): the Institute of Governmental Studies, the Institute of International Studies, the Townsend Center for the Humanities and area studies centres, just to name a few. Many of these institutions provide fellowships, travel and conference grants, as well as opportunities to present work and to get to know like-minded students and scholars from other disciplines.
The university is often the destination for dignitaries such as George Soros, Al Gore, Amartya Sen, Hans Blix, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, former President of Chile Ricardo Largos, John Cleese, Yo-Yo Ma – just to name a random few. Zellerbach Auditorium consistently puts on world-class music, theatre and dance, and it's only a four minute walk from the department.
Berkeley and the Greater Bay Area
The beauty, range and complexity of the Bay Area are hard to describe; you should come and see for yourself. We are spoiled by cool, breezy sunshine nine months of the year, allowing us to hold frequent barbecues and conduct office hours in outdoor cafes. The view from our workaday computer lab is of the San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge and the city of San Francisco. The same view is worth millions of dollars in real estate terms.
Berkeley is a small city, associated with the University but not dominated by it. Most grad students find comfortable (if small) housing relatively close to campus – rents are high but manageable, and not higher than comparable urban areas like Boston or Washington, DC. Some of us choose to live in Oakland or San Francisco to get a little distance. Few of us have cars: bikes and public transportation are the favoured modes of getting around. There are lots of things to see and do: six or seven cinemas, several theatres, and more pubs, music venues and cafes than I can name. Restaurants in town range from the quite cheap to the world-renowned Chez Panisse (the place you get your folks to treat you to), and covers cuisine from Europe, Latin America, East, Southeast and South Asia and Africa. Eating out is a favorite activity.
Oakland and San Francisco are short trips by public transportation away, and both offer unlimited opportunities. San Francisco is a truly beautiful city with a rich and exciting past, and things to see and do there stretch out to the horizon. Oakland is also a wonderful city, and more varied than one would expect. Any city that counts Huey Newton and Jack London as native sons deserves some attention. Both San Francisco and Oakland have major international airports.
A little further a-field, Napa and Sonoma Counties make up Northern California's wine country and a trip there is perfect for a lazy autumn weekend. Point Reyes and Big Sur give dramatic views of the California coastline, and Muir Woods introduces you to the colossal California Redwood. Within a day's drive, Yosemite National Park and Lake Tahoe offer wonderful getaways, romantic or otherwise.
Due to the sunshine and mild weather, outdoor activities abound in this part of the world, and on the weekend, many grad students are found hiking, biking, running, swimming in outdoor pools, sailing and all manner of other athletic endeavours. Fresh farm produce also contributes to healthy lifestyles: there are many organic and non-organic varieties of fruits and vegetables to figure out how to cook.
All in all…
The quality of life and study among political science grad students at Berkeley is higher than what one would expect for graduate school. Even in the middle of the angst and frustrations that come naturally with this way of life, we can enjoy good, deep conversations with friends and colleagues, take a walk in the hills, or find many different ways to amuse ourselves. For many different reasons, we love it here.
Dann Naseemullah
2003 Cohort
dnaseem@berkeley.edu