Beginning Berkeley

This is my inaugural blog post, in an inaugural fashion! I think what I'll do with this is review classes I've taken and food I've eaten, and talk about situations and things I encounter. Songs I listen to, ads I see because I'm stupid and won't get an adblocker. Important things about me: I'm a guy who goes to UC Berkeley and I like biology/chemistry, hence the title. It's not plagiarism if you roll your eyes while you do it.

I was at the dining hall recently, and I was just sitting in my quiet corner with my friends Salad and Burrito (as I do every day of the week, in a completely non-compulsive way), reclining in my comfy chair and enjoying solifood. I heard a great commotion from the door and glanced up to find one of those Wolf Pack Tank Top assemblies of guys pouring in. The type is known to you, lots of short hair on the sides and competitively raucous speech. I guess they couldn't find a table for a double-digit number of people, I dunno. But, as men do, these guys are talking about the situation at the gym in Berkeley (which is a ten-dollar membership for the entire semester, so... the expectations must be examined).This is all very normal for college, if a little bit annoying to the normal lunch denizens of the back part of Café 3 (that is to say, me and two people who study in there).

The fun bit happened as they all got situated to eat. Our gym has a policy that forbids most of the exercises that can tear tendons and things, like jerks/cleans and stuff like that, for fear of people injuring themselves. This, apparently, was not to the liking of the Tank Top Frat Pack assembling at the central tables. They were making a great plan to go to adventuring together at the gym, as these people do, and this policy was interfering in their exploits. Now, I'mma quote this from memory, because I'm not funny and paraphrasing would make it boring. The only thing I'll say aside from this prefatory blather is: no, they were not kidding, and they said this all completely straight-faced and unaware.

"Bro, I wanna go to the gym."
"Yeah, I wanna get swole... but like, they don't let you jerk there."
"I'm on this circuit training program, like where you trade off jerking with other shit."
"Oh yeah? Can you like, partners?"
"Yeah bro, you can trade off the stations n shit. Like one guy is jerking it while the other flies and shit."
"But if we can't jerk-"
"Yeah, they don't let you jerk there. Gay."
"I wanna go to the gym and get swole... maybe we can like, jerk it while they're not looking?"
"But if we're all there jerking and trading off they'll hella notice."
"Aahh, shit, bros, I wanna jerk it and get swole with you guys. No pecs no sex." [ad infinitum until they left]

And so it was that I discovered that the greatest aspiration of fourteen or so frat brothers at UC Berkeley (bold proponents of heterosexuality all) was to go to a public gym as a group, get swollen, and jerk it in a rotation.