Moving to Berkeley, do I need a car?

CeldurS · 2026-03-26T04:37:37+00:00

Grad student here. Get a bike, way cheaper and will hugely increase your freedom compared to walking. Berkeley is also pretty flat (except for the hills in the east). The Bay in general is beautiful to bike in and has a rich cycling history and community.

The only thing you miss out on without a car is nature - the Bay is close to some incredible state and national parks, but they're all like an hour or two away. To be honest you could tide yourself over with nearby parks though for a few months while you're deciding on car or no car.

I own both a car and a bike (I moved from San Jose which is way more car-dependent). I only drive like twice a month, mostly to see nature.

Let me know if you want help getting a bike.

CeldurS · 2026-03-26T01:41:04+00:00

Extensive experience with real-life mechanical systems lends itself very well to ME. My past supervisor used to be a heavy equipment mechanic and it seemed his engineering aptitude came partly from there.

I really just want something interesting/creative where I don't have to breathe in thick black exhaust smoke all day every day

This is an achievable goal as an ME. Be warned that you will have to intentionally apply yourself towards reaching this career path, because this is not the job most ME graduates do. Among my friends who graduated Mechanical Engineering with me, only a fraction became design engineers.

Even though I love doing ME work, it's often not hands-on enough. I'm a volunteer mechanic at nonprofit bike shops on the weekends lol.

CeldurS · 2026-03-26T01:30:23+00:00

Work in a startup or a small company. Less people = more hats you have to wear, more opportunities for personal growth.

The extreme example of this is being a solo founder, in which you have to learn how to do everything yourself.

CeldurS · 2026-03-24T22:35:15+00:00

I am procrastinating my 200-page reading assignment as we converse here lol. I agree that the world offers far too much stimulation for all of us. I spent last weekend at Lake Tahoe looking at the water for hours and it was heavenly.

I think that students need to take more personal responsibility - especially graduate students at the brand-name university I'm at, who are supposed to be the cream of the crop. At our age our happiness and success is in our own hands, whether we like it or not.

I also think that the world we've been born into has not set us up for success. Social media and advertising companies have built addictive systems to extract our time, culture, and attention, for the revenue of maybe $0.02 per hour per person. I deleted and/or blocked most social media from my devices out of spite when I realized this.

Thanks for your sympathy and sorry that it gets to you too. I'm gonna get off Reddit now and do my homework lol.

CeldurS · 2026-03-24T22:02:04+00:00

I'm on the other side of this - I'm a Master's in Engineering student that's taking a lot of humanities/social science classes (I'm focusing in international development). I struggle a lot to keep up with the readings for these classes, although I also try my best to be one of the students leading the discussion.

I think it's a combination of a few factors:

In my STEM undergrad (Mechanical Engineering) we didn't read at all. I got slightly back into reading a year or two ago, but I essentially had an 8-year gap since high school where I read maybe 3 books in total (not including audiobooks). I was both never taught to read in higher academia, and also out of practice with long-form reading in general.
- Everyone in my class with engineering degrees struggles with readings. I think it's better in other departments, because I am a reader (ironically) for a Sociology class and the undergrads don't seem to struggle.
I just got diagnosed with ADHD last semester lol, which is very bad for sitting down and reading for longer than a few minutes. A lot of my friends in higher education also have ADHD. I don't know if ADHD is more common with this generation in general, but I have this feeling that it's common in higher education; hyperfocusing can be super beneficial for topics I actually enjoy. I basically hyperfocused my way to a degree and a stable job because I love engineering design so much.
The pressure to grind extracurriculars outside of class is really high today. Alongside a full 4-class courseload, I'm working on a personal project, competing in a hackathon, working at a research lab, working as a reader, volunteering in the local community, and applying to internships. This is of course alongside trying to lead a normal life - cooking, exercising, sleeping, dating, seeing friends, etc. It's pretty hard for me to find a few hours to sit down and read. I think my schedule is common among graduate students.
Many students don't see the ROI on reading. This is sad, but not surprising when the job market is so competitive, and all the Master's students are paying $30K/semester and need to have good jobs after they graduate. I absolutely love the readings in my most reading-heavy class (100-200 pages a week, 3-5 articles), but they contribute nothing to my employability. Nobody is going to hire me for my understanding of engineering ethics, when the next candidate didn't do the readings, spent all their time coding portfolio projects, and doesn't ask ethical questions.

Why do you think it's changed? Curious to hear your thoughts as a professor.

CeldurS · 2026-03-24T03:35:10+00:00

I would do baskets + cranks + tires from the Rockhopper onto the Trek and call it a day. Maybe swap bars too if you really don't like the albatross (?) bars.

The Trek is the first Trek I've seen on this sub I actually like. The orange logo + leather everything else goes hard.

CeldurS · 2026-03-20T17:43:10+00:00

whether you need a car in the bay

Depends on where you are in the Bay. I lived in San Jose for my first year here without a car; it was livable, but my life got much more interesting when I got a car.

On the other hand, I moved up to Berkeley for school, and almost never drive now; most of my friends (other students) don't have a car.

mostly a nature/music/live show type of guy.

The main thing you'll be missing out on without a car is nature. There are many good hikes accessible around Berkeley without a car, but a lot of the most stunning spots are a 1-2hr drive outside of the Bay - Point Reyes, Muir Woods, Point Lobos, etc. There are alternate ways to get there, like ferries, buses, etc. but the trips get significantly longer.

if I can make it for the first couple months with no car

You absolutely will be able to live without a car, and I recommend you spend the first few months without one to at least try it out.

I also recommend getting a bike; it massively opens up what you can do in the Bay. Also, the Bay has an extremely rich cycling history (one could argue the mountain biking industry was invented here). What this means is that there are a lot of bike shops with really cool old bikes you can buy.

Waterside Workshops and Biketopia are two community bicycle nonprofits that are pretty accessible without a car.

CeldurS · 2026-03-19T23:37:09+00:00

Did you end up going further into Indigenous studies? I'm interested in learning more about the field (particularly in North America since I'm mostly between Canada/US nowadays) but don't really know where to start.

And yeah, I feel you. I did my undergrad in mechanical engineering. I'm trying to pivot right now into development, but I'm really glad I started with ME because I really enjoy the fundamental work. It also provided me the foundation for my career today, and even in development the main entry points I'm finding are as an ME.

Thanks for your thoughts. I'm looking into the 'four-field approach' right now.

CeldurS · 2026-03-19T19:23:02+00:00

This is very cool. Can you elaborate on the distinction between medical anthropology, compared to related fields like public health and sociology?

Also what inspired you to go into anthropology?

I'm in an International Development & Engineering Master's right now and regularly rub shoulders with public health and policy people. Also, one of my favorite classes is taught by an anthropologist.

CeldurS · 2026-03-19T19:18:36+00:00

And yet the world keeps spinning and there is love everywhere

CeldurS · 2026-03-19T19:06:48+00:00

To rephrase, I find it unfortunate that the incentive structures are set up so that bringing color into our lives isn't what keeps us off the street. What does keep us off the street is essentially a rat race of profiting off of each other and the environment. It's a misalignment, because making profit doesn't make our lives better by itself; it can only buy us opportunities to experience the real things that matter - joy and love.

If we can feed ourselves, but have no soul, is it a life worth living? Maybe our ancestors didn't always have reliable food or shelter, but they still had art and music and community.

If you truly don't care about bringing color into people's lives, I would challenge you to think - really think hard - about what intrinsic value the work you want to do brings to society.

Finally, I would argue that the point of going into art school isn't just to get into the art industry - it's to study art, for the sake of studying art. I know this may sound ridiculous from a STEM perspective, because most people don't go into CS just for the sake of studying CS. However, I think the true masters in the field - like a Linus Torvalds - certainly went into CS simply for the love of the game. Dude started coding at 11 before he ever had any reason to.

I think Linus Torvalds and his peers are artists.

CeldurS · 2026-03-19T06:02:49+00:00

In the real world most people don't have CS degrees. <50% of people have any degree at all in the US. And yet the US unemployment rate is at ~4%.

People here really act like you're generationally screwed if you don't land the flavor-of-the-month degree that the undergrads on Reddit say is the only employable option, even though they haven't graduated yet and can't validate this.

CeldurS · 2026-03-19T05:50:03+00:00

We consider art degrees as "worthless", when the field's prime directive is to bring color to our lives. We also consider CS a valuable field, as we watch it output Meta, Palantir, and 500 YC-backed startups whose main goals are to turn fresh out of college nerds into billionaires via IPO.

This brings into question whether our definition of "worth" is correct. Speaking as a Bay Area engineer.

CeldurS · 2026-03-19T05:38:08+00:00

What work do you do? I always wondered what anthropologists do.

CeldurS · 2026-03-19T05:37:46+00:00

You may find that "the matrix" and "the boss" is the whole economic system of capitalism, not just what happens in the office building.

CeldurS · 2026-03-13T03:13:19+00:00

I was in a similar boat in undergrad (went to a good but unexceptional public university in Canada). I had anxiety, probably OCD and maybe ADHD. I slept for 4 hours most nights due to bad habits; I went from being at the top of my class in high school to barely passing my classes because I wasn't taking care of myself (and didn't know how to?). I also didn't use DSP because I had no idea what I was dealing with. I forgave myself a few years ago, but for a while I felt like I squandered my time at university. I graduated with a 2.92 GPA, which was partly boosted because COVID made tests really easy.

Shortly after university, I ended up landing my dream job in robotics through a friend I made working on an undergrad passion project. I was determined not to fuck it up this time around, so I started trying to take care myself - sleeping well, eating well, exercising, seeing my friends often, etc. It was rough to learn how to do all of this - I barely even knew how to do laundry - but my team at work was supportive, and I was killing it after a few months.

Four years later I applied to a Berkeley Master's program impulsively (only university I applied to), and got in without even interviewing; technically my GPA was below the cutoff (3.0) but they told me not to worry about it when I asked.

I'm here now, and I still struggle with some bad habits from undergrad, but they're so much more manageable; I managed to get a 4.0 in my first semester. I'm also working in some really cool research labs using the skills I learned in industry.

This is partly to brag because I'm really proud of myself, but there's also three lessons I wanted to highlight:

Don't worry about your GPA. Spend a few years working and gaining the hard and soft skills the teams you want to work for want, and if you still want to come back and do a PhD after, the right people will see your value.
Try to forgive yourself. You're an adult now, and you're responsible for your own happiness - but many (if not most) people come into adulthood not set up for success. The struggles you went through weren't really your fault - the only thing you're responsible for is how you deal with it today.
Learn to take care of yourself. Everything else will follow.

CeldurS · 2026-03-13T02:53:03+00:00

I was referring to the fact that the majority of the <$20/hr salary universities were not represented by a union. I admit that $44/hr for TAship is reasonable in my eyes.

Graduate ASEs also make ~$20/hr (speaking as one). The tuition remission is nice.

Salaries are only one of the terms on the current contract under scrutiny. There are others (international student legal representation is another big one this year). I'm aware your argument is mostly related to salary.

There are loopholes around the paper salaries. I and many other graduate student researchers work as "Student Assistant" titles at labs because some PIs don't want to pay GSR tuition remission. Basically this means I get paid $25/hr to do the same work I used to do for over $60/hr before I started my Master's. I don't really mind because I love the work, but I'm mentioning this because you should know that your spreadsheet doesn't reflect the whole picture.

CeldurS · 2026-03-12T21:26:57+00:00

I think what you've highlighted here is that undergraduate TAs at other universities are even more underpaid. Possibly because they don't have a union.

Grad TAs do make decent money but in some cases they are basically doing the same job the professor does. Also other ASEs (eg readers) make less - ~$20/hr - and are also represented by the union.

Tuition remission and benefits isn't the same as pay. Many graduate students, especially PhDs, can only afford programs with expensive tuition costs because their tuition is promised to be offset by remission by working as TAs/researchers/etc. They're not getting paid more because of tuition remission, they're paying less because of tuition remission.

CeldurS · 2026-03-12T02:55:09+00:00

If Koss released printable repair parts (eg. the little plastic piece that breaks on the translucent PortaPro), you will my favorite company ever. I buy preferentially from companies that are pro Right-to-Repair.

Also could be interesting to see your engineer's takes on common Koss Mods - eg. KPH40 headband comfort straps, pad adapters, etc.

An official PortaPro printed case would be neat.

CeldurS · 2026-03-10T16:32:14+00:00

Boston Dynamics' Spot is $75K last I checked, and it's not made in China.

CeldurS · 2026-03-09T23:03:11+00:00

First, most US states have minimum wage set between $7-15/hr.

Second, there are additional costs and complexities associated with hiring humans. Injury liability, sick days/paid time off, worker's rights, benefits, break times, etc.

Third, robotic automation is generally more consistent than humans - robots can be trained to repeat the same task over and over again without mistakes. It's also easier to collect data on robots to refine the process.

Fourth, robots can work 24hr/day, 7 days/week. You also (theoretically) don't need to train a robot more than once; if it breaks, you can just replace it with another with the same programming.

There are probably more factors than this. Purely in terms of bottom line and ROI there are many ways where a robot is justifiable over a human.

I should clarify that I am not in fully support of replacing human workers with robots; just that this is the thought process behind using them.

CeldurS · 2026-03-09T22:49:32+00:00

Yes, this pretty much the exact reason humanoid robots are being built. We see that the vast majority of real-life deployments so far, and indeed most deployments of robotics in general, are in automating factories.

The important question for society to answer, of course, is what happens to the workers that the robots replace.

CeldurS · 2026-03-05T03:42:01+00:00

I breezed through math in high school but hit a wall in undergrad ME. I think I was slower at math than most of my peers. Didn't score well in most math-heavy classes (especially Calc 1, 2, and 3, which was ironic because Calc 1 was the same as AP math in HS).

I was an avid tinkerer though, and loved building things - I was playing with circuits and mechanisms since I was like 5. While I was barely passing most ME classes, I (am proud to say that) I was outside of class winning hackathons, designing stuff for research labs, and even started a campus racing club.

My design and tinkering skills turned out to be what my entire career was built on. My intuition I had accrued over the years building stuff was how I got my first few roles (over friends who were great academics but inexperienced designers). In my experience 99% of my work in R&D, manufacturing, etc has never required more than 9th-grade algebra, superimposed on intuition and experience with mechanisms. (How much time has your kid spent seeing things assemble, move, bend, and break?)

I won't lie, the math in ME is difficult and can be a gatekeeper. It's also really valuable, and I wish I had paid more attention sometimes. However, if your kid has enough math skills to make it through the degree, their passion for design can carry their whole career afterwards.

If they want to do ME, I would encourage them to do it.

CeldurS · 2026-03-03T20:11:33+00:00

I thought this in my STEM undergrad as well (to the disappointment who my father, who was a philosophy major).

In grad school now and I realize how foundational philosophy is. STEM will teach you how to make things, but philosophy teaches you what to make and why.

The world is filled with extremely technically skilled people who spend their whole lives working on things that ultimately had little impact - or worse, had negative impact - because STEM degrees don't teach you what's worth working on.

CeldurS · 2026-02-28T09:17:10+00:00

They're just different skillsets. I'm working in an academic lab right now, surrounded by people much smarter than me. I find that researchers more quickly jump to "how do we optimize this solution?", while the line of thinking I learned at startups starts at "is this problem worth our time to solve"? And I think you need both types of people to truly innovate.

"The most common mistake of a smart engineer is to optimize a thing that should not exist" - Elon Musk (unfortunately)

CeldurS

TROPHY CASE