If you’re wondering why complete the survey, there are two main reasons.

(1) To be heard. By letting the GA know which issues matter to you, you will help the GA to more accurately and effectively represent the needs of graduate students in its interactions with campus and external decision-makers, and to achieve results that directly benefit you, such as improved services and increased resources for graduate students.

(2) To win a prize. Survey respondents have a chance to win three cash prizes (of $800, $500 and $200) as well as ten $50 gift certificates for the Cal Student Store.

You can follow the day’s activities in the East Bay and in Sacramento with the Daily Cal’s live blogs. Or read other media coverage here, here, and here.

Sunol Regional Wilderness, south of Pleasanton, is home to Little Yosemite, a popular destination this time of year. A recent Saturday saw visitors of all ages scrambling over rocks, peering into pools, and craning to snap the best photo. A short 1.25-mile walk along a wide, dirt trail, these falls are easily accessible. (Dogs are welcome in this park and are allowed off-leash as long as they are under voice command.) We tacked on a 4-mile loop that led us beside a babbling brook, through oak groves and pasture, to the ridge where we stopped for lunch and enjoyed our hard-earned view.

Take advantage of the wet weather and get acquainted with one of the many local waterfalls while the Bay Area is at its most lush. Here are a few more waterfalls to choose from:

• Donner Falls, Contra Costa County
• Alamere Falls, Marin County
• Carson Falls, Marin County
• Cascade Falls, Marin County
• Black Rock Falls, Santa Clara County
• Castle Rock Falls, Santa Cruz County

If you’re a Berkeley graduate student invested in the future of your institution, you know all this already. But in all the debate swirling around the lamentable fee increases – most prominently, how best to protest them – another issue is at stake. It’s heresy around here to suggest that anyone who wants and works for it shouldn’t have access to a college education. But does everyone really want a college education?

As San Jose State professor (and Berkeley Ph.D.) Mike Rustigan argued in a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed, many young Americans are more interested in working with their hands than sitting behind a desk, and to insist that everyone aspire to a four-year degree discounts the value – not to mention national economic necessity – of learning a trade. Caitlin Flanagan’s polemical (and pretty much universally derided) critique of the Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley serves as the reductio ad absurdum of our unblinking devotion to a liberal arts education at the expense of any practical knowledge. Arguing that school garden programs rob students of valuable time with civics textbooks, Flanagan accuses Alice Waters and her “ACORN-loving, public-option-supporting” acolytes of preventing migrant workers’ kids from getting into college, which is the only way they could possibly escape their fate of diabetes and underemployment. (Waters’ suggestion that working in a garden can prove pedagogically useful is unlikely to breed a permanent underclass of sharecroppers, but if it asks students to write recipes as well as coherent paragraphs about The Crucible – if it produces people who can effectively communicate information rather than haughtily parade their cultural capital in The Atlantic – is that really such a bad thing?)

Faux-populism aside, most school garden advocates would agree with Flanagan that, whether early education is cultivated in vegetable plots or those of Shakespeare, college is the ultimate goal, and the argument that the university isn’t for everyone runs a real risk of elitism. It’s easy for a tenured faculty member, or a first-year graduate student enjoying the first fruits of fellowship, to wax poetic about the art of mechanical production. But, as Rustigan argues, recognizing the abilities of those who show promise in shop class isn’t just empty praise; it might help steer would-be dropouts in a positive direction. Our educational system tends to give short shrift to those with neither the desire nor the skill set to don white collars. If the push for equal education put more emphasis on vocational programs, like the Regional Occupational Training offered in cooperation with the Santa Cruz public school system, we might give otherwise unmotivated teens a reason to stay in school by showing them there are multiple paths to success. Manufacturing may be cheaper in China, but home improvement and electricians’ visits will continue to be made in America, and such expertise comes with a certain job security. As Rustigan quotes a retired plumber, “No one is going to outsource your local repair guy.”

And let’s face it: not all of us in academia have the luxury of condescending to the service sector. Plenty of plumbers make more money than assistant professors, and grad students flush with funding now might not find such a plum situation on the job market – to say nothing of undergraduate humanities majors who try and fail, as I did last year, to score jobs in marketing or magazines and end up waitressing (and earning more than some office-bound peers) instead.

This isn’t meant to suggest that anyone is deciding between a mechanical engineering PhD and a career as a shop mechanic, or to deny the fact that college education can indeed be a powerful force for social change and personal gain. As the current controversy at Berkeley High attests, the misguided assumption that non-white students can’t excel in college-prep courses comes perilously close to proving Flanagan’s point. But it’s about time we realize that learning skills for manual labor, like learning critical thinking, is good for everyone, whether it’s part of a formal curriculum or not, whether as the basis for a vocation or as a supplement to one. The best education would teach how to use all the basic tools: reading, writing, arithmetic, and a hammer.

On Wednesday, February 24, from 12-2 pm, there is a workshop on surviving oral exams in the Tilden Room of the MLK Student Union. It will cover organization, planning, stress management, and what to expect from your committee.  Learn how to prepare while enjoying free lunch and refreshments. Brought to you by the GA’s Graduate Support Services Project in collaboration with UHS’s Counseling and Psychological Services.

On Thursday, February 25, the Grad Social Committee hosts its first event of the spring semester, a Graduate Assembly open house at Anthony Hall from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. Stop by for free food, drinks, and music and to get acquainted with the GA delegates and executive board members.

And on Friday, February 26, attend the graduate student health insurance plan town hall meeting on the ground floor of Eshleman Hall from 12 -1:30 pm. Go to learn more about a proposed UC-system-wide initiative to make graduate student health insurance more affordable and comprehensive as well as possible changes to our health insurance.

Located about 3.5 miles northwest of the Berkeley Campus (take the Buchanan exit off 80 and head west), The Albany Bulb was an active construction landfill until 1987 and is now part of the Eastshore State Park.  It’s not marked on Google Maps, but you’ll recognize it if you follow the coastline up from Gilman until you see, well, a bulb extending into the bay.  Take a nice, meandering walk (or ride) from the parking lot and you’ll be treated to breathtaking views of San Francisco and the bay as well as giant sculptures by local artists and graffiti-covered construction debris.  Head leftish on the path to Mad Mark’s castle, then wander north along the shore to find large murals and amusing uses of the large chunks of concrete scattered throughout the island.  On the north shore you’ll encounter huge sculptures by artists Osha Neumann and Jason De Antonis–I like to get to this part of the bulb by the late afternoon, so I can watch the sunset light up the city and the sculptures.

On any given day you will run into dog walkers, mountain bicyclists, anarchists, graffiti artists, photographers, and people who might rather not be disturbed.  The east side of the bulb is where there are more permanent encampments and the dogs who guard this area are not particularly friendly.  Stick to the well-trod paths and you’ll have a blast.  I bet you didn’t think that the apocalypse could be this fun!

Campus Affairs Vice President, Philippe Marchand, sought feedback on the changes that are being made to the Dean’s Normative Time Fellowship (DNTF). The DNTF is available only to students in certain departments and provides one year of funding for students who advance to doctoral candidacy within normative time. The changes to the award stipulate that if you accept the DNTF, you will no longer be eligible for financial support from your department after normative time for graduation. (Normative time has two dimensions: the time between entering a program and advancing to candidacy, and the time until the dissertation is filed.) This change will take effect for the 2010-2011 cohort. If you have comments or concerns, please email Philippe at cavp@ga.berkeley.edu.

Finally, UC Office of the President Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies, Steve Beckwith, spoke about his position and answered delegates’ questions about budget cuts and decisions about how to allocate funding. His office distributes research funding and oversees research policy for the UC system. They also communicate to the outside world about the value of graduate training; as he said, learning to research is learning to produce knowledge. Some of the challenges his office faces currently are maintaining support for graduate students while the budget is in decline and maintaining an adequate balance of funding across the disciplines.

The Graduate Assembly delegates meet the first Thursday of every month and the full minutes from their meetings are published on the GA website.

Despite the cool temperatures and intermittent rain, spring is on its way.