Reading “University of California looks at adopting semesters at all schools” (July 2) brought back memories of when I entered UC Berkeley in fall 1966 as an undergraduate architecture major, encountering the then-brand-new quarter system.
As I recall, the big selling point was offering four full quarters of instruction each academic year to accommodate more students; we were told we could select any three quarters we preferred during each academic year. However, like most entering California high school students, I was accustomed to two semesters and a months-long summer break. I was not alone; only Berkeley and UCLA ever offered a summer quarter, and those campuses reverted to minimal summer sessions after three years. UC Berkeley wisely reverted to semesters in 1983.
I would have greatly preferred to take the deeper dives that semesters would have offered, particularly in design classes, instead of the short quarters I had to rush through.
— Fred Baron, Carmel Valley