Life at Hopkins…

Written on 6:53 PM by Tushar

It has been more than three weeks that I am here and there are many new, positive and exciting things are happening in my life.

Yeah I got my luggage back.

British Airways sent it back 4 days after I landed here. I had sent them an email asking for compensation and I forgot about it. It was a pleasant surprise that 2 days back I got an email from British Airways doing follow-up of the matter. I might get some compensation from them some day.

Finally I moved into my own apartment. It is located on the 14^th floor on the building called Carlyle. It is a really nice apartment and the view from my balcony is awesome. Some of the pics of the same can be found here.

Getting a decent place to live turned out to be a Herculean effort!

In US everything depends on how good/bad your credit history is and as I am a ‘new’ international student I was at their mercy. The housing authority simple refused to believe any docs that Indian students were showing them (Carlyle is sort of ‘India house’ as most of the people staying here are Indian students). We had to pay a fat amount as a security deposit to get the house.

For the record, I earned my first dollar on 5th sept,06. Ofcourse through on-campus jobs. I had multiple opportunities out of which I had to choose. (Not that my profile great but getting an on-campus job at Hopkins is a child’s play!)I will start working on coming Sunday. Back in India I was really worried about covering my living expenses and it feels great that I will be a position to save a significant amount every month.

Classes started from yesterday (9/7 – date is US style :)). For first two weeks I am gonna attend lectures for all the subjects that I find interesting. I will take 4 courses out of following 6_ distributed systems, algorithms, internet protocols or network security, computer vision or object oriented software engineering.

Profs here are amazing! Since it is just the second day of classes I am finding it difficult to stay awake in class:) but the quality of discussion in the class room is great. I feel really great that I actually understand the stuff being taught in the class (that was not the case in my undergrad years:)) and ask at least one question during each lecture. (There are some marks for the class participation but believe me it has nothing to do with me asking questions :))

People here are extremely friendly and I’ve made some good friends among Indians here.

Indians are everywhere! You cannot escape them anywhere in US.

I cook almost daily and am quite good at it. It is fun! Those who are reading this and don’t know how to cook should grab the first opportunity to learn ‘the art of cooking’.

I did not face food problems even though I am a pure vegetarian. Actually in US being a vegetarian is a ‘cool’ thing :)

I do feel lonely at times even though I am mostly surrounded by my ‘new’ friends.

Whenever I listen to the song ‘luka chipi’ from Rang De Basanti, golden voice of Lata Mangeshkar reminds me my sweet mom and my eyes invariably get wet :( It is hard to stay away from your family, friends and your ‘own’ country! You realize this once you get here…

Life is full of new challenges and I am really glad that I am back to school.

Posted in grad life

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