The long awaited (and much needed) second post! (Part Two - Rutgers)

Seeing as I'm on a roll (i.e. I've actually posted something recently - see part one) I thought I'd carry on with my update.

So after arriving back from Miami I headed back to the apartment and immediately went for a run as there was still no one else there and after spending a week with 90 other Fulbrighters I didn't particularly want to spend the evening sat on my own in my room! It was still ridiculously hot and I had another running 'incident'... I didn't stray into sprinklers like last time as I took a route around the back of the soccer pitch but as I was running along, minding my own business and listening to my iPod, suddenly a beast jumped from the bushes into my path. I nearly had a heart attack as I tried to stop suddenly/change direction/jump over it all at once. Needless to say I felt like a bit of an idiot when I realised that the 'beast' was actually just a gopher (which is like what would happen if a beaver and squirrel decided to cross breed...). Now in my defence, the gopher was pretty big (I think it had been snacking on the leftover hotdogs from the stadium...) but I still felt like a bit of a wimp - so I ran a little bit further than I planned to make myself feel better about myself...

Arriving back at the flat, slightly flustered, I unpacked all my things and read through some of my Fulbright info I had recieved before getting a much needed early night in bed. The next morning I met one of my new flatmates - Czanad (pronounced Chanad) who is a 3rd year Hungarian MicroBiologist who had been on holiday in Colorado for the last few weeks. It was nice to see someone else about the flat, and useful to have someone to ask questions like how on earth the bus system works here... The buses are all lettered, and during term time it all makes sense, even to the point where the L goes to Livingston campus, the B to Busch etc. However in the holidays they seem to pick the routes by random, so advice from Czanad was much appreciated.

On the strength of his advice I decided to explore New Brunswick a bit more and was pleasantly surprised at what I found. New Brunswick isn't a huge town, but it has plenty of stuff in the center - as well as the student center it has a wide range of shops and I managed to get food, toiletries, a cell (mobile phone to us Brits) and a load of stuff for my room all pretty cheaply. Getting back to the flat with so much stuff was quite interesting, but I managed and dumped all the stuff in my room before meeting the third flatmate - Simon (pronounced more like Seemon) who is a first year Physics PhD student from Belgium. We are quite a mix of people but I'm pretty sure I'm going to get on well with both of them and think we'll have a good flat for the year.

Sunday was a quiet day (which really means I can't remember what I did...) but I think I spent most of it getting sorted for the start of International Student Orientation, which began on the Monday morning.

Me and Simon left pretty early as we were warned that there would be loads of queues, and we arrived at 10 on the dot (the registration was between 10 and 12). What we didn't expect was a queue out the door and only *just* getting registered before midday. Luckily we met Vukosi, a South African Fulbrighter I met at Miami so at least we had some company during the wait.

After a brief introduction we were thrown head first into the Orientation process. I thought the Fulbright Orientation had been intense but this was something else. They were constantly throwing info at you (health insurance, tuition fees, registration for courses, Visa stuff - all of it 'urgent') and seem to want you to be in about 3 places at once... On the upside there was plenty of free food, I got to see a lot more of College Ave Campus and I met some really great people. I spent alot of the week hanging out with Simon, Vukosi, Tarek (a half-Egyptian, half-Welsh Comp Sci Phd first year), Natalia (a fellow Brit here for a year exchange during her undergrad) and a few others. It was really nice getting to know everyone and I'm hoping to stay in touch with them all while I'm here.

One of the highlights of the week was the Skit night where the volunteers (all International Students) put on a sketch show about what it's like studying at Rutgers as an international student and in the process we learnt the Rutgers Fight Song - it really has to be heard/seen to be believed so I've included a video of the University Glee Club singing it. The part in the middle where they all go a bit crazy and start yelling "R U RAH RAH, R U RAH RAH, OOH RAH OOH RAH RUTGERS RAH!" is the Rutgers chant and can be heard at most sports events etc. Enjoy!



(and if you want the lyrics to sing along (!) then here's a copy the Rutgers Fight Song)

I also got an opportunity to order my course books - and nearly had a heart attack in the process! In the UK, a course textbook is nice to have but not essential to the course - a lecturer may refer you to the text for additional reading, but all the course topics will be covered in lectures. In the US, the textbook forms the backbone of the course - the lecturer might expect you to pre-read sections so his/her lectures form supplementary coverings of topics and most of the time the problem sets will come straight from the textbook. So a textbook is pretty essential - and the library doesn't tend to have more than one copy of each book - so buying them was pretty much given. What I didn't expect was to pay around $500 for 6 textbooks! I suppose it was a necessary cost but that didn't make it easier to hand over that much money for books I know will haunt me once exams come round...

The Orientation seemed to be over almost as soon as it started and I was thrust into the IMR - Introduction to Mathematics at Rutgers - a 4 day mini-conference for all Math PhD students starting. I've got a lecture in a bit so I think I'm going to leave this post for now, but tune in next time (hopefully soon!) for:

IMR! START OF TERM! FINALLY SOME MATHS! NEW YORK!!! I MEET OBAMA!

(That last one isn't true... I just wanted to see if you were paying attention...)

Later Days

David

P.S.
As a bonus I'm going to share with you some of the Rutgers branded items you can buy here - I told some of you that you can literally buy *anything* with Rutgers on it, and here is my proof (all of which are available online at the Rutgers University Bookstore):
A licence plate cover:
A baby-gro:
Golf Balls:
And even a standard lamp...