Posted: February 17, 2017, 9:13am
My first visit to the campus was during the football season. It was USC vs Penn State and that’s all everybody talked about. I didn’t follow the sport so couldn’t quite get into the whole game spirit. I remember walking into the campus and towards the engineering building when we heard “the spirit of troy” practicing for the gameday. The band looked so good and we all felt the trojan pride for the first time. We continued to walk around the campus and clicked a lot of pictures with Tommy Trojan, Traveller and so many such popular spots. I also visited Santa Monica Pier along with my friends and it was serene. Luckily, the weather was pretty sunny the day we visited the beach.
In the second week, I had my orientation program where we were introduced to the administration and we had presentations about the various resources that USC offers to its students. My classes started a couple of days after that and I was really excited about the first day at grad school. International students can so relate to this feeling because you would have been preparing for this day for the past 2 years. My first day at Viterbi was very interesting. I got to interact with a diverse population and some of them even went on to become good friends. We sat together and we talked about our hometowns, our cultures, food and one thing that they were all very interested in was Bollywood.
Third week was very hectic with tons of assignments but we also spent a lot of time being involved in the on-campus activities which kept things balanced. I contested for the position of Senator in Viterbi graduate student association elections to represent my department and I won the elections! This will be one of my favorite experiences here at USC because I got to interact with so many people during the campaign for the elections. It’s a brilliant opportunity because you get to work closely with the department in organizing academic or social events for the students. We organized our first event which was a Superbowl watch party for both Masters and Ph.D students.
In the fourth week, I attended the spring career fair. Technically, we are not allowed to work until after Second semester but I just attended the fair to get an idea about how a career fair works and just talk to the recruiters. They gave me tips about how I could enhance my resume and prepare for the next career fair.
I always like being involved with the on-campus activities because it makes me feel like I’m truly part of the community. And fortunately, USC has tons of opportunities for people like me who look for overall growth of personality and not just technical stuff. But the key to maintaining good academics and being involved on the campus is time management. Every second is very important in a grad student’s day and once he or she masters that skill, they are set for life. It’s important that I make the best of 2 years that I have here because this decides what my future is going to be like. I’m really looking forward to days ahead because I have a lot more fun stuff coming up which means more content on this blog so yay!!
So stay tuned for posts and fight on!
Published on July 25th, 2017
Last updated on August 10th, 2017