Life in UIUC------A new adventure

Life in UIUC

                                                                            ------A new adventure

 

                                                                                                            Tingwen Liu

 

Thinking of my life here, the first word comes to my mind is “busy”. Although “busy” seems like not a very desirable life, it is truly what I felt.

 

Now I can still clearly remember the first day’s rush here: busy registration, finding apartment, opening accounts, and buying cell phone; lost in how to order food when first entering a restaurant; bewildering with the direction and found that there were no people available on the street to ask. Everything needs to adjust, not only life style but also the thinking logic. Actually, the first day’s difficulties are the easiest thing to work out, but the rest are not an easy part. So I am still learning to get on the life here. But I do like the freedom and easy life style here, since here the legal and political systems are very complete. For instance, I have taken one ethnic training course. The content listed is very specific, telling people what to do, what should not do, and how to report wrong doings. 

 

As a graduate student, the most important part is studying. Since there is no qualification exam here, and we are asked for maintaining a very good grades in all courses, so all students here study every hard to “survive”. Thanks to the first year learning experience in WISE, it really helped me a lot. Since in WISE, we are already used to be instructed with English and to read text books in English version, so it was quite easy to adjust the learning style here. And also I am not surprised by two midterms. I took micro, statistics and econ math this semester. I think I got more intuition training in these classes, for instance, in micro, professor taught very deep in rationality, weak axiom, risk, and other interesting concepts which make micro much more interesting to me now. Also the questions in homework and exams are very flexible, and creative, requiring more deep thinking. And some proof questions may cost couple of hours’ thinking.

 

Moreover, I also did the TA job. Since this is my first teaching experience, I am really afraid and nervous for my first office hour, and I even pray for nobody coming. For the first three weeks, I always felt exhausted after the office hour, since there are so many students coming and I sometimes need to keep speaking for at least one and half hours. Practice makes perfect, now I could manage office hour with more than 20 students coming and balance my working and studying. Besides, I also benefit a lot from Students’ questions which led me thinking more thoroughly and found my weak part. Yesterday I received a student’s email to say thank you for the help, suddenly I felt kind of happiness and their thanks worth all the hard working. It is really a great experience.

 

In all, although life is pretty busy for my first semester, I felt a kind of satisfaction. Life here seems like a new adventure for me, and I do enjoy it!

 

Since 2008 is around the corner, please allow me to send my sincere wishes to WISE. Wish WISE gather more international scholars in 2008 and develop into a regional research center of international standard.