Becoming a UChicago Student!

I woke up this morning with more energy than I have had in a really long time. I was extremely excited to finally be moving onto the UChicago campus, the place that we will call home for the next three weeks. Hurriedly, I rushed to get ready and packed up my belongings before heading downstairs to meet with the rest of the cohort. When I got down to the lobby, I was surprised to only see Maxime waiting. I then read John’s message letting us know he was taking care of something important and would be a couple minutes late. Initially, I was worried that something bad had happened but thankfully it was quite the opposite. John brought us some really delicious and aesthetically pleasing doughnuts to eat before taking a car to the UChicago campus.

We arrived on campus before anyone was allowed to go up into their rooms so we dropped of our luggage and checked in. While checking in, we realized that students are split up into different houses. A “house” is a set of three floors in the dorms with a set of Residential Assistants (RAs) assigned to each house. 

After checking in, we still had a couple hours until the beginning of orientation and before we would have access to our rooms. To make the best use of our time, John had scheduled a tour of the campus. Before heading to our tour we met Jim Wessel, the Residential Director, who spoke to us about what to expect from the program. After hearing we were headed to a tour, he also graciously offered to walk us there.

Just like the tour at Northwestern, we began with a presentation before having the actual tour. The presentation was led by Zack Evans, a college admissions officer. Mr. Evans was extremely knowledgeable about, it seemed, everything at UChicago. He explained in depth the breakdown of  the academics at the university. UChicago students take classes from three different areas. Those areas being the Common Core curriculum, the student’s major program, and electives. The Common Core curriculum requires students to take classes across different disciplines such as Humanities, Social Sciences, Civilization Studies, Math, Language arts, etc. Because UChicago prides itself on the academic rigor of their university, it makes sense they would want their students to be well-versed across all disciplines. The University of Chicago, like Northwestern, also operates on a quarter system. Students take around 3 or 4 classes per quarter. Out of all these classes, 80% of them are less than 25 students and the university’s student to faculty ratio is 6:1.

Our tour guide Liam

After Mr. Evans’ presentation, we were introduced to the students at UChicago who would be our tour guides. Our tour guide’s name was Liam who was rising second-year student from Taiwan. He is studying Neuroscience and Phycology. He is also involved in the university’s dance team. Throughout the tour, he was really energetic and gave us great information about all the different buildings on campus. I also thought he was really convincing when explain why UChicago was such a great university. A parent even asked him for his thoughts on the tagline about the university that claims it is where fun comes to die. He explained really well that, although the university puts great focus on its academics, fun definitely exists. How could it not with the 400 student organizations that exist on campus?

My bed in the dorm

After the tour, we grabbed a quick lunch and headed back to campus to take our luggage to our dorms and get to orientation. My dorm was  a double on the third floor. I did not have much time to unpack before it was time to head to orientation. 

The orientation was held by different administrators such as Christine Parker, the Executive Director of Summer Quarter, and Jim Wessel, the Residential Director we had met earlier. The orientation was mainly telling us what to expect of the program and what was expected of us. When that part of orientation finished, the students were split by house then by program in order to go on a short tour. Our RAs mainly showed us the buildings we would be taking classes in. After showing us the main buildings, the RAs just showed us different cool areas around campus. During the tour, I also met Anna Souchet and Tina Chen who were not only in my house but in my course as well. Anna being from France and Tina being from the Midwest it was interesting to talk about the differences between our hometowns. 

After coming back from the tour, we continued orientation with a Safety presentation hosted by Jim Wessel and a University of Chicago Police Officer. The presentation did not contain information we had not heard before, but I guess it didn’t hurt to hear it again.

(from left to right) Maria, Adela, and Cecilia

After the long presentation, we got to have dinner at Baker, one of the dining commons on the campus. I got to dinner a little late and I couldn’t find anyone I had already met so I introduced myself to a group of girls who were in the summer session and were also looking for a table. They introduced themselves as Maria Fernanda, Cecilia, and Adela. We found a table at the far end of Baker, ate our dinner and talked about where we are from and what we are studying. Maria is from Miami and is studying Mental Health and Psychiatry, Cecilia is from North Carolina and is taking the Bio Tech course, and Adela is from China and is studying Economics. I really enjoyed having dinner with them and learning more about how different our backgrounds are. 

Following dinner, we had a little free time before we had our very first house meeting. During this time, I got to interact with my roommate for the first time. Her name is Kathy, she is from China and is studying Bio Tech while at UChicago. She has been really nice, I feel like we will get along really well. 

During the house meeting, we did basic introductions to get to know each other better and learned some of the basic house rules.

All in all, I thought today was really great. Although, I find it a little intimidating to be taking a course at such a prestigious school, having the support system made up of RAs, my house, and other friends makes the experience a little less daunting. I also found it really cool how easy it is to make friends here. At the beginning of the day, I knew no one outside of my cohort and now I even have a group chat with some of the friends I made today. I look forward to getting to know them further tomorrow.