Saket Vora

No, classes haven’t started (that’s next Monday). I met up with Amit and we spent most of the day together actually. We got his ID card made, then meandered through campus. We checked out the business school (GSB - Graduate School of Business) and as we were about to leave, we saw many students line up to enter a classroom. I caught the title on the powerpoint inside — Global Perspectives on a New Curricula. Amit wondered aloud whether we should walk in, and in a few moments we were trailing the last students into the room and found seats in the back row. This intro seminary was simply communicating new curricula changes for this class of GSB students. What’s interesting (and prompted MANY questions afterward) is that all students are required to have an experience abroad that is at least 2 to 4 weeks abroad, and it must be in a country that you have not spent more than 90 days in. The latter 2/3rds got into the nitty gritty procedural details, but we found out a famous global business development professor is giving four lectures in the coming weeks, so we gotta find out more on when those are.

This impromptu sit-in made us miss lunch with Mary, so we headed over to the Bookstore area and the Tresidder Union (subway). This part of campus definitely has a more undergraduate feel to it. Over the course of the morning, I learned with much delight that Amit is also interested in entrepreneurship topics — he was involved in some fantastic groups at Cambridge in technology entrepreneurship.

We headed back to the apartment and met up with Luke. The three of us hit IKEA and then the grocery store. We made it back in time to catch a Rains house welcome barbeque. Over 80 people showed up and I got to meet some people. By around 8 it was getting dark and it was hard to make out people’s faces. Luke and I were setting up some IKEA lamps (Wei joined us too) and Nader came over too and we chatted for a while. Later Luke and I headed out to walk around campus, going through the main Quad and the engineering quad before swinging by the 750 pub in the graduate community center (GCC). It’s a pretty decent place, especially for something that’s just a minute walk from the apartment.

I’m planning on going by the EE department tomorrow and try to meet some professors. I also need to buy my bike…before Thursday.