...
- no one warned me about the "english breakfast"... beans on toast, etc. Bring lots of immodium.
- my freaking internet doesn't work so there's no way i can edit the page on the wiki that i am currently editing.
...
Dawn Wheeler
- (hope you don't mind that this is random ...)
- So the first thing that surprised me was the free alcohol at official dinners ... just one of those things that doesn't happen at MIT
- My first impression of the University itself was that it was hopelessly disorganized, just because it's so decentralized. It was really annoying that the answer to (almost) all our questions in the first days were "It depends on your college (and I'm not in your college so I don't know)". Now that I've been here, I guess the University actually functions alright even though it is mired in "this is how it's been for the past 800 years."
- Living in one of the outlying colleges isn't that bad ... I get to see more of Cambridge. I know some people still haven't ventured up to New Hall yet ...
- Yeah, Cambridge isn't "no work," which I think is what we all heard before coming here. It's practically no work, compared to MIT, but there's still work to do, and doing it by myself takes much longer.
- I thought it wouldn't be that hard to keep working together on stuff like we do at MIT, but it is definitely more of an effort. First, we all have supervisions at different times, so we don't have work "due" at the same time. Second, it's pretty difficult to find a place to work collaboratively here. The colleges don't have lounges or common areas (except for the bars, which is not ideal for studying), and we're supposed to be quiet in the library.
- I wish I knew to bring mechanical pencils from the States - at least I haven't found ones here that don't have lead that breaks every three words. And peanut butter - they don't know how to make peanut butter here.
- For planning school supplies, I wish I knew that all the lecturers hand out notes with gaps to fill in - we don't really need notebooks (at least in my engineering classes).
- Apparently all the lecturers change in the middle of the term ... that was another surprise for me.