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First impressions of UT

College is pretty awesome so far!

I moved into my dorm at UT Austin on Friday, August 23. Since then, I've had the most jam-packed week, perhaps ever, in my whole life. Here are my first impressions of college life:

food

The food is actually really solid. I know people typically insult college dining hall food, but I've been happy with it. In one of my recent journal entries, I wrote:

"I had some REALLY good breakfast just a few dozen minutes ago. I had eggs, which are normally bland, topped with shredded cheese and green salsa (which made them much tastier), a surprisingly soft biscuit, some oatmeal with an absurd amount of cinnamon and a sprinkling of raisins, and three sausage patties."

However, I am the type of person to eat the same breakfast for three weeks in a row. I'm not a picky eater by any means. So perhaps you should take my dining hall advice with a grain of salt.

living in a dorm

My "old" room is about the size of my "new" dorm room. Except I only really get half the room because I'm living with a roommate. I thought this would be suboptimal, but I only really use my dorm for sleeping and household chores. So I don't mind the reduced room.

I've also been pleased with the communal bathrooms. The cleaning staff cleans them daily[1] and I've never had to wait for a shower or a bathroom stall. I do have to wear shower shoes, though.

The laundry situation has been great too. I thought I'd have to trek down into the basement to do laundry once a week, but there's actually a laundry room right on my floor! No complaints there.

classes & homework

I quite like the college model of classes. This semester, I average 15 hours in class per week, which gives me so much more flexibility to determine the rest of my schedule.

This semester, I'm taking two math classes for my major and two general classes for my core curriculum requirement[2]. The homework is certainly harder, but is still manageable (at least for now).

I am a little scared about my math classes, where my three exams (two midterms and a final) each determine 25% of my final grade. I don't believe the exams are curved, which makes that even scarier. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

making friends

I've met probably 100+ people in just my first week here. I would say 15-20 of those people are potential friend material, and 4-8 seem like solid friend material. That's not a high hit rate, but it's really easy to meet a lot of people at UT.

On my second day at UT, I set up a chessboard on UT's Speedway[3] on a nice table in the shade:

Speedway shade near 21st and Speedway

I am not kidding when I say ten people spontaneously approached me to play chess & chat. It was wonderful. The lesson is to put yourself out there and spend as little time in your dorm room as possible.

  1. They don't get enough credit for it. Sure, the bathrooms are pretty drab, but that doesn't matter! What matters is that the bathrooms are clean. ↩︎

  2. M408D (Calc II/III), M325K (Discrete Math), HIS315L (US History since 1865), ARC308 (Architecture and Society) for a total of 13 hours ↩︎

  3. The busiest street at UT in terms of foot traffic ↩︎