It felt great to be so well settled in our own house with a personal phone connection and furnishings of donations by seniors, people really envied our apartment coz they didn't have a mattress to sleep on and we guys had comfortable couches and what not. Anyway I always wished they too were that lucky.

Finally the college commenced and I got to know precisely what they meant by registering for classes. It was a process of selecting courses from a long list of them in a catalog and reserving a seat for yourself (out of a limit). Getting my courses was not a piece of cake, something which I was already prepared for, seeing 90 new graduate students in my department during orientation, so I had to act fast. There were two days of registration and I was lucky to get 2 subjects of my choice at the first go but the 3rd was Hot and everybody wanted it. I found everybody stuck to their computer terminals including myself to add a course to my schedule just when anybody drops it. I wonder how flexible the system is, if you can drop a course which you don't feel like doing!! Finally after long online sessions I managed to get the thing I was looking for and was really satisfied about giving myself the right direction. I have seen people offering 10 dollars or a free pizza for a course to anyone who drops it, "all in the game!"

My first encounter with the college Computer Lab was more like a trip to Mars. "Internet at the speed of light" is what they call it, and it was FAST. Further, I had the first encounter with the much acclaimed Apple Macintosh and Sun Sparx Workstations. They were great things which made me think that there's much more to computing than just IBM PCs we find everywhere in India. The labs were huge and full of printers, scanners and what not.

Classes began and my first class was absolutely enriching, it made me remember of the movie "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai" and the fantasy classrooms, well I saw them somewhere close to reality. They were really spacious accomodating, Air conditioned (everything is!) and with televisions and multimedia speakers all around just to get the professor in case he murmurs or speaks slowly. All lectures are videotaped and in case I miss one, I can anytime see them later in the tape room, on the Internet(live streaming) or even at the comfort of my house. The professors here have awesome communication skills and really inculcate interest in the class. I simply loved my first class. It began with a brief introduction of the syllabus and the marking scheme. Every class has one or two teaching assistants who help in clearing doubts and grading assignments in the absence of the teacher.

Florida being a hot place made me feel thirsty all the time. I often found myself close to a vending machine for automated drinks, juices and even chocoloates and cookies, and they are so common! I mean I found more of these per restroom -- well that reminds me that what I thought of a restroom (I thought it was an office reception of some kind!) was absolutely wrong, well it is for rest when nature calls! The campus was full of activity with people everywhere of such diverse backgrounds, and different languages, it felt great to be a part of such a rich experience.

At the back of my mind, I was always preoccupied with the fact that I was not receiving any financial assistance and had to look for some assistance at the earliest. I discovered two forms of financial aid here: one from the department which offered an assistantship with a fee waiver and these were limited and decided internally; the other were part time on-campus jobs which permit 20 hours of work, these were advertised by different departments at a central bulletin board at the Student Employment Office (a separate office for this too). They ranged from a variety of work from clerical like general office duties to specific and professional like software development and carrying out experiments in microbiology. The amount of wage per hour depended on the skillset. The most important thing here for applying for any work is an impressive resume, but no longer than one page because I have rarely seen anyone (even a doctorate student) having a resume of more than one page. Futher job search involved lots of communication with many people, and interviews. Besides this I was also advised to look up bulletin boards in every department building for something specific they might have to offer. The experience of selling myself and my talent was another very enriching experience.

A week of thorough search, telephonic and E-mail communication and follow up landed me a job at the University Library which was very kind to accomodate my work schedule to their requirements (that sounded great!) and signing up involved pretty much paper work, I was ready with an appointment letter and proceeding towards to the next big step of my life: "Opening a Credit file with the United States of America" and obtaining a Social Security Number (something about which I had talked in my previous letter). It was time to start building my credit history and earn some bucks!

Letter 2

Nitin Ahuja

Letter 4