Prior to Nov 12th, 2010
I've started my life as a Dawgs in University of Georgia, Athens (UGA) on Aug 16th, 2010.
Since I came from California, almost all people who met me asked the same question, "Why did you choose UGA?". For most of them, who were born and raised in Georgia, California is like a dream place. They thought that if you're already in Cali, you'll never want to go out. Well, I guess those statement might be true to certain people, but California is an expensive state and I'm not sure whether I can survive studying there without my parents, and without any scholarship (yeah, I'm using my parents pocket money for my tuition for now T_T). So, every time they ask me the question, I will repeat the same script that I've prepared, "I came here because the Risk Management & Insurance program (my major) in UGA is ranked as second the best in the US". It's true actually. I chose UGA solely based on that fact. I didn't know anything about the school football team or the fact that it is the 1st party school (ranked by Princeton Review).
I can even remember the first day I came to UGA for orientation back in June. Me and my parents were lost and couldn't find the venue for the orientation thing. A lady in Terrell Hall (the admission building) said, "Owh, you're a new dog in here, aren't you" straight to my face. I was a bit offended since I didn't know that the mascot for UGA is a Bulldog and the students call themselves as 'Dawg'. *hehehe*
My mom was a bit reluctant to let me go at first since Georgia in on Southeast where California is on Southwest; It takes around 6 hours by flight. Well, it's not really that long considering the flight to Malaysia, where it takes around 24 hours. I don't really mind stranded in this place alone as long as I can get the best education for myself. Actually, I'm not really alone since there are few Malay families living in the Atlanta area (around 1hr 30min from Athens), which I'm really thankful for letting me stay at their house whenever I need to :).
So what am I taking for this semester? Since I really hate learning about history (I'm not good with memorization), I kept delaying on the subject. I think that I should have taken it while in De Anza College, but no use in regretting it now (life needs to go on). I am also taking English, Management and Information system (MIST), and Accounting class. My favorite class as for now is accounting; tough and challenging class but fun :). It's so tough that after our first exam, around half of the students were gone. A lot of them blamed the teacher but honestly, I don't think we can get any better teacher than Mrs. Bhan *huhu*.
You might think that my life is very dull with same routine everyday - go to school, go back home. Yeah, I think so too. To spice up my life, I decided to enter a competition hosted by PricewaterCooper (PwC), one of the big four accounting firms in US, called xTax Competition. As stated in the name, the competition was about tax issues dealt by companies. For this year, the case was about a company that wanted to expand their business to e-commerce (online store). I've never thought that you would get taxation problem if you wanna sell things online, so this competition definitely opened my eyes to the real world issues. The participants should be in groups consisted of 5 people and we were given 2 weeks to solve the problem. At first, my group had 5 people but one member had to drop out because she had a lot of things going on in her life (yeah, right).
We worked for the rest of the two weeks given as a 4-member group and unfortunately (or maybe god wanted to test us I guess), the dateline fell in the week of midterm exams for most business classes (for me and my other 2 members -> accounting exam. For another member -> finance exam). Still, we met each other every night until the day of the presentation (Had to stay at school til around 11pm *sigh*). However, we had a fun time working together, not to mention, precious experiences and also free dinner and stuffs ^_^.
Furthermore, I managed to get full score for my accounting exam (yay!), which I considered it as a birthday gift (which fell during the weekend after the exam) from me to myself *hehe*.
Talking about my birthday, I had a 25-hour birthday this year thanks to the Daylight Saving Time (more sleep time) >_<. I received presents from my family back in California. I also got a surprise visit from my friends Gina, Ashleigh, and Dana on Saturday evening with cupcakes!! *huhuhu*
Present from my parents. Key to freedom I guess ^_^
I think I'll stop rambling about my life here for now ^_^.
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