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̽»¨Ö±²¥past week has been quite a whirlwind.Ìý I arrived in Cambridge on Saturday evening, found my room and unpacked a few boxes, and after a few short hours of sleep I got on a bus and drove six hours to the Lake District for a Gates Scholars orientation course.Ìý

I was certainly in need of orientation.Ìý I’d only recently completedÌýÌýa Ìýsix-month bicycle tour from South Africa to Egypt.Ìý After that much time on the road I felt disoriented even when I returned home to the US, and now on top of that there’s the whole new world of Cambridge to contend with.Ìý ̽»¨Ö±²¥tour was well worth it though.Ìý As an engineer I believe my ultimate goal is to bring technologies to the world that can genuinely help people.Ìý To do so requires a sense of how people live and how they will interact with any technologies I introduce -- and traveling by bike provides a great opportunity for that.

̽»¨Ö±²¥orientation course did do a lot to ease my transition to the UK.Ìý ̽»¨Ö±²¥three day course included activities like hiking, kayaking and museum trips, as well as plenty of time to visit with other new Gates Scholars.Ìý I already feel I have made lots of new friends.

When I returned to Cambridge on Wednesday evening things didn't quiet down too much.Ìý In addition to setting up a bank account, registering with a doctor and settling into my room, I have also been punting on the Cam with a group of international freshers from Churchill College, drinking tea and visiting a pub withÌýa Trinity College society, and gone for a picnic with the Gates Scholars.Ìý What's more this is my first time in Cambridge, and indeed in England.

Looking back I guess I should have felt quite overwhelmed, but everybody I've met has been extremely friendly, and the orientation events I have attended have helped me get up to speed on life in Cambridge and at the ̽»¨Ö±²¥ quickly.Ìý

Orientation at the ̽»¨Ö±²¥ is not at all centralised.Ìý Instead each person's orientation week is largely structured around their college and department affiliations, as well as by any other affiliation, such as a scholarship.Ìý In some ways, this can be slightly confusing since there's no one place to find all the information (I have four separate orientation schedules posted on my pinboard right now).Ìý ̽»¨Ö±²¥benefit, though, is that each orientation event tends to be in a rather small focused group where it's easy to get just the information you've been looking for and to meet people since you automatically have at least a few things in common.

Having so many different orientations occurring at the same time can be a bit hectic to keep track of, but it doesn't really matter.Ìý Most of the events are not compulsory, but having so much going on all at once means there is always something to do.Ìý Last Thursday I made a list of things I needed to get settled in my room (like hangers and an iron) and I headed out to see if I could find some shops that had them.Ìý Since I didn't know where I was going I was worried I wouldn't be able to find everything before all the stores closed (very early here).Ìý But the first thing I ran into when I walked out my door was a group of Trinity College graduate students on a tour of Cambridge that I had completely forgotten was happening.Ìý I joined the group and was shown all the stores where I could buy hangers and an iron and everything else on my list.Ìý

My best interpretation of the bit of friendly chaos that is orientation here is that it is the result of a mostly decentralised university system. At MIT, where I completed my bachelor's, all of the distinctions between schools and departments seemed rather vague while the greater university was a constant presence.Ìý Here at Cambridge ̽»¨Ö±²¥ I get the impression that the smaller entities have much greater importance and the ̽»¨Ö±²¥ is more of a web of these groups.Ìý While I loved my time at MIT I'm now very excited to see what this new system can offer.
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