Living on the small isle of Manhattan

Based on my own experience, I maintain you cannot focus all of your attention on the academic aspects of your studies. This is not desirable, much less productive. You soon find out that monotony kills you, so you find some sort of amusement, whether you want to or not. I did want to.

I think my performance in the previous semester marks a quite successful start for my university studies. I even made it to the Dean’s List – a list of all students at the school who rate above a certain GPA (Grade Point Average), which is a scale of 0 to 4 calculated on the basis of success relative to other students in all courses taken.

Since the final exams for the first semester in the U.S. took place before the Christmas holidays, I made sure to thoroughly enjoy the subsequent vacation, even though I was not going home for the holidays. This makes me look forward to returning home even more – and meeting my family and friends. I keep in touch with them more or less successfully, though this can be difficult at times, in part also because most of them had to prepare for their final exams of the first semester during the holidays, regardless of whether in the U.K. or the Czech Republic.

During my time here, I have grown to appreciate some other benefits of attending a school such as Columbia University. For example, when I was choosing my subjects for the next semester, my academic advisor was always there to help me, and I was able to go to her without any prior appointments and ask her for help in choosing my courses. The teachers for all my subjects are available for personal consultations for at least one hour a week, usually together with up to three TAs (Teaching Assistants – older Bachelors or Master degree students), each of whom also has one hour per week reserved for meetings with students. And tomorrow, as a Humanity Literature class we are going to New York’s Metropolitan Museum, one of the world’s most important art museums. The possibilities are huge here – but you have to learn how to use them best.

The spring semester is well underway and I have taken a few tests as well. The pace is starting to accelerate, but I am still doing well, as far as I can judge. There is increasingly more work to do, so I have less time available, but I still have some left for extra-curricular activities. I am still playing tennis, but instead of Youth for Debate, I decided to join the URC (Undergraduate Recruitment Committee), a somewhat selective club governed by the recruitment department and involved, for example, in providing guide service across the campus. Also, in order to gain valuable experience in my field (Behavior and Neuroscience), I enlisted as a volunteer in a laboratory focused on cellular mechanisms of learning. For starters, I work with lab rats, and after initial disagreements, I am starting to get on well with them. Often, they will even let me weigh them and write numbers on their tails; however, I have not taught them to clean up after themselves yet.

I still hope to overcome this – and many similar – difficulties, while the Czech flag over my desk reminds me, though not too frequently, that I have pulled out a few such feats in my life already. But it’s still enough to make my challenges seem easier.

Since I am currently in quite close contact with our university’s recruitment committee, I will be happy to receive any of your inquiries regarding studies at our school as well as my own studies at my e-mail address marek.svoboda@gmail.com.