Impressions - Part deux

The name “Port Columbus International Airport” sounds very important and busy. In reality, it is anything but. It is a lazy little airport that belies its name. It is about as “International” as Bangalore, maybe even lesser because there are flights to more foreign countries from Bangalore than can be counted on the fingers of one hand. I think the only “International” place to which this airport hosts flights from is Canada.

I waited in the almost empty hallway to collect my baggage after taking a trolley by depositing some money from my credit card. Yes, I had to pay for the trolley. I breathed a sigh of relief on seeing my two huge suitcases, as I was sure that the airline would have offloaded them at Chicago judging that they were too big for the little plane I came on. I collected my luggage and proceeded towards the exit. I was instructed to “wait until somebody turned up” and “not to panic” if the person supposed to pick me up was late. The Indian Students Association (ISA) is doing a wonderful job in picking up new students and providing them with temporary accommodation – all free of charge.

After a couple of minutes, a car came with a very Indian looking person at the steering wheel. He took a look at me and apparently decided that I was indeed the fellow he was supposed to pick up. He asked “ISA pick up?” and I nodded my head. Kushagra then stopped the car and helped me load my considerable belongings into the car. He even asked “That’s it?” to which I understood that he was used to picking up students with much more luggage – no doubt packed by anxious parents convinced that they were sending away their children to some god forsaken place.

First impression – the roads of urban USA are not the velvety smooth ones we are made to believe they are back home. In fact I think some stretches of road in Bangalore are better (Cubbon Road, MG Road etc.). The roads of France and UAE are a lot better.

I engaged Kushagra in some talk. Ok, actually it was the other way round as I am not too open with strangers. Anyway, I learnt some things about Columbus, Ohio State University and also the reason for my being there, the Fisher College of Business. He too was a student there.
First impressions on looking at the sights outside the car window – these people think big. Huge roads, huge cars, huge buildings, huge plots and sites, huge signboards, everything was huge. The whole place was so very spacious. Bangalore in comparison – even Mysore – seemed claustrophobic.

We soon arrived at the place where I was supposed to live for at least the next year. My roommate Chetan was there and he helped me with getting my things into the house. A place was arranged for me in Mohit’s room. That room would later be my room once Mohit moved out. I was made to feel very welcome. Chetan had also fixed something for me to eat for which I was very thankful. I then called up home to inform my mother that I had arrived in one piece at my destination.

I was in no mood to take any rest due to my excitement in landing up in a new place. So, Chetan and I took a walk around the campus. The campus is very pretty with lots of greenery all around. The university is very old. It was established in 1870. In fact until the city of Columbus caught up with the university campus, the university was referred to as “The University in a cornfield” as that was where it was! I had a glimpse of the stadium – the famous “horse shoe” or just the “shoe” according to the locals (More on the stadium later). I also took directions to go to the Office of International Education as that was supposed to be my first port of call the next day.

I went to the Office of International Education the first thing next morning. There was a banner put up to “Welcome all International Students”. I got registered “into the system” so that I could get my university ID – also called the BuckID as the state of Ohio is called the Buckeye state – and a letter to get my Social Security Number, something similar to our PAN. I was then made to go through a small session with one of the counsellors at that place where she told us in great detail as to what all things I should be doing in the next couple of days. I then opened my bank account at Bank One whose representatives were manning a table at the registration room. It all happened so quickly and effortlessly that I was happy that my stay at the university had got off to a good start.

I then had to go to a place called Lincoln Tower to get the all-important BuckID. I had a bit of trouble trying to get to the building as I could see it but could not find my way to it due to some construction work going on in the vicinity. This was where Flavia, a Brazilian who was also at the Office of International Education with me in the morning, helped me out. She told me that she too was going there and since she had been in Columbus since the past year (as her husband too was a student at the university), she could guide me to that place. The reason why I remember her is that I found out the total lack of my fitness in that walk from the OIE to Lincoln Tower with her. I had to literally jog to keep up with her, all the more remarkable because she was very pregnant. I was panting by the time I reached Lincoln Tower.

At Lincoln Tower, I got my BuckID made which took all of thirty seconds (including clicking my photo, taking my signature and printing a card). I hope they can give PAN cards, DLs so quickly in India. This BuckID is an ID, a bus pass, a debit card, and an access card all rolled into one. This card is accepted in many shops and restaurants around the campus in place of cash. This card would be my ticket (quite literally too) to all the buildings of the university and to the local bus system, which I could ride for free by flashing this card to the bus driver.

This was also the day I found out that the university has its own captive thermal power plant! It is right in the middle of campus with a huge brick chimney. In fact most of the buildings on campus are made of red bricks or have a brick façade. This gives a very colonial feel to the whole campus, which is very pleasant. In contrast, there are a few monstrosities too that look totally out of place in a campus like this. The Lincoln Tower in fact looks very much like our Public Utility Building in Bangalore (including the colour scheme). The Wexner Arts Center looks like an unfinished building, with all the steel frames on the outside of the building trying to look like some “work in progress”. That is something I have never been able to understand about modern art. Why do these people make things that are so hard to understand?

The entire emphasis of the university seems to be geared towards providing as much space as possible for the students. Offices are deliberately kept either very small or very distant from most places the students would normally be. The aim seems to be to minimise and even eliminate the need for students to go to any office. Everything is getting online from registering for classes to paying the fees and even attending classes! Some professors do not insist on attendance to their classes. Instead they record their lectures and they are available on the net. Students can download these lectures and watch them at their convenience. While this may seem totally meaningless to us Indians – “What’s the point of going to a university if you are not going to sit in a class?” we may ask – it appears to be accepted here as just another way of reaching the students. Every student is given a mail ID and told that this would be the main means of communication in the university – from assigning homework to communicating the exam results. Students are strictly warned that “I did not see my mail” is not an acceptable excuse for anything.

To ensure that every student has access to computing resources, every library has a few dozen terminals so that students could use them. There are also dedicated “Public Computing Sites” which have nothing but computer terminals. Some of these are open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I guess it would be quite foolish for any student to even try and venture an excuse such as “I did not have access to my mail”.

So rigorous is this approach that the university has a Chief Information Officer, just like there would be in any corporate setting. His sole job is to make sure that students have the means and skills to use the computing resources on the campus. To that end, his office, the Office of Information Technology, conducts free training sessions in a variety of computing related topics for anybody who is interested.

Having been overawed by the scale of this university – this is the university with the largest student population in the USA – I decided I needed to take in more of this place in more manageable bites in the following days.