I arrived in Hong Kong two weeks ago and have settled in
already. I was assigned to live at the
brand new HKU dorms called the Residential Colleges on Lung Wah Street. However, when I arrived at the Residential
Colleges, they told me that I would be placed into a hotel for a few days because
the air quality did not pass the government standards. I thought they had already taken care of that
because they emailed me before I left the U.S. saying that I would be able to
move straight into the Residential Colleges.
HKU prepared shuttle buses and took us to Ibis Hotel, which was pretty
nice and new. So I stayed there for
three days before I moved back. I was
assigned to a double on Floor 13. It’s a
corner room so it’s actually bigger than what I expected. My floor is an all female floor with many
international and exchange students and a few locals. It definitely feels different from my co-ed floor
that I was used to at UC Berkeley. My
floor is very international with students from the U.S., Europe, Korea,
Indonesia, mainland China, and Hong Kong. There is a small lounge with a TV, refrigerator,
and kitchen. There is also a laundry
room at the very top floor of the building (Floor 29).
After moving in, I went to campus and checked in at the
Global Lounge where they gave me a packet of information, and then I checked in
at the Faculty of Arts office, which was the faculty that I was admitted
into. I turned in a student ID card form
to my faculty and also picked up a student octopus card form from the faculty
office. The student octopus card gives
us discounts when taking the MTR.
However, the card won’t be available until November, so I will have to
get a temporary one for now.
Exchange students can only sign up for courses during the two week add/drop period, starting at
12pm on the very first day of class. HKU’s
course enrollment process was very frustrating to me. I am required to take 5 courses and 3 have to
be from the Faculty of Arts. In UC
Berkeley, we use Telebears to enroll in courses, which I learned to love now that
I experienced HKU’s system. At UCB, once we enroll into a course, we are
officially enrolled. However, at HKU,
when we enroll into a course, there is a pending and approval process. All the courses that I added will have a
pending status until they get approved.
What I didn’t like was that they would randomly disapprove my courses
and drop me from them during this period.
This was a somewhat stressful time because I got disapproved for 4 out
of my 5 courses. Even after I signed up
for a Common Core class which the professor said had 6 more seats left on the
first day, I got dropped when other students signed up for it because it seems
that exchange students have the lowest priority here. For my foreign language
course, I added it on the very first day of class. My full-time friend here added it a few days
after me, but she got approved and I’m still pending. I even talked to the professors here, but
they said that they cannot do anything about it because they cannot manually
add students in. A local student told me
to just keep trying and that’s what I did.
I finally got approved for 4 courses after getting rejected many times and
am still waiting for the last course. Exchange
students who are in different faculties already got some of their courses
approved before they came. Exchange students I met who were also admitted into the Faculty of Arts didn’t get any courses approved
beforehand, so maybe it was just my faculty.
Hopefully, I’ll get approved for my 5th course.
