Man Shuk Yee

BBA in Information System &

Operation Management

Fall 2018

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Part I Monthly Activity Log…………………...……….………...…………..3

Part II General Exchange Information.……………..………………………7

Part III Items to Bring….….…………………………………………………..11

Part IV Useful Links and Contacts……………………………..……………12

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August 2018 I arrived Austin on 15th August at midnight, two days before the University Official Orientation events. I did not buy the air tickets through school’s discount website since those tickets were sold out very quickly and they could only arrive at Los Angles but not Texas or Austin. I was quite frustrated when I first arrived in Austin

due to the unexpected hot weather (nearly 40℃) and bad transportation (an hour

bus trip to all places). Since we arrived a bit earlier than expected, that was a good time for us to finish the banking and telecommunication stuff. On 18th August, there were a lot of Official Orientation events started, some were compulsory such as IBC Advisory Session and McCombs Welcoming Orientation while some were voluntary such as those events from International Office, where you would be able to meet other international or exchange students. For example, they drove us to Austin City Exploration and Zilker Park. Also, there were some social events organized by them, such as Free Bowling, Billiard and Texan Social Dance. I would suggest you go if you have time since all of them are free and that is a good chance for making friends too. If you come to UT in fall semester, there would be an event on the day right before the semester starts, ‘‘Gone To Texas’’ that it is strongly advised to go because it is a big introductory ceremony by the university for welcoming the new batch of freshmen, there will be special neon sign on the UT Tower specifying the particular class of year. For me, I joined the Bat Festival in late August which was an outdoor live music festival with lots of jazz and band performances. The location of this festival was on a bridge where you cannot enter in daily time. Also, I have tried the Kayaking in Ziker Park with other exchange students. You may also try paddle broad there which is much more dangerous and exciting.

PART 1 - MONTHLY ACTIVITY LOG

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September 2018 UTA’ fall semester starts at late August and our first school day is 27th August this year. The workload there is not tight until late September / early October, in which lots of quizzes and mid-terms will be scheduled. Having a Taiwan friend was living in Dallas, I spent my first weekend there with him for three days. Dallas is famous for its cowboy culture, so I did watch one real cowboy show in Fort Worth which was extremely exciting with crushing cows. Dallas has a wild zoo too which is like a safari in Africa. You can drive your car in and feed the animals directly. They were just next to you and you may have the chance to be attacked if getting too close to them. On the second week, I spent the time with other Hong Kong exchange students for shopping and gathering. We would cook our own food and brought them to others’ home to share, or maybe we would go out the play POOL (snooker) for a whole night. That was the reason why I learned how to play pool after exchange. The third week was a special for all UT students as the football games were started since that. Other exchange students (from HKUST and CUHK) and I have bought the first home game tickets to watch and luckily our school has won. The game was held in our school stadium and that day nearly 100 thousand of students have also joined to watched. Since Yellowstone National Park would be closed from October to March every year. Two of my exchange friends (Wendy and Sylvia) and I have spent the last weekend of September to go there and Antelope Canyon. As Antelope Canyon is located in Arizona where is a desert with very high temperature. We are very lucky to see the light beams from sun when visiting there at the noon. After going to Antelope Canyon, we spent two days inside Yellowstone National Park. Lower Geyser Basin, grand prismatic spring, mammoth hot springs, old faithful were some of the places that we have been to. The time there is early winter for the park, so it is common to see some wild animals, like buffalo and deer. Grand Canyon was my favorite attraction since it is the symbol of Yellowstone and the bird’s-eye view of the park there would give you a glorious feeling. One funny thing happened: one of my friends has dropped her iphone 8 from the canyon there when taking photos! Before going to Austin, we even tried to play the real guns in Salt Lake City for 2 hours. Pay only USD3X, we could already play 4 different kinds of guns, M416, AK47, and two pistols.

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Antelope Canyon Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park Gun Shooting

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October 2018

Since UTA’s midterm period was from late September to mid October, you may need to deal with quite a lot of assignments, at the same time, doing good preparation for tests. By discussing with my professors, I have skipped two midterms for my next trip after either rescheduling the test or transfer the test percentage to the final. Having friends(Kelly, Mandy and Grace) who were having exchange in Canada at that time, we planned to spend 2 weeks in Toronto, Kingston, Quebec and Montreal during their holiday in Canada’s Thanksgiving period. Toronto is just like other developed cities, having some similar attractions like observation tower, aquarium, zoo, art and human history museums. However, as we were travelling during October, one of the heritage-Casa Roma had decorated its basement to be a haunted house. For me that was really scary and terrified although nothing would jump out or no one would follow. Different from Toronto, Kingston was a small city with not many attractions to visit. However, its natural views and the Queens University there were quite worth to see. The reason why we must go to Quebec was because of a famous Korean drama.

Guardian(도깨비) has filmed in Quebec, like the Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac.

Quebec was ruled by France before, and that made it to become a “Little France” with lots of classical heritages. This is also why Quebec became my favorite city in Canada. Montreal is a small city which does not have many attractions to go or you can say the attractions there are not as impressing as others, especially compared to Quebec. If you live in the city heart or live near the city hall, you only need to spend one day to visit all the well-known places. However, the Chinatown there is very good that you can even hear people are speaking in Cantonese, with lots of dim sum and Hong Kong Style restaurants. Unfortunately, due to the unexpected heavy rain in Texas, the water department did not filter all the water at once. Austin government has asked people to stop using the water unless it is boiled. Therefore, all the water refills were stopped from using and we had to buy the bottled water to drink. Targets, Walmarts and Costcos even had shortage for them. Since I got a second-degree burnt, that was quite scared for me to use the top water to bath too. At last, the crisis has lasted for half month. I spent my last weekend to Six Flags in San Antonio since one of our friends was willing to drive us there! Six Flags is full of roller coasters and there was much exciting than any parks you have visited. On the Halloween day, I borrowed my friend’s ID card and went to Six Street where is a Austin version of ‘ Lan Kwai Fong’. People there were crazy because of Halloween by dressing up in different characters.

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Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac

Toronto Zoo

Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac

Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac

Gathering

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November 2018 More quizzes and assignments popped up and the workloads suddenly became heavy. It was the busiest month for me in the semester, especially before the Thanksgiving. On weekdays, I was mainly filled by school works and coop labor duties. However, my passion for travelling had never be affected. Since I have joined an international buddy program, two local families took me and some exchange students from Korea to McKinney falls state park for picnic. The park has a little waterfall which allows you can observe from the top. You may also ride a bike or have barbecue there. For the second weekend, some exchange friends and I have rent a car for travelling to Houston. We spent three days there and visited lots of famous places, like Rice University, NASA, battleship state, Brigham Monument, Galveston, Taste of Texas. Since we have rented a car, it was much convenient for us to go anywhere as it was quite clumsy to take buses in Houston and we may not be able to go as many places as we did. My original goal for Houston was to visit the headquarter of NASA there. You could take one tram tour there for visiting either Astronauts Training Center or Mission Control Center there. NASA is similar to science museum in HK and actually you could not find something very surprising as many places were prohibited for entry. The most impressing thing you could do was seeing the real used rockets during the tram tour. For me, Galveston was the favorite place in Houston since you could park your car on ship and wait it to take you there. You could even go out and feed the seagulls on ship!! After finishing all the deadlines, it finally came to the Thanksgiving holiday. To be honest, lots of students (like me) would skip a few days more for travelling. My exchange friends and I have travelled to San Francisco and Los Angles. Since my friend has a friend for UC Berkley, we lived in his hall and visited there for the first day. Also, the Golden Gate Bridge and Pier 39 were some of our visited spots there. Because of Black Friday, we spent a whole day for shopping in department store and malls. The prices at that time were so cheap that made you wanna buy them all. The main purpose for my friends to go Los Angles was to watch NBA there. They like Lakers and LeBron so much. We watched the one that Lakers VS Magic which is also my first NBA and I fell in love with basketball after that!! Apart from that, we were so lucky to watch the Christmas Parade on Hollywood Walk of Fame. That was their traditional to have different car shows, cheering teams and live performances during the parade, you may even see a superstar if you were lucky enough. I spent one more day by going to UCLA to visit my college friend there. He took me to visit the whole UCLA, his dorm and Santa Monica. I would definitely recommend you go Santa Monica if you have time, since the sunset there was so beautiful and romantic. You may also go Griffith Observatory for night view as well.

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Houston NASA

NASA

Lakers VS Magic

Santa Monica

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December 2018 That was the last month of official exchange period. However, I would stay in US until January 2019 for travelling because of the one-month grace period provided by visa. Some of my exchange friends did not have their finals during final periods, so they could end the whole study at the end of school day (10th December). For me, I have four finals and the last one is on 17th. Since I did not want to spend so much time for studying, I kept gathering with friends in the early December, like playing pool, going to San Marcos for shopping, seeing Trail of Lights in Ziker Park and eating end-sem rice. During the final period, I even went for a trip to San Antonio again with my two friends. San Antonio was okay for people who did not have a car to go, since the bus system there was well developed. It was famous for a few spots only and that made our journey schedule was not tight in there. The Alamo and Riverwalk were the most go places there. Since one of my friends and I love to watch NBA and she even is a die-heart fans of Spurs, so we went to watch a NEA game in AT&T center there (Spurs VS Bulls). After my final exam, I immediately cleared my coop and took the flight to start my SOLO trip in Buffalo to visit Niagara Falls. You could cross abroad the boundaries of US and Canada to see the two different views from different angles. As I wanted to save money, so lots of flight tickets that I bought were late night/ midnight flight and I even slept in the airports for many times alone to save the accommodation fee. After travelling to Buffalo, I went to Chicago and catch up with friends there. We spent four days there by visiting museums, trying their local food, going to Christmas Market, visiting beautiful spots. Chicago was a very interesting trip for me as my two friends Colin and Wendy were very funny and friendly. Finishing the trip in Chicago, I went for a solo trip again to Boston for lobsters and Harvard and MIT. To be honest, that was the very first time for me to try so many lobsters at once for a cheap price. Then, I had my trip to New York with my friends and we even were waiting in a heavy rain in Times Square for the New Year Countdown. New York is a good place for Opera and the one we watched (The Phantom of the Opera) was so good and unforgettable. After visiting in New York, we continued our trip in January to Washington, Miami, Orlando, Los Angles and Las Vegas. I finally end my exchange in US on 16th January after going back to Austin again to pick up the luggage there.

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San Antonio Niagara Falls

Chicago Chicago

New York New York

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Visa Procedures

UT issued us the DS-2019 form for applying for J-1 visa, then we can make the online application together with the US embassy appointment. The procedure was easy to follow, and it only took 2 days for issuing my visa. Just make sure to schedule the time early in case of emergency. The whole visa application procedures were quite simple.

Orientation Activities Before the start of the semester, the International Office organized a bunch of events for international exchange students to better adjust to local life, like Austin Bus Tour, Texas Social Dance, Volunteer work. I would highly recommend you join them at the beginning of the semester, as you will be able to meet lots of exchange friends there, although these are totally on your personal interests. Moreover, there were some compulsory events at the beginning of the semester that you had to mark your schedule, such as the IBC session and course-registration advising session from the McCombs Business School.

International Services & Activities Through the whole semester, the International Office offered monthly gathering and bus trips to a variety of locations and events around Texas. You can choose to join different cultural programs, like PALS. There is a student society called Planet Longhorn, which holds parties every week. These parties are good opportunities to meet local students. Although most of the parties are drinking related, you can still go and meet new friends! Or you can choose to join different societies through the counters they set up on Speedway at the beginning of semester.

Accommodations UT doesn’t provide on-campus housing for the exchange students but you can still apply for their halls. One suggestion is to find apartments through Simply International, it provides various properties on west campus and it only needs a short walk to school. For me, I suggested my other exchange friends from UST to live in Coops which is cheaper compared to others and you can have free meals cooked by students who lived there. My coop is called Halstead which is a bit expensive towards theirs with better environment. However, in order to live in Coops, you need to contribute four hours every week for labor weeks, such as cleaning or cooking. Personally that is okay for me and I would choose to live in coop again.

PART 2 – GENERAL EXCHANGE INFORMATION

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Course Registration UT will request you to submit your course preference list in the online system. During the orientation, the McCombs School of Business will arrange advisory sessions and the staff will go through your preference list as well as give suggestions for the registration. However, there is not a must for you to get in all your desired courses and few courses were registered by myself. Also, UTA only has three days for add/drop period! Please be careful and make up your mind for what courses you wanna take. There is a special benefit for BBA students: No Friday classes will be held!! So, we already have a dayoff and a short holiday from Friday to Sunday.

Teaching & Assessment Methods

The teaching & assessment methods was a little different from that in UST. Some of the courses focused more on case studies and there were more exam and quizzes than UST throughout the semester. For example, MIS 373.22N focused projects and case studies. You have to prepare a detailed project which sponsored by the local companies. Meetings and Interviews are needed during the process. For an exchange student, if you do not good groupmate, the workload is quite demanding. Meanwhile, the other I took, like OM 368, MIS 325, STA 371G and SDS 321 are mainly focus on actual use of knowledge. Their final exams all are cumulative which are quite heavy for me as I only did my study before tests and skipped lot of classes. I would say for UST students, actually the gradings there are really good and you can get a pass very easily. For it is possible, choose some absolute grading courses, then you can have batter estimation on how hard you should study.

Sports & Recreation Facilities There are two main gyms on campus, the one near the business school is called Gregory Gym and the other near the art school is called Recreational Sports Center. The Gregory Gym is equipped with various facilities for workout, two outdoor swimming pools, indoor running trail and wall climbing.

Finance and Banking There are three banks near the campus, including Chase, Wells Fargo, and the University Federal Credit Union. However, the other two UST exchange students and I chose to open accounts in Bank of America because you can find more theirs ATM in travelling. If you would like to withdraw money from Hong Kong, you can use the ATM with ”Plus” logo to do so. However, some charges is needed for transaction fee.

Social Clubs and Networking Opportunities At the beginning of the semester, you will see different clubs doing promotions along the Speedway and you can attend events before you decide to join the club. I did not join any of them since I spent most of time with other HK exchange students.

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Health and Safety

Every exchange student must purchase the insurance provided by UT which is around 1,000 USD. Many vaccinations are covered by the insurance such as flu vaccine, MMR, TB test, and HPV vaccine. UT provides “SURE Walk”and “SureRide” service at midnight for free so that you don't have walk back home alone. In general, just don’t go outside alone at night.

Food

Tex-Mex and Texan BBQ are quite popular in Austin. There were quite a number of good restaurants nearby with Japanese, Korean, Mexican and American food. In additions, there are some good food trucks on the 26th Street and 21st Street next to the UTC buildings, you may try them out during the lunch break. Even inside the University, there are several food courts, like J2, Chick-fil-A and panda express inside the Union and. Personally, I mainly cooked my own food or had food in Coop or my friends would take me to some good restaurants! Haha! Also, you can have a cheaper to taste traditional American Steak in Texas as all the meals here are extremely big and can be shared with your friends.

Transportation

You can use the student ID to take the metro bus in Austin for free. The bus can reach most of the places in Austin. However travelling by bus always takes around half hour to one hour for going anywhere. Another alternative could be taking the Uber or Lyft going around. It is very convenient if you have a car to go out, so try to ask your friends to pick you up when hanging out.

Climate

In Summer time, it is extremely hot in Austin, which is about 35+ degrees even in the morning. You may need to put on your sunglasses or sunscreen block. Throughout the whole semester, it was pretty hot and warm. It became colder when it was in December and there were even snows for twice in December and January. Apart from Austin, the weathers in East Coast were pretty low, which might be below 0 Degree Celsius in December. Therefore, you are recommended to bring both summer and winter clothes to Austin.

Communication My friends and I purchased a family plan from AT&T, which cost us 32 USD per person per month. The plan contains 10GB 4G data and unlimited calls and messages. UT provides wifi to students and UT will refill your data quota every single week.

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✓ DS – 2019 Form, Passport, Visa and other important documents.

✓ Vaccines Proof

✓ Clothes for winter and summer

✓ Suits

✓ Laptop

✓ Camera

✓ Adaptor

✓ Medicine

✓ Calculator (normal calculator and financial calculator)

✓ Cash

PART 3 – ITEMS TO BRING

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Course schedule: https://registrar.utexas.edu/schedules

Access Syllabi and CVs: https://utdirect.utexas.edu/apps/student/coursedocs/nlogon/

The University of Texas at Austin Exchange Program Website: https://my.mccombs.utexas.edu/BBA/IP/Programs-Overview/BBA-

Exchange-Programs

Housing: https://quartersoncampus2.businesscatalyst.com/

https://simplyinternational.com/

PART 4 – USEFUL LINKS AND CONTACTS