Written by Ramses Trigo Torres
Traveling to a new place is always a great experience which provides the traveler with opportunities of knowing a new place, learning about something different besides their routine, meeting new people and opening his/her eyes to a new perspective that might not come during the normal day at home. These same experiences go for international graduate students as us. Most times, international students tend to think about how they need to study hard and keep up with school activities only and leave behind the new life experiences that appear in front of them while being at in a new country. That is why it is very important for a student to completely know or at least be conscious about all the resources that the university offers for every important aspect of an international student, from funding and academics to recreation and labor.
Talking more specifically about the University of California at Irvine, there are several resources that every student has the right to use at a minimal cost for some cases or free of charge for the most cases. For example, when I first came to UC Irvine, I still had some problems with having fluent conversations with my classmates. Sometimes, I even tried to avoid getting into a conversation because I felt that my talking speed was so slow that people would get bore while talking to me. Fortunately, the International Center, which might have been your first contact for the US Visa requirements, host a recurrent event called “International Coffee Hour” which is offered to International Students as a “safe zone” for meeting new people, practicing your conversational skills, sharing your thoughts or issues with others or just as a relaxing moment outside your hectic live between your lab and courses.
In addition to this, the International Center offers support and links to external opportunities or activities in which international students can participate because depending on the type of Visa they might have, they must stick to certain constraints of participating in on and off campus activities.
Another great resource that is not limited to international students but to every graduate student at UC Irvine, is the Graduate Resource Center. As the International Center does, the GRC offers a wide variety of resources that are considered not only useful but fundamental for graduate students. Some of these resources focus on academics, like the writing support that offers writing consultants for dissertations or thesis, workshops for writing proposals or abstracts and full-time courses during quarters to strengthen the writing abilities for students. This same efforts go to the oral communication area in which several short and long term courses or workshops are offered for public speaking in the engineering and science fields, interview bootcamps for jobs, communications consultants and couching for presentations or seminars, and other specific resources for getting better at communicating to others.
Furthermore the academic side of graduate school, the Graduate Resource Center along with the International Center and the Wellness, Health & Counseling Services offer a series of wellness services for students in cases in which someone is feeling overwhelm with their daily activities, is being homesick, or just feeling depress by factors outside from school. These services are very important for us international students because they can represent a determinant factor between a successful student and a dropout
Leaving behind the academics and wellness services, UC Irvine also offers something called UCI Campus Recreation. This final resource mostly offers outdoor and indoor activities and sports to students. Depending on the activity you might be looking for, it may have a little cost per quarter but these payed activities only refer to specific sport or courses as martial arts or CPR courses which offer a valid certificate of participation or knowledge. On the other hand, there are several other activities that are free for students like the sport fields that are located around the main campus or other sport facilities as the ARC which houses a gym that is available for free most part of the year to UCI students.
Lastly but not lease important, you have two final resources which offer a weekly reminder about the current opportunities offered by the campus in different aspects. First are the Graduate Interconnect peer mentors’ weekly emails that provide useful information before your arrival to UCI. It is important to pay attention to the provided information because it might give you hints about activities or requirements that you’ll need to fulfill at sometime during your stay at UCI. And second is the Grad Mailer weekly emails that you’ll receive one you activate your UCI Email Account. These weekly reminders talk about events, announcements, a Graduate Resource Center Update on current activities hosted by them, external and internal funding opportunities and more that are of interest to every student at UCI.