“The trip would start with my flight to Sacramento, CA,” I thought. But my trip actually started much earlier with the obligatory visit to the American Embassy in Frankfurt am Main. After I had finally sent off all of my application documents and had my acceptance of the UCDavis on the table. Basically, this visit to the embassy is an ordeal, because you can wait a long time to hand in only half of the documents you have laboriously gathered together.
- Check topschoolsintheusa for more about The School of Medicine at University of California Davis.
I was overjoyed when I had this visit behind me and especially when I finally found out who my host family would be. I chose this option of living because it is actually the cheapest and I wanted to experience typical American life. I also have to say that it really wasn’t a lot of effort and the organization does all the work for you in this regard. Even if from then on I was woken up every morning at seven by my cute, little (4 and 7 year old) host siblings and the two of them would also easily keep the house awake until 11 p.m., whether one wanted to sleep or not.
Unfortunately, my bike path to the university was about 20 to 30 minutes away from Davis. Since this was mostly driven by sunshine on specially created bike paths, it was actually very nice until winter came (with about 5-10 ° C, significantly colder than I had expected from California!). All in all, I am really happy to have found accommodation with this host family, because even if it is probably not the typical American family (the father is Ethiopian, the mother wears her hair in long Rastas and felt at home with her 30 years more like a sister to me), they are really loving people who have always supported me in everything and, above all, have given me an incredible amount of freedom. Best of all: I know that in you I have made friends for life.
After a few days of getting used to and exploring the super beautiful and sweet university town of Davis, we went to the Extension Center. If I had known that you could go there earlier than the agreed date and start organizing your Open Campus Bridge Program courses, this would have made my course finding and admission a lot easier. Fortunately, I didn’t have to take the English test, which some people were very annoyed about because they had taken the TOEFL test in Germany (everyone should actually take it).
you should come up with something better as far as the organization is concerned. In the end, I was just happy to have found courses in which I could still participate (actually, according to some lecturers, I had already missed too much) that had at least something to do with my course in Germany. I didn’t consider taking one of the English courses because, as I mentioned, I grew up in English and that shouldn’t be the purpose of my stay, even if it would have made the whole thing easier. that had at least something to do with my course in Germany. I didn’t consider taking one of the English courses because, as I mentioned, I grew up in English and that shouldn’t be the purpose of my stay, even if it would have made the whole thing easier. that had at least something to do with my course in Germany. I didn’t consider taking one of the English courses because, as I mentioned, I grew up in English and that shouldn’t be the purpose of my stay, even if it would have made the whole thing easier.
Regarding on-site support, I can only say that not much was actually done, even if people were always interested in how things were going. Typically Californian! Unfortunately, there were hardly any real suggestions for solutions or direct assistance. Helpful information was more likely to come from the other students who had similar problems. But I also believe that it is generally more difficult in my field of study, also because there was talk of completely dissolving the entire Textile and Clothing department from UCDavis (reasons for cost savings, of course).
The courses themselves were quite interesting, even if, as I said, I unfortunately cannot credit them. But on the whole it was informative and enriching to see how university life in America differs in many ways from German university life.
Of course I tried to see as much of California as possible. And I have to say that Davis is really an ideal starting point. Only about 1.5 hours to San Francisco, 30 minutes by bus to Sacramento, about 2 hours drive to skiing near Lake Tahoe (from the end of November), about 2 hours drive to Yosemite National Park, about 30 minutes drive to beautiful Napa Valley for wine tasting. However, it has to be said that America is really only a pleasure with your own car! Davis might be a little too far north for a road trip through South Cali at the end of my stay, but it is quite doable. So it was about 10 days from San Francisco along the beautiful coast to Santa Barbara via Los Angeles to San Diego. To top it off, we went to Las Vegas from where we flew back to San Francisco. If I had had a little more time, I would have gone further north, where nature is supposed to be really beautiful and I only heard good things.
So on the whole, if you are more lucky with your choice of subjects, Davis is a recommended place if you want to see typical American small-town life and you don’t mind that you have to drive a bit for everything but food!
