In a blink of an eye, I have been to UCSI University a week. Even so, I’m still a non-official UCSI student because I have not paid the fees yet but only the registration fees, so you can say I’m an intruder coming to UCSI holding Nilai UC student card. I can’t pay my fees yet because I’m eligible for 50% scholarship but to accept it, I need to present my foundation final semester and the foundation completion letter to them to prove that I’ve passed my foundation program. However, my head of foundation told me that the result will most probably out on next Monday, so I hope everything goes well as planned and by the third week of May, I’ll officially be a UCSI student. Now, I’m going to share my experience throughout the three days in UCSI University.
Day 1
My counselor, Mr. Steve, asked me to come to meet him on 9am. I expected traffic jam in Cheras and had no idea when and where will be UCSI bus picking up their students so I asked my dad to fetch me there. I went out from home at 7.45am and as expected, we were caught in the jam just after the second toll going towards KL. At that moment, I was expecting to be late and I kept blaming myself why I had not come out much earlier like my friend did. She went out from home at 6.45am as she had class at 8am but morning at this time there weren’t that much cars around the road yet.
However, I never expect that I could arrive just before 9am and when I reached the marketing department to look for my counselor and he was busy inside doing his stuffs. I guess he was preparing the forms for me as he told me earlier that since I had not paid the fees yet, I couldn’t register my subjects online so I’ll have to do it manually. While waiting for him to get his things done, I looked around to see whether there is anyone I knew, but there were none. The students were all crowded outside the marketing department as they wanted to pay their fees, I guess, as the counters are just beside the marketing department. Even they have 9 counters, if I’m not mistaken, they still cannot manage to settle the students fees in a faster manner so that was why there were so many students waiting outside.
Finally, I saw Mr. Steve stood up and walked to a young lady sitting in front of his desk holding some pieces of papers and saw him pointing to me. Then the lady stood up and walked out towards me while Mr. Steve sat back his place. This young lady just passed me a course selection form and a time table for all the subjects for the faculty of management and IT (they called it FOMIT). She asked me to choose about 4 to 5 subjects based on the papers that had been specified in the brochure. I was not sure what subjects to take in the first semester and in that moment, I needed to contact Wei Chien, a friend of mine, to know whether are there subjects that we can take together as I wouldn’t want to be lonely in the first semester. Wei Chien, who is also taking his first year degree this semester but instead of accounting and finance, he is taking actuarial science. Unfortunately, I do not have his number and so I contacted my other friend to get his number. I was surprised when my friend too does not have his number as he is quite close with Wei Chien. I had no choice but to call for help from my angel, Wen Hao, that had helped me to gain entry to UCSI without my official foundation result. Wen Hao, just like me, was a Nilai UC student formally and transferred to UCSI after his foundation a year ago. Actually we couldn’t enter without the official result for foundation but Wen Hao knew an agent so he asked this agent to help me again. This agent is also my counselor.
So happen when I SMSed Wen Hao to get some suggestions on the subjects that I have to take this semester (as I scared he has class at that moment), he called me and told me that he was just outside the marketing department. He brought me to look for the Dean of business school to get advises but I wasn’t understand why later when we reached FOMIT, he asked me to talk to the enquiry counter and the girl inside took my course selection form away and asked me to collect back at about 2-3pm. The subjects that I had chosen were based on Wen Hao’s past experience. So meanwhile I attended my classes as if I were a student here. According to the time table, my next class will be at 12.30pm but that moment it was just about 11am. So I went to the library to login to eadvantage (UCSI online portal) to check whether there were any changes to the time table using Wen Hao’s ID but I couldn’t log in and because he has class at that time, I didn’t bother about that but continue to search for Wei Chien’s number. At the library, I met Ah Kiet, my old friend since primary school, but wasn’t that close. I called my secondary school ex-class monitor as he was also quite close with Wei Chien but unfortunately he doesn’t have his number. I called my other classmate and finally got it. I found that I have 2 subjects same as what he will be taking, namely University Life and Business Communication.
I was lucky when Wen Hao offered to have lunch with me outside UCSI. As expected, the foods in Cheras are much more expensive than in Nilai. After lunch I had my first class in UCSI, Business Communication. On the way to the class, I got lost when trying to climb up the stairs as the C block has 3.5th floor and a guy, as well as me; thought the 3.5 floor was the fourth floor so we were a bit lost. I was smart because I tried going up another stair and found the fourth floor. This guy, so happen was also taking accounting and finance and he was the first friend I made in UCSI. His name is Chun Hao.
I found that all the classes in UCSI are 1.5 hours instead of 2 hours in Nilai. So each subject I’m taking only consists of 3 credit hours instead of four. After my class I rushed back to FOMIT to collect my form but there was nothing done to the form. The other lady in charge of the enquiry counter asked me to go in the office together with other accounting and finance student to have a short briefing regarding the subjects that we had to take this semester. Inside the room, I noticed a few were from my secondary school, SMJK Yu Hua, but they remember seeing me in Yu Hua two years back so now I’m getting to know the accounting and finance students, or classmates I should say. The head of accounting and finance asked us to take this this this subjects so I had to cancel of business law to replace with business information system. So the subjects that I had chosen were Business statistics, business information system, introductory accounting (same as ACC118 in foundation in Nilai UC), Business communication, University Life and extra curriculum activity. The last two subjects were not major so the actual number of subjects I’m taking is 4 and I only have classes on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, everyday till 6.30pm. These new classmates I met told me that whatever course selection was to be done in the eadvantage, but as you know, my ID is still unusable since I had not paid the fees yet.
I went back to the marketing department to look for Mr. Steve’s help; he tried to log in to eadvantage using my ID and success to register online all those subjects. I was much relieved now.
At night however, I couldn’t log in anymore as there stated that my account had been removed due to certain reasons. I had expected that as I knew I had not paid my fees.
Day 2
I had taken the bus schedule yesterday so I can start taking KTM from today onwards. Since my class starts at 12.30pm today, I went to Kajang KTM at 10.30am. I arrived at Bandar Tasik Selatan KTM about 11.10am and together with other UCSI students, we waited more than thirty minutes and we can only see Rapid KL busses passed by. I checked the bus schedule and it stated that there should have 2 buses passed by but none. Very weird. I followed the other students took a Rapid KL T408 bus to UCSI. When I arrived, I was hungry even though it barely reached 12pm yet. I asked Jui Yee (a colleague from my music studio) to eat with me but she thought it was too early to eat, so I ate alone in the cafeteria inside the library. The food here were much more expensive than outside UCSI as it has air-con and the workers are all chinese. Today I met some other new friends. I found that UCSI just the same as in Nilai, lacks of guys. But here in UCSI, I can hardly see any Malay and only can see some Indians. Every classes I attended, about 90% are Chinese and only a few are foreign students, much lesser than in Nilai UC. Today I was a little bored because not all classes I’ll attend with my new friends. I found a very very terrible news at night. I saw my friend from Nilai UC told us that he had called the exam unit and they told him that foundation studies results will only be out on the 21st of May. I was really shocked to hear this as next Wednesday starts the May semester for foundation students. So, I don’t believe what they told him was right, probably they thought he was asking for Degree results. When I heard this news, I was asking myself whether I am eligible to continue ‘pretending’ as a student of UCSI after the add and drop period. I felt that I made a mistake to leave Nilai UC. Not that I like Nilai UC, but I realize that transferring university using foundation is very complicated. And having more friends in Nilai will be much better to me. I was sad today (on Wednesday).
Day 3
This morning I had class at 9.30am so I followed my mum down to Kajang KTM before 6.45am. The train to KL is very punctual in the morning as I had taken note of after one semester of taking KTM down to Nilai. I managed to arrive at Bandar Tasik Selatan at 7am and the UCSI shutter bus came at 7.05am. Today I wanted to print my lecture notes in the library as they provide free printings (we paid for it in the resource fees) but I didn’t realize that we need to prepare our own papers but I didn’t have any so I couldn’t print. After the 9.30am class, I went to the foyer to do my music theory paper. Before doing it, I went to see how interesting touch screen computers are. At first from far I thought those computers were Mac, as UCSI has an Apple store inside but then I found that those are HP Touchsmart PC.
The touch screen computers at a corner. I took this shot secretly.
Entrance to UCSI foyer
Glass roof and wall in the foyer
I had lunch with my new friend outside but she already had her lunch so she just accompanies me while having my lunch. I enjoyed the moments I chatted with her because she and I didn’t have much free time to talk with new friends, to get to know our classmates. I was starting to enjoy UCSI life when I got to know even more friends during the business statistics class. I found that many new degree students are from UEC and so far I’m the only one transferring to UCSI degree through external foundation program. Today our time table has many gaps in between classes. So we managed to spend some time together to know each other. I didn’t surprise when they see me doing music theory and asked why I didn’t choose music. Overall, I starting to like the environment in UCSI despite having a small campus compared to Nilai UC. The lecturers are much more experienced in teaching the subjects and are more professional. I really hope that Nilai UC exam unit gave wrong information to Ilyas. I really hope that I don’t have to withdraw from UCSI. Really need to pray hard!! God bless me
