UC Davis (Part 1 of 2)

I visited University of California at Davis last Friday. Unfortunately, it was a Veterans Day Holiday and therefore not much crowd. Almost all the buildings and classrooms were closed and locked. I wished I had gone there on a working day. 

University of California has 10 campuses all over California. The most famous are UC Berkeley and UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles). Third in line is UC Davis.

Someone told me long time ago that "at Berkeley the professors don’t teach and the teaching is done by the teaching assistants. At Davis, professors teach. Therefore, Davis is much better than Berkeley”. I do not know how far this is true. 

First item I wanted to see was their football stadium. But I could not go inside the stadium because of the holiday. Here is a photo from outside: That stadium can accommodate 33,000 people but you will never know looking from outside because the football field is surrounded by tiers of seats for the spectators. Just like an amphitheater. 

Here is a building for classrooms. This building was donated by Robert Mondavi, an American billionaire and a wine maker. I was joking with my host the Mondavi family will not have any difficulty in getting admission to this University. 

One particular thing I did not like is the dorms (hostels) are only for the first year students.  Second, third, and fourth year students have to rent apartments outside of the campus.  I think this is ridiculous.  They also should have an option to stay in the dorm if they so wish.

The dorms are located far away from the classrooms. Therefore, all the students staying in the dorms have a bicycle to go to the classes. 

I met a few students who stayed in the dorm during this long weekend. They were very friendly and easy to have conversation. 

Stay tuned for the next blog post about the UC Davis cafeteria.