I gave in and activated my Facebook account a good two months back as Georgia Tech has an official group that lets students interact and post questions. There are also half a dozen unofficial groups created by students where you can ask questions, post about experiences and plan travel arrangements with others who are going to leave when you do. I saw posts about long queues while waiting at the various consulate offices for the visa interview and decided to reach the US Embassy an hour early. I thought I would be first in line and I could save some time. I was not first in line and unlike in other cities this wasn’t something to worry about. The whole thing was very organized and everybody was called only in the 15 minute slots they were in. Even if you were last in queue, it would have only taken you 15 minutes inside.

Seeing her interview others before me, I thought the lady I was going to face was pretty stern. She gave me a big smile when I went forward and I was no longer nervous.

She asked me three questions and was really nice throughout:

Where do you want to go?
A. Georgia Tech.

What do you want to do there?
A. Human-Computer Interaction

I have never heard of that before. Does this make sense for you professionally?
A. I want to be a designer. I’ve pursued Computer Science so far and HCI falls in the intersection of Computer Science and Liberal Arts which falls perfectly in line with what I want to do.

Superb. I’m approving your Visa, you should have it home in 5 days by courier.