I’ve been on vacation for two and a half months now, but the time has come… to finally go back to school.
giphy.com
It’s really hard to describe that ‘first day of school’ feeling. It’s like being in first year all over again, where you don’t really know anyone and don’t know anything, let alone where your classes are. Except now it’s even worse, because the people all around me are speaking a different language. When it seems like everyone has their own friend group already, it does seem kind of difficult to insert yourself into their group as well – especially when you aren’t fluent in their language and you aren’t accustomed to their culture.
There are so many factors to consider when you’re studying abroad. You want to have a lot of fun and not spend all of your time studying, since you are in a new place and you want to explore. At the same time you’ve already paid for all your tuition, so you don’t want to waste money either. You figure out how many courses you want to take (4? 5?) and then you go about choosing which courses to take.
And then there’s the problem of choosing courses – your options are so limited that the courses you originally thought were really interesting, you can’t take anymore – all because of a language barrier. It would also be great if you could stack your courses as well, so you can go out and explore the city on your days off – but the class scheduling system is so different from the one that you’re used to that it takes you so much longer to decide what to do.
You can go read blogs online, but then you hear about all these horrible rumours – not just about classes, but about everything else basically. For example, I’ve heard rumours about how some people signed up for a class that had a 2 next to it – meaning it’s taught in English – only to go and find out it’s actually taught in Korean with a tiny, tiny bit of English. Or, you hear that the dryers in the dorm not working very well and having to hang all of your clothes in your already-small room.
And with all of these rumours in mind, you still have to go to school and make friends? An amazing feat, I think. I don’t even know how I did it two years ago, when I was in first year.
yonsei.ac.kr
New campuses always seem super huge (although UBC is probably bigger and I have no problems navigating UBC); I’m just glad I managed to find the building that both my classes are in without getting lost at all (thanks to the map that the exchange student orientation provided me with).
Thankfully, my first class just finished an hour early with no problems at all. The class was taught in English, as promised (the prof initially took attendance in Korean… and then she said she forgot this was an English class, and she started speaking English after that), and the prof seems super chill and straightforward – not like some profs who say one thing and actually mean another.
Hopefully all my classes will go this well!
Follow