What a wild time this month has been – certainly the most
unique conglomerate of coursework, historic site visits, and activities that I
have ever encountered. From the beginning of my experience in Korea, my
expectations were much more academic in nature. The level of informality and
ultimately low-stress academic environment had both positive and negative
attributes.
The program allowed for extensive student flexibility and an
ideal environment for the amateur academic traveller due to the University of
Ulsan’s emphasis on student comfort. Coursework was generally straightforward
and covered topics mentioned prior to program matriculation. In regards to
completed academic goals, I was able to learn a lot about Korea’s economic,
business, and sociological environments at the level I expected, or above in
the case of economic and taught historical information.
The aspects I found particularly lacking were primarily in
the sector of language education and general academic rigor. I joined the
program expecting to spend far more time and energy focused on Korean language
learning, and was disappointed to find that they only taught consonants and
vowels (which I learned prior to my arrival in Korea). The limited phrasal and
vocabulary teaching was a limiter on my abilities to socially interact, and
ultimately may have contributed to lost experiences with other college students
linguistically due to this inability.
As a whole I feel my academic expectations were met to some
level of satisfaction – especially the history-loving side of my scholastic
interests. There is certainly no perfect program for mixing this large quantity
of information across several, multi-faceted fields, but they attempted to do
so and created an enjoyable and comfortably educational experience in the
process.
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