Japan Trip: Days 113-126

I would sum up my last couple of weeks in Korea with two words: finals and traveling. After my dad's side of the family left from their visit, I admit it was a little stressful to pull everything together for finals week.

Here at Yonsei University, and many other Korean universities in general, the grading system weighs finals very heavily (often 40% of your grade or higher). However, the test caused less anxiety and worry than the group projects did. In both of my in-person classes, which were taught by the same professor, we had to complete extensive group projects as part of our final. This required more collaboration and communication than I was used to doing in group work back at Shidler. It was important that we set a time to meet in-person, outside of class to work on our projects. However, in these particular classes my groups were as large as 8-10 people.

It was difficult to have discussions with my fellow teammates, as some felt frustrated that the work was not divided evenly, or that not everyone was contributing. However, reflecting back it did provide me with the chance to improve my collaboration skills and try to bring the group back together. We were able to resolve the conflict without removing any team members from the project.

Another cultural difference I spotted; not many local students enjoy public speaking. This could be due to the fact that the courses were taught completely in English. Seeing as I completely lack Korean language efficiency, I would have the same fears. However, many other international students were the ones who volunteered to do the group presentation. I volunteered to do one of my group's video presentations, which was a bit more time consuming than I anticipated.

Overall, I did enjoy my academic time at Yonsei. It was more than just having a beautiful campus or great campus life. I had the chance to work with both local and international students (through the ups and downs) and end up with a great end product. Our final grades made me feel like the time and effort we put in was worth it.

After I completed my finals and attended my last class sessions, I left for Japan with my friends the next day! This was our final trip out of country and I had such a great time.

We spent all of our time in Tokyo with the exception of a day tour to Hakone, and were able to see Harajuku, Shibuya, and Ikebukuro.

Our last three days included splitting our time between Tokyo Disneyland and Disney Sea.