As this semester (and with it my first Korea experience), this year and decade are all coming to an end, I’ve been thinking a lot about the people who have greatly influenced my past couple of months in Korea. And I was faced with the realization that, though you cannot like and be liked by everyone, I am overall much more than just satisfied with the people who have been in charge of my academic experience at KU – the professors. And not being able to express my appreciation to them personally, for fear of coming off as if I’m looking to improve my grades via flattery, I have decided to dedicate a blog post to the people who have helped me grow and develop as a student. So, here we are.
Let me start with the professor that saw me every day for two and a half hours, our 선생님. I’m sure teaching the Intensive Korean class is not much easier than attending it and as motivation and energy decrease with time, it would have been easy for the class to become boring and exhausting. Not on his watch. There was rarely a time when he was not trying to make us laugh, be it with puns or funny examples. He tried to keep his positive attitude even when all of us, the professor included, barely had enough energy to stay upright. He was extremely thoughtful and even bought a cake for my birthday, that was the first time I ate one with chopsticks. I am genuinely thankful that he made learning Korean a pleasant experience. I enjoyed the course till the very end and am already looking forward to the next semester.
Twice a week, I attended a course on Ancient Chinese Law and Philosophy. One of the rare classes where attendance was completely liberal, but I still ended up going to every single lecture. Call me a nerd and see if I care. He is so well-read and charismatic that it was a real pleasure listening to him. I am seriously considering just showing up to some of his lectures next year. Though his subject is not exactly what I’d imagine I’d enjoy a couple of months ago, I even had a good time revising for the exam with friends. Not only did I learn a lot about Confucius and his teachings, I find myself applying some concepts to my daily life as well. Just goes to show that sometimes when life throws unexpected things our way they can end up being blessings in disguise.
Another professor I had the pleasure of seeing in my morning lectures and, let me just say, being able to eat your breakfast while looking at memes and having class discussions with that really cool person next to you (shout-out if she ever reads this) is the way to go. Besides, most of the assignments and the midterm were group projects, so they ended up being pretty fun to do anyways. I think I learned a lot from just being required to participate in class and critically think about concepts before being given the answer, as I did quite some analysis on my own that I could’ve just searched up online otherwise. I can definitely say that the professor knew how to keep us interested in the content of his lectures.
I have a lot of compliments for the class after it as well. Though I’m not into public speaking at all, the presentation I had in this professor’s class was the least stressful one to date. I felt comfortable and confident and I hadn’t even practiced that much. (Or at all, to be completely honest, but don’t tell him that.) He seems to be a really approachable professor in that he never pretended to know everything and quite frequently appreciated points raised in our debates that he hadn’t previously thought about. And though this is most probably a cultural thing, a simple social requirement he grew up practicing, he always asked “how are you?” when we met outside of the classroom. And I appreciate that.
I’m grateful to the Korean professor who was the first and only one to reply to a stressed ol’ Maja, when she couldn’t get enough credits during her course registration. A very kind and friendly professor, who thanked us for coming to class at the end of each lecture and whose passion for teaching could be seen in the way he got excited about topics and examples he was explaining. He occasionally commented on pressing world issues or recalled a time he went to Sicily and was just so nice of a person in general that I couldn’t help but overcompensate for other students’ lack of attention by nodding vigorously when we made eye contact and smile at all of his jokes.
Feeling like it might be unfair to leave out a professor just because my experience in his class was not as pleasant as it could have been, I need to also mention a course that taught me how to pour my absolute everything into a project. Three-quarter-nighters were not uncommon before this class and I spent a lot of my time and energy self-teaching myself skills that would help me achieve the goals of the professor’s assignments. Regardless of how the class turned out, I do feel that I have learned a lot about how I prioritize and about how much I am willing to sacrifice in order to sleep peacefully, knowing that I’ve done my best.
A special mention should also be given to some professors from my department. Recently, I have started feeling much more optimistic about my academic future at KU, partly thanks to their efforts. Firstly, along with a friend of mine, I was invited to a lunch with our adviser, which made us feel a lot more included in the affairs of our department. Besides, we got to spend some time talking to a well-educated professor who seemed to really be interested in what he was asking, despite the meeting likely being included in his job description.
Secondly, an International Students Workshop was organized by two foreign professors of my department, aimed at improving the program to better suit our needs, and there are not enough words in my vocabulary to express how grateful I am for that. It has easily been one of the best moments of my first semester in Korea and that is saying a lot. I felt heard, I felt less alone in the struggles that I had been facing thus far and I felt excited to learn from them in the future. I felt included. I left that workshop with a huge smile on my face, despite the fact that I had a final exam right after it finished. None of the praise that I can think of right now does justice to how I felt in that moment and if, god forbid, this blog is ever found by the aforementioned people, I hope they realize just how much their efforts mean to me.
All in all, I believe it is important to acknowledge and express my appreciation of people who often get forgotten in the conversations about university life. Because they do deserve some credit for my current satisfaction with life. A big thank you goes out to all of them. Let me wrap this post up with the following quote from an unknown author: “Not all superheroes wear capes, some have teaching degrees.”
KU Tigress 