Course registration matters & PNU life!

Ooooh I’m back!

The third week of school has begun!!! Have more or less settled down here since I have confirmed all my courses and it’s getting warmer so it’s felt less “painful” whenever I am coming home at night.

Flowers are starting to bloom in PNU! So pretty! 

My initial plan was to take 1 Economics, 1 Marketing, 1 Language, 1 General Education and 1 Technology & Entrepreneurship course in PNU. But sadly, the marketing courses offered in PNU were a little boring and one of the course’s professor actually didn’t let the exchange student register for the course since it was full. So in the end, I registered for 2 Economics, 1 Language, 1 General Education and 1 Technology & Entrepreneurship course.

I actually registered 6 modules since I was really interested in all of them. However, SMU only allows me to map back 5 modules so if I were to take 6 modules, I would be taking one module for fun. And who the hell takes an extra module during exchange for fun?

Below are the modules I am clearing in PNU!

1) Korean Family Life: Really fun and interesting course! As the title suggested, you learn about the Korean family life as well as the different festivals the families celebrate in Korea. Although this is an English class, but the professor does speaks in Korean sometimes so all the exchange students are assigned with a buddy! I have a really nice buddy and he translates everything well so I could understand!

2) Management Information Systems: Pretty dry course but the funny and charismatic professor makes it bearable. And he always talk about Singapore since I’m the only exchange student in the class!! But the workload is heavy! There is a quiz every week so I’m forced to study before going to class. I have no idea why but I have a short attention span for this course -_-….

3) Game Theory: My favourite Economics course so far.  It’s very different from what I heard from those who did this course in SMU. The professor is really good at English and so far, he focuses more on the qualitative side rather than quantitative. I hope this continues throughout the course because I really hate proving and all the mathematical formulas!

4) Environmental Economics: Boring boring course. The professor speaks really slowly and softly so most of the time, I don’t get what he is talking about. He also reads a lot from the slides so going for class is kinda redundant??? And after 5 lessons, I still have no idea what is this whole course about!

5) Beginner Korean (II): Bloody difficult! I learnt Korean last year in Singapore so I kinda have an idea how difficult Korean is. To make things worse, there is a quiz and dictation every class! And I did pretty badly for the dictation since I am not able to “decode” the professor’s pronunciation fast enough. Am sure that I would do badly for this course ha ha ha ha. 

Other than the quirky courses in PNU, university life in Korea is also quite different as compared to Singapore’s.

* Nobody ever eats in class. So if you miss a meal and have back to back classes, too bad! But the good thing about Korea is that they rarely have classes during lunch time. Talk about school life balance?

* Korean students are so much more attentive and hardworking than Singapore students. They don’t use laptop/cellphones in class and focus on taking down the notes. Using pen and paper, mind you. How could one sit still for 75 minutes! BECAUSE I CAN’T.

* Korean students rarely speak up. For the classes I attended at least! I am totally liking this though. I had enough of class part whores in SMU so a change is really good! Just that sometimes, it can get awkward when the professor ask a question and after 1 minute, nobody wants to reply… hmmmm.

* The students follow rules pretty well. I went to the study/quiet room to revise my work and I was shocked that it was really quiet!! Nobody talks or whisper in there. SMU students should totally learn from them! And they also buy the textbook after the first lesson since they are told to do so. Really good students!

* The atmosphere in class is pretty awesome. Everybody is friendly towards one another and whenever the professor says “hello” or “thank you”, the class would reply back really loudly. I don’t think many professors do this in Singapore??

* After class life is also very happening. There’s a shopping mall in PNU, a shopping street and lots of pubs outside PNU, lots of coffee houses in school etc…… There are just endless things to do after class! Shopping near university is also cheap! You can can a cup of mocha easily at 2,400 KRW, a pair of shoes at 10,000 KRW and a burger at 2,000 KRW!

* If there’s one thing I hate, it would be the inefficiency of the PNU office!! Not only do they process the exchange student ID cards really slowly (I still do not have a student card after 3 weeks) but they also NEVER reply emails. HELLO, EXCUSE ME? An email is obviously created for communication but they are refusing to communicate with the students?!!!! I am not the only one having this problem since there are some Singaporeans who also said they don’t reply emails. ZZZZ now I feel thankful for all the help rendered by OGL back in SMU.

DONE RANTING!