So this was what led me back to the blog after a year, hopefully it will help prospective students in terms of what to expect and current students in terms of advice and encouragement.
My Top 5 list for “success” at UIC
Category: Studying Abroad
Studying Abroad – Missing out on things at home
Today I write perhaps what will be my saddest post on this blog.
Yesterday on March 23rd, 2015, Singaporeans lost our founder, Mr Lee Kuan Yew. We enter our second day of mourning and Mr Lee will be put to rest after a state funeral on Sunday.
What prompted me to write this post was the reminder that his death has triggered in me. I will write with my personal experience, as a preview to those of you considering study abroad of what you will miss out on back at home, and those feelings of homesickness that might attack. Hopefully you might be better prepared mentally or at least know what you are getting yourself into when you decide to study abroad.
1) Homesickness
You definitely, I guarantee you 100%, will get homesick. It’s just how bad the homesickness is, and when you get it.
Some people like me had my first bout of homesickness right from the beginning after my parents left Korea. I only met my new classmates for 3 days so far, and it was a little tiring trying to fit in and make friends, and worrying about what was the “correct” thing to say. After my parents left I shut myself in my room (after talking a little to my new roommate who didn’t speak English that well so the conversation was short-lived).
Studying Abroad – How to persuade your parents and yourself?
After being inactive for a million years, I’m finally back, and I plan to write as often as I can this semester before I graduate! (Yes, this is my last semester in Korea ㅠㅠ) It’s been a journey full of ups and downs and I really wish to document more of my thoughts and my life in Korea in these last few months here. Thank you for staying with me even though I haven’t been updating often, but I hope that my posts will be of interest to you!
As you can see from the title, I’m talking about something that might be a problem some of you are facing now – how to convince your parents that you’re making the right choice in studying overseas? In fact, I faced the same problem 4 years ago, and today I’m facing the same problem again as I intend to go to graduate school. Some of you have asked me the same question about how I managed to persuade my parents, so I thought I’d share with you some of my experiences and thoughts.First question is always, why Korea?
To be specific, the question my parents asked was “why don’t you want to go to NUS?” In the case for Singapore at least, we have pretty well-acclaimed universities and going to Yonsei appeared to be some sort of downgrade. I had good scholarship offers too, but the scholarship providers did not want me to go to Yonsei (and thus I rejected their offers in the end).
For this question, you would have to answer to three groups of people: 1) Your parents 2) Your relatives and friends 3) Yourself.
studyinkorea 