Coming to an End
As my time in Seoul comes to an end, I have started to reflect on the 4 months that I have spent on exchange. Ever since last winter break, after taking a short-term study abroad course to Spain I knew I needed to spend more time getting to know and understand a culture other than my own. I thought the opportunity to be completely submerged into something unfamiliar that would allow me to continue to break out of my comfort zone. I wanted to be in a place that pushed me to communicate more effectively and to be somewhere that I wasn’t extremely familiar with.
With my exchange term ending in less than seven days and as I reflect on my last four months, I have begun to think about all of the great moments and opportunities that I’ve had. During my time, I was been able to meet a diverse group of people from all over the world, take three-weekend trips and travel to Japan. This semester I had the opportunity to go to different concerts, museums and fashion-related events which all helped me understand different aspects of South Korean culture and its society.
Going into this semester, I wanted to challenge myself to step further outside of my comfort zone to enjoy the different aspects of Korean culture unfamiliar to me. But, I did find that many of the experiences and events that I partook in weren’t as different as I thought they would be. Although there are a lot of things in South Korea that I could only get, see or experience here, living in the US and being constantly surrounded by diverse cultural backgrounds reduced the amount of cultural shock that I felt. I found that many of the new things that I experienced in Seoul so far to not be as shocking as I thought I would before arriving.
Being abroad has afforded me time to deeply reflect on my life and career aspirations. During my time in Seoul, I found it very easy to have the time to deeply reflect on my goals without any distractions. Being in a place where everyone is on a different path and background has allowed me to explore many different perspectives on the varying experiences of college and life in different countries. I have made friends from not only the U.S., but from the Netherlands, Jamaica, and Ireland. These friendships have helped me gain new perspectives on a lot of things in my life. Being abroad this semester has helped me reconfirm my desire to work in a career that focuses on global design.
The greatest takeaways of my time in Seoul include the people that I met and the different things that I got to experience with them. In my short four months, I was able to maximize all of the time that I had to experience South Korean culture that I could. Having the opportunity to study abroad is something I will always extremely grateful for. The opportunity to broaden my perspective with a global education is something I will never take for granted. Having the opportunity to be challenged and to learn and grow in such a short period of time is something I will never forget. Although I am really sad to be ending my abroad term, I am really happy about all the memories that I got to make.
