Hebe – Ewha Woman’s University
Semester 2, 2023
Bachelor of Information Technology
If you want to eat yummy food, see beautiful things and meet amazing people, I would 10/10 recommend doing a semester in Seoul, South Korea. The lifestyle in Seoul is crazy and hectic but you will leave with some unforgettable memories, because I know I did.
During my time in Korea, I attended Ewha Womans University, which was located in Sinchon, Seoul. I have many wonderful things to say about this uni, but to name a few:
- The campus is gorgeous
- I attended during autumn and so I got to see the leaves change, as well as see the campus when it was snowy. The architecture on campus is beautiful but the main feature that everyone knows is ECC. It’s a building basically built into the ground that is in the middle of the university and it was surreal walking through there everyday to get to class.
- The students are all super lovely
- As an exchange student at Ewha you have the option to sign up to the Peacebuddy Program (do it!!!) and you are grouped with 6-8 exchange students and have a buddy who is a domestic student. I met my Peacebuddy group the first week I was there and met some of my closest friends from that one meeting. I also signed up to a club where I got partnered up with a Korean domestic student. The intent is for language exchange but my buddy and I became really good friends so we would just hang out and go do activities, visit cafes and explore Seoul together. A favourite memory of mine is when we brought some of our friends together and went to a board game cafe (be careful everyone is very competitive when it comes to Halligalli)
- The classes are really interesting
- I study computer science at QUT but I used my electives whilst in Korea so I focussed on things relating to Korean culture in order to fully immerse. I only enrolled in three units over the semester as one of them was a Korean intensive class that counted as two units. The Korean intensive was probably my favourite class and was where I met a lot of my friends; we bonded over the difficulty of learning a new language and the 8am start, Monday to Thursday. The entire class was only in Korean, which was very confusing to understand at first but by the end of the semester I could understand way more than I expected to. Another class I did was East Asian History. This was actually super interesting as I am half Chinese, and so it was cool to learn more about China, as well as the history of Korea and Japan. My final class was a Korean Ceramics class. This class was honestly the hardest class I did as I am not creative whatsoever, but my teacher was so funny and encouraging that overall I actually really enjoyed it. Attendance for classes was mandatory so it did feel a little bit like high school sometimes but it was nice because you got to know everyone in your classes.
While in Korea I was also able to visit a ton of different places and they were all so beautiful. I definitely recommend travelling outside of Seoul and making the most of the fall season. Overall, my exchange was an unforgettable experience that I will always cherish. If you plan on going to Korea, learning the alphabet before you go will be super helpful but everyone is really friendly and helpful. The best piece of advice I can give to really get the most out of the experience is to get involved and say yes to things even if they’re a little outside of your comfort zone. Everyone is in the same boat so doing new activities with people you don’t know too well will give you something to bond over and that could become a lasting friendship. Go drink some soju, take a ton of photobooth pics and have fun !!!
Find out how you can apply for exchange via the QUT Student Exchange website.
