(Liberal Arts, 1)
It is amazing how time flies. A year ago, I was a scared little girl just graduated from high school, and now I am almost through my freshman year. When I got the acceptance letter from Ewha, I was really happy for what my four years of hard work through high school had rewarded me with, and was ready to start a new chapter of my life at college.
The last nine months in Ewha were a blessing. In March, everything seemed difficult; I did not know what to do or who to ask for help to a point that I was completely lost. Then I started to become friends with other students in the Liberal Arts department and girls living in the dormitory and began to get used to my self-made schedule, the locations of different departments and the shortcuts to save up transfer time between classes. Moreover, I learned how to do everything by myself starting from cleaning my bedroom, doing the laundry, to even eating alone. April taught me a harsh but good lesson: Hastily crammed study is of no use for university exams. May was full of activities. I was busy doing team projects, visiting relatives living in the countryside, meeting new people from other universities, and assisting with different activities provided by United Nations Student Association (UNSA), the club I belong to. Then, I was so exhausted from everything and desperate for the first semester to finish. Even though there were only three weeks of classes in June, it seemed like forever.
After finals, I was free. I was so excited to enjoy my first summer vacation in Korea. One thing that I could not get rid of during the vacation was UNSA. In order to get ready for the 23rd Ewha Model United Nations (MUN) Conference, I stayed in the campus dormitory and met up with other students once a week during the entire summer vacation.
Before making the decision to participate in UNSA, I did not know it would be so tiring. The meetings were held only once a week, but everything I had to do in order to prepare for the materials to be discussed took me such a long time that I felt as though I were taking classes and doing homework every single day.
After two months of hard work, September came. It was again full of spirit; I could not wait to see my friends and start a new semester. This time I was more used to campus life, I was no longer lost and had almost everything planned beforehand, be it class materials or team projects. However, mid-terms in October were not as easy as I had expected. It may sound like an excuse, but the exams came and went so fast that I did not have enough time to prepare and perform well enough.
Now, it is December and it has been two weeks since the 23rd Ewha MUN Conference took place, and it was so successful that all the stress that I have received during the preparation time just vanished away. I cannot believe that it is only one month before 2012 comes to an end.
Whenever my friends attending co-educational universities talk about their college lives, I admit that I once regretted coming to a women’s university; there seemed to be less opportunities for me to meet people from different backgrounds compared to my friends. However, now I can definitely say that the experiences, friends, and knowledge I have gained through the last nine months at Ewha have been essential to me and will be for my future for sure.