First Week of Lessons at Korea University!

The beautiful 'KU Cinema Trap' where I had my Broadcast
and Film Criticism class.

The first week at Korea University was basically a module/course introduction week.
The first lesson of each course are introductory lessons where the lecturer will go through the course syllabus with everyone and answer questions. The second lesson, which is the first real lesson, will let students sample on how the course lessons will work.

This week is also considered to be the add/drop period where classes will be packed with more students than it could actually hold. Students who did not get registered successfully into the course will attend in hopes to convince the lecturer to let them join for the semester. Also, it is important for these unregistered students to attend in case a registered student drops out, so that they know what the course is like without having to ask the lecturer the week after - for preparation. Furthermore, on special occasions, the lecturer may accept all the unregistered students who attended the first and second class during this week.
So I highly recommended everyone who didn't get registered sucessfully to attend these lessons if they really want to do the course.

Please note that this is the only week where students can drop courses. The deadline for us to drop courses this semester was 7th September 12pm. Students may add courses during the first week and later again in the month.

Monday 2nd September

Broadcasting and Film Criticism

The lecturer just went through the syllabus with us and elaborated on certain things. During this lesson we could ask questions about the course and so forth.
He also made us take note that the class could overrun onto the next period slot since there were certain classes where we would have to watch movies that lasts for about 2 hours long - each class period at KU lasts for 1 hour 15 minutes. Having already registered for 5 classes (required amount was 4 per semester at least), it meant that I would probably have to drop this course since I have Beginner's Korean class right after this period slot. And I really wanted to learn Korean.

When I left the class I was fairly put off from it despite the amazing course content. Unfortunately it seemed like a majority of the domestic students in the class weren't so eager to use English, because when they asked questions they asked it in Korean. And what made it worse was that the lecturer answered back in Korean so we exchange students were clueless.
This could be problematic for future classes since the answers answered in Korean could be relevant to all students. We foreign students could be left out and blindly work our way through this course purely because we just don't understand Korean. Of course the lecturer sometimes translated his answer back in English for us foreign students when a significant question was asked, but it would be a lot better if he just used Englilsh to answer because we might be interested to know. Besides, what he deems as less important to answer in English may actually be of importance for us foreign students.

Beginner's Korean 1

This class only lasted for about 15 minutes long, so it wasn't really a real lesson.

After a few minutes sitting down in the designated room that was on my timetable, a Korean lady came in and told us to move to another classroom. In the other classroom there were more students already there from the other Beginner's Korean classes.
We were told to purchase a certain textbook and workbook, as well as important information about the course such as attendance, workload, and etc. People in the class who think had learnt beginner's Korean already were asked to stay to take a test to see if they are suitable for a more advanced class. People who knew minimal or none at all were asked to leave and just sign ourselves on the sheet outside along with our country. They wanted to know where we came from so that they could put us in super diverse classes.

Oh and for the rest of the week there were no Korean classes. The first real class was to start the week after.

Tuesday 3rd September

New Media

The lecturer for this course is a slave driver.
Like the other classes, this too was an introduction class: syllabus details, quetions and answers, etc. He also talked about himself, and how much the workload would be for us, that he was like a King and we were like his slaves. I'm not joking. I was so intimidated when I heard that.
There was also a student assistant for this class who offered to help us with our work since he took one of the lecturer's previous classes before. To take up on this 'tutoring' opportunity we had to sign up on a sheet at the end of class. I didn't, thinking that I should be fine.

When we reached the end of the class, to our horror, the lecturer had given us an assignment to complete by Thursday.
This was when I was partially starting to consider on dropping this class and keeping my B&FC class - just that I had to leave 30 minutes before the end of the movie hoping that it was ok.

Media and Social Change

Same thing here. Introduction, syllabus run through, questions and answers.
Unfortunately when he ran through the syllabus I realised that this course could be potentially more boring than I expected. I was really hoping for this course to be my favourite, but after this lesson I wasn't so sure.

Consumer Behaviour and Communication Strategies

Again, nothing much happened in this class. Syllabus run through, Q&A. We were also told that our project for the course will be based on marketing one of Korea's top beer companies: HITE.

Wednesday 4th September

Broadcasting and Film Criticism

This was a real lesson. I took so many notes despite having already decided to drop the course. Despite the New Media course's intimidating lecturer and heavy workload, I thought it would be good to take a challenge in Korea.

The lesson was very fast paced, with a lot of content. Luckily everything was in English this time round. We were taught the basics of camera work and typical film related terms that I had already learnt back in A levels. There were some extra stuff such as lighting that I hadn't leant before. It was really interesting stuff.

However, before the lesson began I was sat next to another exchange student who told me that we foreign students had to write 3 discussion essays to make up for the fact that we would most likely not be able to take part in class discussions, which were most likely to be done in Korean. Again, this exclusion made me feel slightly better about dropping the course.

Thursday 5th September

New Media

Despite having done the assignment the day before, I had no idea where to print it. So I thought saving a copy on my Kindle to show it to the lecturer would be fine, giving proof that I actually done the work (it really sucks that we can't upload it online). But when I told him that he made this incredibly displeased face and told me to email him my assignment right after the lesson, which I couldn't because I had another lesson right after. So I agreed to do that and went back to my seat.
Talk about a rocky start.

Later on in the lesson a girl (J) walked in and sat a few seats away from me. She asked me about the assignment and workload for the course because she wasn't there for the first lesson on Monday. She too was surprised to hear that we got set an assignment in the very first lesson, plus she's a domestic student.

Media and Social Change

Couldn't remember much about this lesson. But now that I'm on the 6th week of lessons as I'm writing this I guess it was because the lecturer's voice was fairly monotonous, which made everything sound boring.

J also took this lesson too ^^

Consumer Behaviour and Communication Strategies

We didn't have a real proper lesson as our 'second' lesson. Instead we watched an interesting documentary called 'The Persuaders' talking about advertising and marketing. In the end we had to stop half way through to answer sheet questions and discuss about what we learnt from the documentary.
This lesson was regarded as a warm up lesson to get us thinking about the advertising world.

Plus, this was also the lesson where the lecturer announced that she would accept all those unregistered students who also came on Tuesday (the first lesson). Meaning the class that was meant to contain perhaps around 30-40 students now had almost 80. People who only attended today's lesson (the second) instead of the Monday one were asked to leave since they would not be enrolled at all.