But now that I've completed my second semester - just finished my final exam in Korea yesterday, I got plenty of time since it's Summer break! However, it means I less than 2 months left in Korea...
Just thinking about it pains me.
My friend persevered with the class and ended up regretting it since she eventually found the class dull.
Beginner's Korean 2
A bit more difficult that level 1, especially for those who didn't take the Winter classes. But no worries, even if you didn't take the Winter classes you learn all the necessary grammar that you missed out in these classes.I purchased my textbook and workbook second hand once again, the workbook from someone on Facebook who posted up a notice that he was selling one, and the textbook from a friend. The one who sold the workbook to me said that level 2 was too hard for him, the difference between the levels were too great, so he eventually dropped the class after a week or two in the previous semester. That got me worrying.
Although he was right, level 2 is a tad harder, it only felt difficult in the first few weeks. Afterwards it felt like I was back in level 1.
In level 2 you learn 'banmal' - informal talk, and more suvival-related dialogue so you don't sound like a dumb foreigner using broken elementary school Korean.
Like level 1, a quiz, midterm exam, speech, and final mainly determines your grade. Miss a certain number of clases and you fail.
Once again the prof was enthusiastic and very engaging with the students. Responding to some of our witty comments/remarks light-heartedly, sharing some of her stories, tried engaging us in conversation multiple times, and etc.
Didn't feel like a lesson at all at some points. Very fun class.
Media Aesthetics and Production Theory
Perhaps my most favourite class of the semester..? I was a bit wary at first with this class since I'm a New Media major and taking a film class is kind of irrelevant.At one point I was ready to drop it and switch to the Advertising Creativity class since I was thoroughly self-convinced that, despite its heavy group work focus, Advertising Creativity would give me one last chance to do something creative in my remaining university years since I wasn't planning to take the infamous Information Design class back in Leeds next year.
To be honest, I was also partially driven to join after hearing Alexander (ex-member of U-Kiss) was in that class! But alas, no. I emailed the prof (the same one who taught Consumer Behaviour and Strategic Communication last semester) to see if there was still space for me, just in case since the system said there was space, but she replied back saying no. She preferred a smaller class for a group work type class anyway since it would be more manageable for her. Perhaps it was for the best. I ended up still being able to do some creative stuff for my Advertising Management class regardless. And besides, I wouldn't even know how to interact with Alexander if I ever were to be sat/put into a group with him. To cut it short, I wrote something embarrassing in a message to the English speaking U-Kiss members back when I was around 16 or 17. I started off by addressing them as 'cutie Kevin, King Alexander, and sexy Eli' (excuse me while I go bury myself). They read it out loud on Pops in Seoul (English radio show hosted by Arirang), the episodes were uploaded onto Arirang's Youtube, that's how I knew. Despite being still somewhat happy that that message got picked, I still cringe at my opening lines of the message.
Anyway, back to Media Aesthetics and Production Theory. I loved it. Maybe because I had yet to take an indepth class on film studies and such. I learnt some bits and bobs before university back in A-levels and GCSEs, but not as theoretical and indepth.
The first half of the semester was based on Media Aesthetics, sound, motion, editting and so forth. The technical side of things. How certain forms and induce certain audience response behaviour. Which theorist said what.
The second half of the semester we focused more on Narrative Strategies. Types of characters: Dickensian, Chekhovian, Shakespearean, tragic and comic. Types of narratives: a hero's journey, and Frued's psychoanalysis on the oedepial and electra complex. We were told to watch the movies listed on the syllabus that was handed out on paper at the beginning of the semester, and given assignments after for some movies in relation to what we learned in class. Such as matching the stages of 'A Hero's Journey' to 'Little Miss Sunshine'. Despite not getting feedback on our assignments - it would probably reflect in our end results, the prof said he would mark leniently provided we gave reasonable awnsers.
Midterms and finals were dead easy. Provided that you skimmed through the powerpoint slides a few times, or just once but really indepth, you're pretty much ready. The questions were based on the powerpoint slides to be honest. Just remember the necessary terms here and there, if you don't remember off by heart, no worries. Since it's multiple choice it's pretty much memory recall.
It was recommended to read the neceassary chapters from this big thick and expensive book, but I don't think it's necessary since the exam questions are basically stuff taken from the powerpoint slides.
So in sum, the class is really laid-back. Super easy multiple-choice midterm and final, a couple of easy-to-do assignments, watch some interesting movies, and most importantly no group projects! Minutes before our final started, the prof gave his final speech. Expressing that he noticed that some people came to class to just sleep on the comfy cinema chairs and mark attendence, and that some marked attendence for their absent friends.
The format of the lectures really is to turn up, listen and maybe take notes. I guess one downside is that you don't really get a chance to mingle and befriend classmates.
If you want an easy-pass class that also has interesting material, pick this class!
Advertising Management
Advertising Management was an interesting class. I learnt some basics on how the advertising industry in Korea worked, as well as globally. Despite the intriguing content/material used in the classes, it felt rushed since there was so much to cover. Because of this I started to take less and less notes, and focusing more on listening in class - well try to. The delivery of the class materials half the time was engaging, the other half not so much. I particularly liked it when Korean advertisements were shown and then explained to us.The prof, Una Kwon, worked in the Korean advertising industry before as well as in the USA. So she had a lot of experience to share with us. Examples of her previous commissions were shown, and she even revealed photos of the average advertising industry worker's life: lots of meetings, napping in the office, consuming the product itself to know it better, and etc.
She had also worked with Korean celebrities before as well. Apparently, Rain is a difficult person to work with, hence why he's not featured in adverts as much since the advertising industry people dislike him. Whereas Lee Seunggi is always a pleasure to work with. I guess my mum was right in that Rain is a douche.
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| My hand-drawn designs for our 'Young Mac' burger campaign's Kakao Talk emoticons. |
So, despite the rocky start, I eventually grew to like the group like I did with my Consumer Behavious class in the previous semester. The Korean members were fun to work with. Though, again, not very confident about their English. We had 2 Korean girls and 2 Korean guys - us foreigners were all girls. One of the Korean girls was very bright and upbeat, and along with the other girl, they both were very active in helping to translate their ideas to us from Korean. One of the 2 guys spoke some amount of English, especially when he was helping me come up with a TV ad story. I noticed that the other Korean guy didn't speak much English with us unfortunately, but was very expressive when he spoke in Korean.
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| TV Ad 2: Lotteria Crab Burger Parody (page 1) - yes I drew it by hand, traced certain panels from original ad. |
Surprisingly, the team members nominated me as the best speaker of the bunch, and said that I should present. Usually, I'm a terrible and unconfident speaker. But I guess my experiences in Korea, and being tired of being put into groups with group members that have relatively lower confidence, helped me boost my confidence in presenting. So I agreed, although a bit unwillingly. If we weren't marked so heavily based on presentation I would have pushed the other foreign girls to do it.
Regardless, our presentation date was on Saturday 14th June from 10am-1pm. We just finished our powerpoint slides the day before. Rehearsed it a few times. Me and my friend who was also presenting were very confident and involved with our team's ideas, so it only made presenting easier. When it came to the day of the presentation, we were the second group to do it. Despite stuttering and making a few mistakes here and there, the prof said we were very strong in our presentation skills, loud and clear voices, sounded very enthusiastic, and had a very good idea for the advertising campaign (it resonated with other classmates during Q&A time). Personally, I am very pleased with this turnout. It's a personal achievement to me to be praised for my presentation skills when I'm usually a very unconfident person.
Overall, I feel that I developed (as a person) a lot more through this class, as well as gained valuable insight in the Korean advertising industry and how Koreans respond to certaing advertising concepts.
I guess I could say this was another favourite class of mine.
Internet Communication
I think my expectations for this class was a bit too high, just like Media and Social Change (previous semester) only that it wasn't as bad. I liked this class more than Media and Social Change (M&SC).The material in this class was definitely a lot more engaging that M&SC. A couple of the lectures really peaked my interest, some mildly, others not so much. I guess what I was expecting was for the lectures to always peak my interest. Now that I skim past through the topics, most of them should have been interesting, a majority of the content was intriguing for sure, but I guess the delivery of the content also affected it.
The prof was a bit iffy like my M&SC's one. Both tried to make jokes, but failed to make the foreign students laugh. Well, the M&SC one didn't quite make the Koreans laugh either, but a handful in this class did regardless. Maybe it's due to cultural differences.
I may have or have not mentioned this before, but I noticed Koreans tend to respond orally to things/jokes a lot more easily that foreigners. Like they're easily amused. If there's something that may not be that funny to us foreigners, at most we might give a small laugh, not really loud. But Koreans would, almost in unison, laugh loudly. Things that somewhat amazes us foreigners, we may give a small sound of acknowledgement or even a comment, but Koreans would go "WHAAA" or "WHOAAA". Koreans are the perfect people to have as TV show audience members. This sort of thing happened in all of my classes (with the exception of Beginner's Korean because foreigner only class).
But back on topic, the delivery of the material, at times, wasn't so engaging. Though I am sure the prof himself is very enthusiastic about the material like my M&SC one.
One thing that put me off slightly from this class were the students.
Let's start off with our one pager assignments. Sorry but this paragraph is going to be a rant segment.
Taken from the course syllabus:
"The goal of this exercise is to encourage creative thinking about technology and technology research. Each student is required to submit a one-page musing (in the form of an art piece, such as a story, poem, satire, self-made short video clip, etc.) about one topic. There are different topics (See the course schedule at the end of the syllabus for the list of the topics). Any themes will be welcomed as long as they are relevant to the topic that you sign up for. All students are not required to respond to all topics. Just one submission (and its presentation in class) over the entire semester will do. Each week, about 5-6 students will present their one-pagers in class and explain their motivations and ideas behind their one-pagers. Your presentation should be no more than five minutes...[omitted content]...Do not wait for the final minute to do this assignment: Based on my experience, I can tell you that most submissions created in the last minute tend to be ill-made and lack of creativity. Grading will be based on the degree of creativity, cleverness and imagination in each of the submission. Once again, please note that this is not an assignment to demonstrate your research and summary skills but one to show your creativity."
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| A panel from my one pager comic. |
Reality: creative pieces were often taken from the internet, put onto powerpoint, overly explained, and only a few students hand-made/created stuff to varying levels.
Most of the one pagers were so damn disappointing that I left the class pissed multiple times since they were always presented at the end of class.
Another reason why I am pissed. Becuase I was the first one to present during the entire semester. Believing that I might have competition ahead - since Koreans seem to be very good with UGC and making super nice and pretty powerpoint presentation slides, I hand drawn a comic to reflect my assigned topic of 'The Internet - Can't Live With Them or Can't Live Without Them'. Didn't include external text at all, just panels put onto a powerpoint - essentially just a slideshow of images, with the quotes and captions. Totally forgot that the presentation should be 5 minutes long (comic was only 21 panels long with minimal text), so I improvised on the spot on the day by briefly explaining each panel verbally. In short, I presented a story detailing my experience with the internet with images that I drew by hand.
What I saw in class was mostly content/videos ripped off from Youtube or some Korean video hosting site, presented to class, and then explained why it was relevant to their assigned topic. Where is the creative side to that?!
I will give lee-way to those who did use Googled images and poorly photoshopped/editted the images, since drawing and photo editting it not everyone's forte. People who skillfully editted other people's video is ok too. This one guy who focused more on verbally expressing his idea to build a womb stimuliser, and at somepoint mentioned something about sexy toys and masturbation..?! But people who just took other people's content, didn't edit it (no creative input) to make it somewhat their own, and just said "oh I found this on this internet and thought it related to the topic so I'll just present it here" is just NO NO NO.
I would say around 10 people incorporated editing and creativeness into their one-pagers in our class. Definitely half of the people in the class didn't even bother.
Another thing I want to point out are those few girl classmates who either turned up to class to just be on their phones/laptops doing other stuff all the time, or leave right after the prof takes attendence. What's the point even.
There's this one Chinese girl who I have the most dislike towards in particular. Maybe because she looks like the Asian equivalent of the stereotypical dumb blonde who got multiple plastic surgery done on her face, wear offensively huge false lashes, with clashing childish cheap outfits at times, and always turns up to class just to be on her phone and pay no attention to the lecture at all. Thank God I didn't end up in a group with her.
Speaking of group projects, yes there was one for this class which accounted for 30% of our grades. Deadline got extended to next Monday, and our group isn't quite finished with it yet. We presented out project so far, just that we need to finish the paper.
I don't feel quite so motivated with this group, though luckily it wasn't as stressful as my M&SC group. Fortunately, work gets done. Everyone responds to each other and doesn't slack, well it is a group of 4 people including me.
The disappointing side about this group is that I feel a bit more left out since the other members are Korean and their English aren't too strong. The one with the strongest English skills would have to be the one other girl, but otherwise, the guys hardly speak English and leave it all to her to translate. In the group, I am in charge of literature review and the bibliography, so I'm hardly involved in the research side of things. To be honest, even now I'm not 100% sure on what my team members done and what they found out. Despite having the powerpoint there to help me understand a bit better, as well as a tentative draft of our paper available to read, I don't feel quite motivated to read them. I attempted to read some parts of the paper earlier on, but once again due to Konglish, I was unable to understand our research clearly.
Midterms and finals were a tad difficult due to the overload of content. Some questions were based on our weekly assignned chapter readings, which I gave up after reading them the first few weeks. Hence why I lost out almost 20 marks in my midterm.
Finals, unfortunately, was cummalative. But in reality, most of the questions were based on the second half of the semester in which the content was slightly smaller, and far easier to grasp and remember. I would the last third of the exam was based on the first half of the semester. I didn't revise very hard for the final, but I think I did well regardless.
Overall, the classes this semester were slightly more enjoyable than the previous one. I was hardly stressed, only having to deal with 2 group projects, an easy class with easy exams, and an enjoyable Korean class.
Gained confidence with my presentation skills, and more insight in Korean media.
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