Traveling While In University: South Korea

I went to community college online while traveling in 2014. I wanted to keep moving towards my goal of obtaining a bachelors degree, without putting my life on hold to do so. The outcome was to take an art class online while I traveled Asia.

When I landed I Seoul, South Korea I had a lot to see and do. But I also had school. There were weekly reading and discussion posts as well as weekly assignments. The weekly work could all be done in a handful of hours. What was great was that all assignments were due Friday at Midnight PST. I’d wake up Saturday morning, open the little laptop and do my assignments. No fear of missing an assignment when you’re 16 hours ahead of California. Taking online classes in Asia meant even when my work seemed to be over due, it never was.

My fall art class had weekly discussion posts, essays, and exams. The semester started the last week of August.

I stepped off the plane on September 4th unaware of what lay ahead. But I knew I had school work. When I first arrived I was still new to getting connected to Wi-Fi. As a result, I’d end up doing school work odd places. Luckily South Korea has the best internet in the world, at least in 2014 it felt like it did. I must admit, I had a few close calls when it came to getting work turned in.

One night I had a discussion post to write and managed to get connected while sitting outside the Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul. After typing my whole post into the text entry box I hit submit and to my surprise the webpage was no longer connected. I had been disconnected and my assignment was gone.

I began to feel disheartened. I had spent a while typing this out and it was dark and my battery was nearly dead.

In desperation I hit the back button and to my surprise the webpage reloaded and my work was back in the text entry box. I was saved by technology. I sighed with relief, submitted my post, quickly replied to other students posts and called it a night.

Other times you’d be having fun and forget about your Art essay.

Early on in my bike trip I became sick. I recovered at a jimjibang and completed my school work there on the top floor. The top floor was part roof, part conservatory. It was truly something spectacular for the price. I would spend most of the day up there, recovering from whatever sickness I had. I stayed there for almost two weeks to recover. In that conservatory I took a midterm and caught up on reading I’d been delaying.

I wasn’t sick for ever and soon the bike trip took my focus again. Still, I completed my work the best I could.

I often was out with people I’d meet in South Korea. Even with these connections, I still had time to focus on school. When I did sit down to work on my school work, I’d procrastinate for a while. This procrastination didn’t change when I went to Japan, but my time alone markedly decreased. Still, I found there is always enough time to get the work done.

Overall, I’d rate South Korea to be extremely suitable for being able to accommodate people who are taking classes online.