By jlee4946
Finals season at Seoul National University has arrived and this is made clear by the lack of seats in the library. Something interesting at SNU is that at the library, there's a machine that you log into with your student ID and reserve a seat on the 6th, 7th, or 8th floor for a certain amount of time.
One thing I've really come to like is that the library is incredibly spacious and has absolutely enormous tables that are big enough that you can spread your stuff out in your designated area even though you're sharing the table with up to 5 other people. There are different types of rooms, such as the reading room where you're not allowed to use your laptop to type (i.e. writing essays, doing research) since even the sound of typing on the keyboard is distracting, the laptop zone equipped with outlets conveniently located at every seat, the multimedia plaza (my favorite place) where there are INDIVIDUAL TVs (or 2-seater seats or even 4-seaters) you can reserve for up to 2.5 hours and an expansive collection of DVDs to rent movies from, the computer lab with computers at every seat, and there is even one of those typical red London phone booths in case you need to take a phone call on every floor.
I've been spending quite some time there because it is such a great study environment. I think people study at cafes a lot here but for some reason I always get distracted and since they play music it's not as easy to focus there as the dead silent library at SNU.
However, it still hasn't really hit me that this next week is my last week as a SNU student. It seems like yesterday that I got off the Seoul National University Entrance subway station that's actually NOT the entrance of SNU and walked to school not knowing that the school is about a 30 minute uphill walk from the subway. There are still so many things I want to do while I'm still here because I've always been thinking that I have more time. It's a quite interesting feeling knowing that the next time I come back to Korea I'll have my own Korean friends to meet up with instead of only knowing my relatives here.
I've met so many friends here that have gone out of their ways to show me around or help me find my way around campus and Seoul and to just show me what it is like to be living in Korea. I never thought my semester here would end, yet here I am, writing this blog post while procrastinating on studying for what will be my last exam here. Even though I've been abroad before, this experience was so unique in a way that I'll never be able to explicitly express. I keep thinking about the next time I'll be back and visiting the apartment I'm staying at now, visiting campus again, and seeing the friends I've made here again. Although studying abroad had its own difficulties, it's an opportunity I will never regret taking.
For me, I feel like this semester came to such an abrupt stop since, like I said before, I always thought I had so much time here. It's kind of bittersweet thinking that I'll get to see my friends back at GW in less than five weeks, but I'll also be leaving where I've been calling home for the past three months.
But for now, I'm hanging on to the fact that currently I'm still a SNU student and have 4 finals left. See you soon, GW!