[LIFE OF A 대학생] #2: Enrolling and looking for an apartment

English

[September 2014] Hello guys! Haven't posted in a long time because I was so busy with university and other things. Short update again: I have been accepted to three unversities - Tübingen, Bonn and Berlin.

 

After a very very long time of jumping back and forth between unis and contemplating which one is the best, I finally made a decision and sent all my papers to Berlin. It's been almost two weeks now and today I checked the status online and it said the following: "You have been enrolled. Your student ID, showing your student ID number, will be sent to you by mail."
Yay! I officially am a university student, woohoo!

 

The next steps will be: waiting for a letter from uni with my student ID which I have to show my bank so that I won't have to pay for my savings account; finally finishing all the papers I need to fill in and send to Berlin in order to get financial support; finally FINALLY find an apartment in Berlin!

 



Weeks later...

Flashing forward to October 2014 because I haven't really had the time to finish writing this post. I got all my papers from university with my student ID. The last weeks have been torture, I tell you. Looking for an apartment has probably been the hardest thing I have ever done in life. But really fortunately, my mum got in contact with a really nice guy who is a landlord and had an offer for a one room apartment which wasn't too expensive. So I moved pretty spontaneously to Berlin and have been living here for a little bit over a week.
Uni has also already started on Wednesday this week and it is really really tough already. Speaking in more detail about my major: Korean studies is really no joke. Lectures haven't started yet but I already am obliged to attend a course that's going to teach us all the basics. I have to say that everyone expects a lot of us. The Korean professor expected everyone with no knowledge of the Korean language to actually teach themselves the alphabet and how to write it in one day. So you can only imagine how glad and relieved I was that I taught myself 한글 like three years ago, otherwise I would probably be really frustrated right now. The first two days you learn about pronounciation and next week we'll get to know more about the country and its history.
You have to put your schedule together on your own. All of this happens online on a particular website of my university. It's kind of difficult to understand all of this in the beginning, like which courses you have to take when and how to book the lectures online and so on. They also tell you to go slowly in your first semester and to not book too many courses. So, if I have actually gotten this right, then my schedule isn't actually too busy. I have a Korean language course from Tuesday to Friday for two hours plus lectures on Friday about Korean history, economy and politics for two hours as well. That seems really chilled, right? But be aware of having to study loads for your Korean language course. It really takes a lot of self studying at home to become good. Because as far as I have already experienced during the two days of my pre-course, you will have to teach yourself a lot.

This post is a bit rushed because I wanted to squeez in everything that has happened in the past two to three weeks. But I hope it already gave you a first impression about what my life is like right now. I will also post a few cons of living on your own soon, as well more details about my major and about attending university. So far everything has been pretty unfamiliar and new to me so I can't really say that much. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment or message me on twitter! :>

(German version of this entry after the cut - click on 'Read more')

Deutsch

The German translation will be up in a few days.