Today a very new experience waited for us. I had never visited a university in a different country, so I was interested to see what life was like here, any similarities and differences to Pitt. I had known beforehand that Yonsei was one of the top schools in the country, kind of like a Harvard in Korea. Dr. Yun had been talking about how he had some connections to people in the university, so we were excited to see the people he was talking about. We had already seen one of the professors he worked with at Pitt at a dinner a few days ago.
Upon arrival we had some free time to ourselves, so me and some friends decided to explore the surrounding town. It definitely felt like a college town, with what we could only assume to be the same sort of food places we could find in Pitt all over the place except the Korean versions of them. We finally found what seemed to be ice cream at some place along one of the main roads off campus, which because of how hot the day was ended up more like a milkshake. It was also extremely cheap too compared to similar things that could be found in the states.
When we got back to the university to start our tour, first thing was a basic walking tour. The campus definitely felt much more like a private campus. All of the university buildings in the same place bunched together, kind of like a town but of only school buildings. Nonetheless, everything was very cool, as I can assume most students see the place on their first glance only for it to grow somewhat old later on as it becomes the place where they have to study all the time. There were some things that we saw however and had to say “why don’t we have this at Pitt?” Definitely some jealousy from seeing the outdoor stage they had where they told us musicians come and perform, as well as just how nice the campus was in general.
After the walking tour, we had lunch in the dining hall. It was slightly different from what we were used to as you have to get a ticket to one of the restaurants in the dining hall then wait in line to get whatever food they serve. The food was definitely much better than what we can find at Pitt. I ate some sort of spicy dumpling soup. After lunch we had some free time which we mostly spent in the gift shop. To be honest it was nothing special, but I found a pretty cool soccer jersey which I had to get.
Afterwards, we had an engineering tour. Yonsei has a lot more engineering buildings than we do, which we soon experienced after having to walk a ton just for us to think there’s no way we’re in the same building. We learned a lot from the overview of the engineering program, one thing that I thought was really cool was how there was an engineering discipline that was made by Samsung in the university and that students can choose that path and almost have a guaranteed spot to go work at Samsung afterwards.
Afterwards we got to tour Dr. Cheong’s labs as well as a tour of cellArtgen’s facilities on campus. There was a lot of confusing stuff going on, but one pretty cool thing that I had never seen before was live rats being tested on in the labs. They all seemed pretty happy and in good shape which was good to see.