Before anyone (specifically my parents) say anything about the title, no, I’m not transferring from Pitt to a university in South Korea. I am keeping an open mind to the possibility of doing a semester abroad though, because the university we visited today seemed very nice.

POSTECH

Today we visited POSTECH, or Pohang Univeristy of Science and Technology. For me personally, POSTECH made a good first impression. During the first presentation, we met 3 people (one professor, one undergrad student, and one grad student) in the industrial engineering department. As the only industrial engineering student on the Korea trip this year, I was very excited to finally see some representation of my major. The undergrad student, Cherry (yes, I do believe she said her name was in fact spelled like the fruit), is going to be a rising junior this fall, and she is also doing a semester abroad at Pitt this fall! I was really hoping to talk to her during lunch, but some of the other people in our group had her sit with them. I got to talk with her a little bit afterwards, but not for very long before she had to leave, which was disappointing.

For me, the most interesting part of our POSTECH visit today was when the industrial engineering reps were presenting. Other than that, we focused a lot on computer science/computer engineering and electrical engineering. Unfortunately, when we were touring the labs, I could barely hear anything that was said. The people talking were talking very quietly, and between noises from machines and murmuring from the crowd, there was too much background noise for me to distinguish what the presenters were saying (I have a lot of trouble distinguishing sounds when there is almost any level of background noise, I have no clue why, but it is very frustrating). The little that I could hear kind of went right over my head, partially because I didn’t have the prior knowledge to understand everything they were talking about, and some of it was probably because I didn’t hear everything they said. However, seeing the equipment was really neat. I also know that the ECE (electrical and computer engineering) students were having a blast finally getting to see some really cool technology.

During lunch, we ate at the eSports Colosseum, which is one of the dining options at POSTECH. We got to meet with a bunch of computer science/computer engineering students and talk with them about what POSTECH is like. I found it interesting how their semester schedule is different from ours. The fall semester is pretty similar: starts at the beginning of September(only a little later than Pitt), and end in December. The spring semester is very different from Pitt: start at the end of February, and end in June.

Evening Adventures

After what seemed like a very long day at POSTECH (probably due to the amount of walking and the heat), we finally were free to do whatever. My group desperately needed to start working on our final presentation, which is due Thursday – eek! Since some of us were very hungry, we went to the market near the hotel and got some rice cakes which were really good. Then we headed back, we tried to work at one of the tables in the lobby/dining area, but the WiFi was being super slow for all of us. We eventually went up to Jacqueline’s room since each room has its own WiFi, so we figured it would work better. We started to make an outline, but the instructions in the syllabus contradicted the instructions from a previous class. By the time Dr. Yun finally answered our text where we asked for clarification, we were all getting ready to head out for dinner.

We ended up going with a large group to Yeongildae beach to find a restaurant. For some reason I was the designated navigator. I’m not sure if that’s just because I was one of the first people to pull up a map, or if it was because Dr. Yun had made an announcement in the morning to everyone that I know Pohang better than him (he knew I went to a beach on Sunday night, so he interpreted that as I know how to navigate the town). Some people broke off, but there were still ten of us that went to a restaurant together. It turned out to technically be a bar, but the food was still good. I got dumplings and fried rice, but I wish I had just gotten one or the other. They were both listed under side dishes, so I figured they’d be small, but the fried rice was a rather big portion (at least for being called a side dish) that I couldn’t finish. It was delicious though.

Anyway, I think it’s time I go to bed now that I’m caught up on these blog posts.