Midterms were particularly hard this year for me. That’s not to say they weren’t par for the course at a national university. They mostly included in-class essays and short answers based on the readings, presentations, etc.
What’s changed is that none of this is in English anymore.
67 days.
67 days I’ve been in my new home of Costa Rica.
67 days until I go back home the U-S-of-A.
I have a lot of mixed feelings about that revelation, some of them clichés but all genuine.
Read the rest of the post here.
I’d also like to name this the theme song for last week, as it was also the High Holy Day week, the most sacred week of the year for Jews.
Ladies and gentlemen, Bon Jovi.
“We’re halfway there, livin’ on a prayer.”
Check out my latest photos of my trip to Costa Rica.
This first batch is from a trip to Cartago for el Día de la Virgen de los Ángeles, the annual pilgrammage to the church of Costa Rica’s patron saint.
The second is from a trip to a zoo near my home in Heredia, called INBioparque. Lots of beautiful butterflies, flowers, animals, insects, trees and more.
New campus. New students. New professors. New subjects. New regulations. New languages.
All of the change associated with studying at a new school is enough to drive even the most competent student mad.
Here are a couple of tips I picked up from my experience of “syllabus week” at a foreign university.
Read the tips here, and add your own!
It seems completely counter-intuitive to send study abroad students to a completely different place for their first week of orientation, only to shuttle them off to a completely new town with completely new family.
It’s paramount to doubling the culture shock, antithetical to IFSA’s promise of “More culture. Less shock.”
But, by George, it works. Transition to university has been easier than I could have imagined, no small thanks to my time in Liberia.
Zach C. Cohen 