I don’t think I’ve actually talked about the courses that I’m taking during the Summer Session in the first post, so I’ll do it here.
Since this is a summer holiday for me, I didn’t want to overexert myself and feel burnt out at the start of the school year. So I was pretty careful not to choose any courses that would demand more than what I could handle.
The courses that I ended up choosing were: Beginner’s French, Social Psychology, Communications, and Study Smart. I’m planning to take IB French, so I thought it would be nice to get that going during the summer so that I can get a head start. I wasn’t really sure how fast the classes would go, but since I took French for two years in Years 8 and 9, it wouldn’t be too hard.
I just had to take a psychology course, because one of the majors that I plan to pursue at the college level is psychology. I wanted to get a feel of how universities handle the subject and what I would be learning. One reason for choosing social psychology, in particular, was that the content of the said course was very intriguing since the focus was very much on how the individual behaves when interacting with others.
Communications were something quite new for me, but the course itself seemed interesting. The focus would be on conglomerate companies like Disney or Amazon and how these affect the consumers of the modern era. The Study Smart course is probably the most interesting one because it’s all about learning how to learn better. With the instructors guiding us through different techniques, I wanted to study how I can be a better learner without spending a ridiculous amount of time studying.
I’m actually one of the youngest students in all of my classes — most of my friends are also a year or two older than me. Now, this is a pretty big thing because, in Korea, I wouldn’t be able to be so friendly with people who are older than me. This is one of the things I love most about being abroad. They don’t immediately think I’m less than them just because I was born two years later than they were.
In terms of my time spent outside of classes.. well, there’s a lot that happened this week. With a group of friends that I’ve gotten close with, we decided to go to downtown San Fransisco (or something like that) to watch the latest “Spider-Man: Homecoming”!!
This was actually my first time going somewhere that requires transportation without any adult supervision, so this was particularly exciting for me. We took the Cal-Train to the cinema and watched the amazing sequel to the first Marvel Spider-Man movie. Ugh, it was so good. The cinema itself was really quite empty so it felt like we just rented the whole place for ourselves. This is also where I had my first dish of chipotle! I’d heard a lot about it in Korea but I never knew where to eat them, so the whole day just consisted of me being proud of myself.
Just today, I came back from the Winchester Mystery House tour, which is one of the weekly ‘activities’ that Mirlo holds. I was able to get a spot and I even made a new friend outside of Mirlo! The Winchester House was quite beautifully built; I can imagine being a little girl here, exploring all the pathways and secret hideouts. Thankfully, we went there when it was nice and sunny — or else I might have been a little frightened about the potential ‘ghost inhabitants’ that my tour guide seemed to love talking about.
Wow, that was one action-packed week. I hope there's more in store for me next week, though!