My Summer Attending the Harvard Summer School-Seoul Program- Summer 2010
When I first arrived in Seoul, I was excited but nervous. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know who my roommate was going to be and I was afraid that I wouldn’t feel integrated into the program or close to the other students. Several of the other Harvard students had already taken some classes together and all of them were two years below me. I didn’t know that the HSS program would include a contingent of Korean students. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself rooming with a rising senior at Ewha and my fears about the social aspect of the program proved completely unfounded. Though the classes and excursions were really top notch, the best part of the program was the interaction with the Korean students. Having them in our Anthropology class allowed us a much more nuanced perception of Korean history and culture, they were incredible assets in our language learning, and they helped us to experience modern Korean culture in a way that would not have been possible had our program only included foreign students.
The structure of the Anthropology class and the program excursions really fostered a sense of community and closeness among the program participants while also being very interesting and educational. Each excursion was a unique opportunity that I would not have had the chance to experience outside of this program. The excursions taught us about various aspects of Korean culture, ranging from religion and tradition to pre-colonial history to modern pop culture. They complemented the lectures and readings perfectly. Also, having two professors for the class, one from Harvard and one teaching at a Korean university, reinforced the comparative aspect of the course and worked nicely with the two student populations in the class, one Korean and one foreign. The professor’s differing areas of expertise complemented each other nicely. I found that I actually learned a lot more about Korean culture by viewing it through the lens of other countries and their cultures in addition to just that of Korea.
The language program was well set up and taught. The pairing of foreign students with a Korean language partner, as well as rooming foreign students with native Korean speakers, was incredibly helpful. Having more Korean students than foreign ones encouraged me to attempt to use my language skill more than I otherwise might have. The Korean students were always incredibly supportive of my efforts to learn the language and their encouragement helped me to feel more comfortable trying to speak.
This summer was the best experience in my three years at Harvard. The atmosphere of collaborative learning was phenomenal. I truly felt like everyone in the program was genuinely interested in the subject and the focus in the classroom always seemed to be on intellectual growth, not grades. The professors were as wonderful at fostering enthusiasm for the subject as they were at teaching us, both about Korea and the field of anthropology.
-Ashton Howard, '11