08. July 2022
GSSE Program Experience Week One - Orienting One's Mind
For the fist time in over five years of being unable to attend school, I finally had the opportunity of attending the School of Global Studies’s Global Studies & Social Entrepreneurship program. In this series of articles I will explore my experiences during the course of the program on a weekly biases.
Moving in prior to the start of the program
Me and my roommate “Perry” moved in to our dorm (Haus Private Residences) on Saturday the 2nd of July. That day was incredibly stressful for me, since moving all my belongings is something I haven’t done in years. Luckily, I had a helping hand in a friend of my mom’s. She helped me moved most of my belongings in which did help reduced part of the stress I faced that day. But what helped, relieve stress even more for the both of us was swimming. Yes, you read that correctly. We both decided to swim on the first day of moving.
Sunday was the day in which I explored the university campus and gathered all my remaining belongings from my old place. I started the day by going to our faculty’s building (Piyachart 2), and from there I went straight to the place that contains items that for the last couple of years drained a significant amount of my income: the library, specifically the Puey Ungphakorn Library. After exploring the entire library itself and hearing from a security guard that possible one of my classmates was in the library. I messaged in the line group and did find a person. Not the person that was allegedly in the library unfortunately. But that was the day I made a new friend on campus as a fully enrolled Cohort 9 student. That person was Yohan (the Filipino guy). We met at the Green Canteen, had some good chat about ourselves. We then went back to the library to meet up with some of the Cohort 8s. Turns out one of them was named Potter! Only one vowel off from my own name 😂. After that me, Yohan, and Bricky (one of the Cohort 8s) when to Future Park Rangsit. Yohan got some pictures taken for VISA purposes if I recalled correctly. Bricky got someone to pick him up to ascend himself into the realms free of the responsibilities of being a member of the student council. While I got there just as a stop, to go to my old place to pick up my remaining belongings. Needless to say, my reason for going there was like the most boring of them all.
First Week Highlights
The first week was full of excitement and enthusiasm. One of the largest surprises for me during that week was that Professor Dipendra, the person that interviewed me for my scholarship, was actually not that scary and that his lectures were really enjoyable. I mean in the interview session he was as stone cold as a human person can be, if I’m being honest I was kinda scared to death (In a good way though.) It was also kind of fascinating how the faculty refers every Professors as Ajarns, and there I was in the class referring to every single Ajarn(s) as “Professor”. It was kind of like here’s a tiny injection of classical Thai-ness that is rather nichely cute, and I was like: No Thai-ness shall pass! into my brain that is (Spoken in a manner as Gandalf from Lord of the Rings would.) All of the lectures were quite informative and interesting, however, one lecture stood out. It sparked my inner sense of Justice! Well, I’m just being overly dramatic but here’s the gist of it. Professor Stephane pointed out a research that I’m familiar of, specifically a research into the effect upon how electronic devices affects students in the classroom environment. The research showed that electronic devices had a significant negative impact upon the students. And based on this conclusion, and rightly so, Professor Stephane banned electronic devices from his lectures. This is something while I found incredibly counter-intuitive for me personally, makes sense for the benefit of the whole class. As our favorite science fiction character, Ambassador Spock, would say: The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
Conclusion
This week has been incredibly fun and relaxing in a way. I finally get to enjoy that feeling of being in class along with its social aspects once again. Attending classes as if our lives depended on it, and treated the times after those lectures as extra-curriculars. Basically never stop working as long as I’m awake and every possibility of anything denying that goal has been dealt with. Despite how depressing that may sound, I cannot contain my enthusiasm for next week.