Midterms and the "café" study culture
Lately, I've been so busy with midterms and because of that I haven't been able to update much. Thankfully, it's all over now and I can finally breathe again. Even though it was tough with studying, I actually lowkey kinda enjoyed it.
As you probably already know, Korean students study really hard and they take exams very seriously since their grades can affect their future career a lot. The grading system here is very unfair since what grade you get depends on the whole class and not individually (exchange students and Koreans are graded separately though). There is no limit percentage or points that you have to get in order to get specific grades but you are graded depending on the class's overall performance. Basically, after grading the exams, the professor will rank all students and then depending on the course/professor, about 20% of the top students will get grade A and 50% will get grade B and so on. This is why whenever it's midterms or finals, you will see a lot of Korean students sitting in school or library until late to study. Some of them pull all-nighters, and some take naps in between.
The thing that I enjoyed the most during midterms was definitely studying at cafés with my friends. There are tons of small coffee shops around campus and it was so cozy studying there. I usually sit at cafés for several hours and sometimes would switch from one place to another. I think I've visited around seven different cafés during one midterms week.
One of my favorite cafés is "Coffee Namu Lab" (커피나무랩), which is located near the back gate of CAU campus. It's spacious and a perfect place for studying and they have amazing cakes there! My friends and I used to go there a lot and we will probably go back during finals. The price is around 5,000~6,000 won for drinks and 7,000~8,000 for desserts.
As you probably already know, Korean students study really hard and they take exams very seriously since their grades can affect their future career a lot. The grading system here is very unfair since what grade you get depends on the whole class and not individually (exchange students and Koreans are graded separately though). There is no limit percentage or points that you have to get in order to get specific grades but you are graded depending on the class's overall performance. Basically, after grading the exams, the professor will rank all students and then depending on the course/professor, about 20% of the top students will get grade A and 50% will get grade B and so on. This is why whenever it's midterms or finals, you will see a lot of Korean students sitting in school or library until late to study. Some of them pull all-nighters, and some take naps in between.
The thing that I enjoyed the most during midterms was definitely studying at cafés with my friends. There are tons of small coffee shops around campus and it was so cozy studying there. I usually sit at cafés for several hours and sometimes would switch from one place to another. I think I've visited around seven different cafés during one midterms week.
One of my favorite cafés is "Coffee Namu Lab" (커피나무랩), which is located near the back gate of CAU campus. It's spacious and a perfect place for studying and they have amazing cakes there! My friends and I used to go there a lot and we will probably go back during finals. The price is around 5,000~6,000 won for drinks and 7,000~8,000 for desserts.
Another favorite of mine is "Cafe Yoof " (카페유프), which is located right infront of the back gate. This is a smaller cafe but the atmosphere is super cozy here, especially during evenings. The price is around 4,000 ~5,000 won. You should definitely try their lemon tea if you ever visit here.
One last café that I should mention is the "Ohu HongKong" (오후홍콩) which is one of the most popular cafés near the front gate of CAU campus. It has 300+ reviews on Naver and it's usually very full, or so I've heard. I actually don't know why it is so popular. Personally, I didn't think there was any difference from the other cafés. The price is pretty much average, around 4,000~5,000 won.
Anyway, enough with cafés hehe. But honestly though, if you ever decide to do exchange here in Korea, visit a café and study there at least once! It's actually a culture here in Korea since Swedish students don't usually do it.
All in all, midterms went pretty well for me. In my case, it didn't matter what grade I get since it will only be translated into "passed" when I go back to Sweden. So I basically just need to pass all of the courses and according to all of my professors, failing a course is very difficult, unless you don't attend to classes at all. So I had nothing to worry about which is pretty damn nice!
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