Mutiara Wahyu Nirmalasari is undergraduate student in Faculty of Biology year 2020. This semester, she’s experiencing study abroad to Korea University through IISMA (Indonesian International Student Mobility Awards) program. It was unexpected for her to be selected to joining the program, but still she was excited and honored.
“Study abroad does open up your horizon about society and how to improve as a student,” she explained.
Mutiara chose a university in South Korea because she’s already interested in its culture since a long time ago so she didn’t need to face culture shock when study abroad. Besides, Korea University has the reputation as the top 3 university in South Korea, and it offers although in the end she couldn’t enroll in the classes she expected. At Korea University, Mutiara took 4 courses: Intermediate Korean 1, Marketing Management, New Media Cinema, and Media Technology.
Studying courses outside biological topics must be difficult, like the terms and basic insights that used in the courses. But Mutiara enjoyed the courses and adapted well since those are general courses. She makes sure herself read the “required reading” from the professor before classes so she can understand the lectures. She also had high curiosity of the courses she took, like searching the unique marketing campaign for Marketing Management course from YouTube, practicing Korean with ahjussi and ahjumma while groceries shopping, and explore surroundings.
Although Mutiara took courses which are not linear to biology, in fact she met biology related topic in her courses. One of the films discussed in class New Media Cinema entitle Gattaca (1997), about genetic engineering, the ethical value and how the future society face the genetic engineering. Besides, the courses she took can be applied to biological field, such as biological innovation product marketing and integration in biological information on digital media.
After finishing IISMA program, Mutiara will be focusing on graduating since there are some mandatory courses that she still has to take. But if she’s given the opportunity, she wants to continue about biotech abroad while trying to create easy and short content since she learned a lot about media here.
“I’m more than happy to go since I haven’t experienced that through my IISMA journey.” (MWN/AS)
