Through Her Eyes (2Yeon)

xxvii. The Life

A year has already passed and not much had changed. Friends had come and gone. Classmates that you didn't even interact with go on with their lives anyway. College is a place to experiment and explore. There's a bunch of new people to meet. That doesn't mean you'll automatically cut all connection with your friends. But all of you can safely grow in different ways and at different rates together.

Nayeon's entry into a college after she had completed her school education was an important event in her life. A few weeks after she received her acceptance letter from the college she applied to, Belmont University, she jumped for joy. She told everyone who were important to her about the good news. Jeongyeon was elated for her.

But, they were going to different universities. Jeongyeon wanted to study culinary arts and was accepted to several universities that offered the classes she wanted. She was thinking about taking the one in Europe, but seeing that the time zones would be implausible, she decided to take the university that was only a couple of hours away by plane. Of course, Nayeon, only wanting what's best for Jeongyeon, persisted on her going to Europe and that they would always find a way to talk despite their time zones. Jeongyeon shook her head and said that she was still going to become a chef either way and own a restaurant of her own. And if that meant spending more time with Nayeon then so be it. Nayeon couldn't argue with her anymore after that so she just smiled.

Nayeon felt very much excited on the very first day. She found that there was a great difference between school and college life. The world of her high school was narrow and limited. The world of the college was large. Most of the teachers in college lived in the world of ideas and books. They had students of all kinds in college. They discussed the current affairs, art, cinema and sports. Some of them neglected text books but they didn't miss the daily newspaper or the running commentary of a football game going on in some part of the world. Some of them would even engage the teachers in class in a political topic and discussed it fully.

There was a lot of freedom in the collage than in high school. Nayeon was busy from the first period to the last. But in the collage, she attended classes for three or four periods. Even being late for the classes was not punished. She absolutely loved that. Although, she was never late to class before in her life. Jeongyeon could vouch for her on that. If anything, it was her who was the reason Nayeon skipped classes one time.

College life had given a lot of societal awareness; Nayeon surprisingly had also got good grounding in audio engineering. Some time there were strikes in the college. The strikes were engineered by some senior students who were either punished or fined for misbehaviors. They wanted their fines to be remitted but the principal would not accept their demands. So they would force other students to go on a strike and paralyzed teaching work. It looked like Trade Unionism.

Nayeon didn't like that one bit. What she did like was the college life for its freedom, intellectual awakening and its various academic and extracurricular activities. She had already thought that even after completing her education, she would never forget the happy days she spent in the college.

For now, she was unpacking the last of her boxes. Regardless of her already being in the university for a year, she didn't have much of a busy schedule and actually had a lot of free time on her hands for only being a freshmen.

A big difference she had to be aware of was the time structure. She had a science class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 10:10–11:00 am. Then, she had a Spanish class on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:15–3:00 pm. Her Introduction to Education class on Wednesday evenings from 6:30–9:00 pm. Sometimes on Mondays she'll have three classes, and on Tuesdays she'll have two classes. There will always some courses that were only offered on certain days at certain times, but for the most part, there were a lot of options.