A Little Background

I figure that I should write a post about the application process and what got me to this point before I get into the more exciting stuff next month!

The Carolina Southeast Asian Summer (SEAS) Program is a unique program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is only for first-year students only (going into their second year), so that the students can come back with time to pursue the interests that are sparked by this program, whether that be a new language, major, or more time abroad. Additionally, the trip is fully funded for the 25 students that are selected to go on the trip! It is really a fantastic opportunity

I began my application in early January and it was due on February 2nd. The application included several short answer questions about general study abroad topics, as well as a long essay. The long essay asked the students to read a Southeast Asian newspaper for a week and pick a topic that you felt the SEAS participants needed to know more about. Then, it asked us to design an activity so that SEAS participants could learn more about this topic. I choose an article about dance in Southeast Asia and designed several activities to expose the students to dance styles of the area. I hope that I actually get to do some of those activities; I thought they sounded pretty exciting, but that may be because I designed them.

I never expected to actually get accepted to the program just because I had always heard about how competitive it was. I was planning to look for a job for the summer when I got the email that I had been selected for an interview. I was ecstatic, but still skeptical at my chances of getting chosen, especially after the interview was over. I thought it didn't go very well; I felt like I was not giving them the answers that they wanted. "Oh well", I thought. "At least I tried".

However, to my surprise, two days that I got an email that said "Welcome to SEAS". I almost fell down the stairs of Phillips as I was walking out of my physics lab because I couldn't believe that it was true. I was actually going to Singapore and Thailand for a summer! The furthest I had ever been overseas was on a cruise to mexico and the bahamas with my high school dance team. A million things were racing through my head at once.

Since then I have attended a wonderful orientation session at the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School Rizzo Center, as well as the picnic mentioned in the previous post. I am so excited because the next event is my plane ride from Dallas to New York, New York to Frankfurt, and Frankfurt to Singapore!