6 — Wednesday, September 1, 2021
News
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Summer semester in South Korea draws mixed reviews as study
abroad opens for 2021-22 school year
Students to travel to Germany, Iceland, the United Kingdom and South Korea for six programs this fall
LSA senior Tiffani Ihrke
was supposed to return home
from the South Korea trial
study abroad program in early
August with fellow students.
Instead, frontline workers
dressed
in
hazmat
suits
picked Ihrke up and rushed
her to a treatment facility in
Seoul after she tested positive
for COVID-19 just a couple of
days before her flight back to
the U.S.
Ihrke had been a part of the
Yonsei International Summer
School (YISS) program for the
Spring/Summer 2021 term.
It was the first study abroad
program to take place at the
University of Michigan since
all were suspended in March
2020 due to the pandemic.
Despite testing positive at
the end of the program, Ihrke
said she sincerely enjoyed
her time in South Korea.
She attributed her positive
experience
to
living
off-
campus due to both financial
reasons and the desire to
experience more of South
Korean society.
“I personally learned so
much about myself, and
I gained so much insight
about different cultures and
the different ways that the
pandemic is being handled in
different areas,” Ihrke said.
Once
her
10-day
quarantine is finished, Ihrke
can
request
confirmation
of her recovery from the
local center of public health
and reenter the U.S. with
documentation
confirming
her recovery starting Aug. 21.
Ihrke was fully vaccinated
when she tested positive for
the virus, as the University
has required all students
participating in on- and
off-campus
programs
—
including study abroad — to
be vaccinated.
For
now,
Ihrke
is
in
quarantine at the treatment
facility with a government-
assigned random roommate
who also tested positive and
is dealing with the downsides
of studying abroad during a
pandemic.
“I’ve
been
very
well
taken
care
of,
and
I’m
really fortunate that the
Korean government is so
accommodating for COVID
specifically, but it’s definitely
been a headache, to say the
least,” Ihrke told The Daily
while in the Seoul National
University Treatment Center.
The Centers for Disease
Control
and
Prevention
currently
classifies
South
Korea
as
a
“Level
2:
Moderate” out of a scale from
“Level unknown” to “Level
4: Very High” in terms of
COVID-19 risk. Both new
daily infections and deaths
have increased since June,
and roughly 21% of the
country is fully vaccinated.
Business junior Gabriella
Jakubczak, another student
who
participated
in
the
program but lived on campus
at YISS, said physically being
in South Korea was “better
than anything else I would
have done this summer.”
But as rising COVID-19
cases in the country led to
YISS’s and South Korea’s
increasingly stricter social
distancing rules, Jakubczak
began to realize how much
the pandemic still inevitably
impacted the program.
“Eventually
you
could
only go out in pairs after 6
p.m,” Jakubczak said. “They
shut down all the street food
in Korea, which is insane,
considering how much that’s
a part of their culture and
how prevalent that is within
the city. It was like walking
in an empty Times Square;
you’d just see storefronts
empty.”
Jakubczak
said
if
she
knew how bad the COVID-
19 situation was going to
be earlier in the year, she
probably
would’ve
opted
to complete the program
online from the U.S. instead.
According
to
Jakubczak,
studying abroad amidst the
pandemic also sometimes led
to miscommunication from
CGIS staff about program
details like dates for certain
activities.
“I think the problem is
there
was
an
increased
demand for support and
responsiveness
that
we
needed because it was a
COVID program (during the
pandemic),” Jakubczak said.
CGIS
Director
Michael
Jordan said he has yet to
send out surveys and receive
feedback from students who
were in South Korea. He
told The Daily that CGIS
often communicated with
students in the program, and
he asked for “flexibility” and
“patience”
from
students
when traveling abroad given
the current circumstances of
the pandemic.
Jordan said CGIS has
been communicating “quite
frequently” with students
in the South Korea program
especially because it was the
office’s first ongoing program
in a year.
“Information
has
been
and continues to change
very
frequently
under
these circumstances, so I
can imagine it could get
confusing,” Jordan said. “But
again, it is a situation that’s
changing on a daily basis,
so we definitely require our
partners’ and the students’
patience
and
flexibility,
because this virus and the
pandemic just keep throwing
curveballs at us.”
Looking ahead to the fall
Six
programs
will
be
running this fall semester
in South Korea, Germany,
Iceland
and
the
United
Kingdom,
including
a
different program in Yonsei.
Jordan said CGIS had to
cancel numerous programs
for both the fall and winter
semesters after evaluating
the status of the pandemic in
various countries.
“We’ve worked for years
to expand the options for our
students’ interest among our
students and destinations
outside of Western Europe,”
Jordan said. “But at this
point in time, those are the
countries that are letting
Americans in and that meet
the University’s criteria for
health and safety during a
pandemic.”
Some
of
the
criteria
include infection rates and
vaccination rates among that
country or city’s population,
quality
of
the
country’s
healthcare
system
and
potential overuse of that
country’s healthcare system
by U-M students.
“Even though our students
are vaccinated they could
still transmit the virus, so it
seems unethical to be sending
them
into
unvaccinated
countries,” Jordan said. “If
the local medical system is
already being overtaxed by
the pandemic, then obviously
we don’t want to exacerbate
that.”
LSA junior Jorge Blanes
will be studying in Germany
this fall to earn credit for his
double major in International
Studies and German.
Though he admitted that
potential
lockdowns
and
risk of being sent back to the
U.S. were “daunting,” Blanes
said he considers the pros
of meeting new people and
venturing into a new country
worth the challenges. He
said studying abroad this fall
is the best time academically
for him to do so.
“It’s basically a risk-reward
thing, and the rewards seem
to outweigh the risks right
now,” Blanes said. “They
won’t really let the program
happen unless they see that
we’re going to be, for the
most part, safe.”
LSA
junior
Garrett
Ashlock also contemplated
the benefits and drawbacks
of
studying
abroad
and
ultimately chose to enroll
in a program at University
of
Cambridge
Pembroke
College in the fall. Feeling
like his time was running out
in addition to being accepted
into his “dream school” of
Cambridge, Ashlock said he
felt it was necessary to seize
the opportunity.
“Ultimately, it came down
to the fact that this was
basically going to be my
only chance to study abroad
that I had left, and this was
such a great program and
one that is very selective to
get into,” Ashlock said. “So
after weighing the options,
even though there are some
inherent risks with traveling
abroad during the pandemic,
I thought it was still the best
thing to do.”
Though Ashlock is fully
vaccinated,
he
said
he
remains
worried
about
potentially contracting the
virus. However, he said he
is grateful CGIS and the
University are able to support
him if he must navigate a
foreign system.
“I think the amount of
effort that Michigan puts
into sending students abroad,
and the amount of resources
that they have, helps me
feel a lot better about going
somewhere,
especially
in
the middle of a pandemic,”
Ashlock said.
After the challenges she
faced during the program
in South Korea, Jakubczak
said she is debating whether
or not to follow through
with another study abroad
program planned for the
winter semester.
“It’s very isolating in a
way that you already know
what COVID feels like in the
United States,” Jakubczak
said. “Now imagine you
have no friends, you have no
family support and maybe
now you have a language
barrier, depending on where
you’re going. So now you’re
really truly alone. I was
supposed to go on a study
abroad program to Madrid in
the winter semester this year,
and I’m wondering whether
or not I want to go through
that again.”
Daily Staff Reporter Martha
Lewand can be reached at
mlewand@umich.edu.
MARTHA LEWAND
Daily Staff Reporter