I have been jumping up and down for joy to go to Korea since before the Spring semester even began. It’s my first big travel without my parents and my first time visiting anywhere in Asia. I’m writing this blog about six hours before departure (yippee!) and have already gotten the chance to hang out with others going on the trip with me. I am so excited!

I recently completed my first year at Swanson School of Engineering. It has been very successful and I am extremely grateful for the opportunities afforded to me by Pitt. I am a Nigerian-American immigrant and cannot express the joy it brings to my family to see how much this university can provide for me. I am a bioengineering major with a minor in linguistics. I hope to one day work in biomedical product design but I am also very interested in exploring the world. I hope to take experiences like this one and use them as stepping stones to connect my future products with people across the world and help as many people as possible.

Over the course of this schoolyear, I have slowly gotten involved with extracurricular. This year I danced on the Ya’Baso African Dance Team at Pitt and will continue dancing next year while serving as the public relations chair. I am also a part of National Society for Black Engineers and will serve as the pre-collegiate institute chair next year. In my free time, I love writing. I have authored a self-published short story and am currently slowly working on another. I also really enjoy eating. I love trying many different foods, especially foods from other cultures, which is definitely a goal of mine for this trip.

I hope to get a hang of basic Korean in the next few weeks and check some travel locations off my bucket list. I also aim to make useful connections across seas that I can possibly come back to in the future and force international collaboration. This trip will also introduce me to the world of traveling, as I do hope to be an avid traveler after college. All in all, I’m ready!

-Therese