Week 12 – Priorities

With about one month left in the program, and many students leaving immediately after final exams end, now is the time when exchange students like are looking at our wish lists of what we wanted to do while we were abroad. Most of us have not come anywhere near completing them because of making friends, studying, and trying to spend some time resting. I am unfortunately, amongst those who failed to do almost anything on my wish list despite being here for an academic year. But, it is all about priorities.

I did an interview for a job about a year and half ago that I will always remember. For the majority of the interview I answered standard interview questions like “why do you want to work here?”, “what qualifies you for this position?”, etc. But towards the end of the interview they asked me to look at a list of tasks that are fairly standard to the position and give the tasks a priority number and then explain the rank I gave. I answered the question well, I think, since I did get the job. I value this interview experience a lot not because I got the job, but because of the professional skill it taught me that I feel no one tells you about: the ability to prioritize tasks and have logical reasons as to why you have made these priorities. It is easy to make priorities based on “feeling” like many of us approach grammar in our mother tongues; we don’t know why it is this way, but it just “feels” right. But the ability to verbalize your logic and have valid reasons is a valuable professional skill. It is also, an incredibly important skill in our personal lives as well.

I have a lot of things left on my Seoul bucket list. But, I also need to get good grades this semester as it is my final semester before graduation and the courses I am taking are necessary to complete my degree. And I have a friend coming in two weeks to spend my last few weeks in Seoul with me. On top of all of that, I am someone who gets tired fairly easily. I need rest days/self-care days sometimes to recharge (also the senioritis is hitting me hard).

Although it means I will leave Seoul with a lot of activities left on my bucket list, I have decided that completing my last semester with good grades and resting need to be my priorities. I will try to do some of my most important bucket list items with my friend when she comes to visit, but school must take priority over this. I want to graduate already since I extended my graduation by a year to go abroad. Additionally, I have been dealing with a lot in my family right now, this has taken a toll on my mental health. I cannot perform well in my classes if I am burnt out from working hard on school and constantly being out trying to complete my bucket list. So, self-care days are a must! Hopefully, some day in the future I can visit Seoul again and check off some of the other bucket list items on my list. This is how I have decided to prioritize for now.