Seunghee Chae

Student

“SMC is a really good place to study. Students here study harder than at other colleges.”

When Seunghee Chae left her native Korea last year, the change of direction in her life could hardly have been more complete. It meant being away from her family for the first time, getting the hang of a foreign language, and coping with a culture much different from her own. And if that weren’t enough, Seunghee also decided to delve into a completely new field of study. “In university in Korea my major was French literature and I graduated from there in 1992,” she says. “I love the French novels by writers like Balzac and Camus, but I really wanted to study another subject and so I came here and started studying Interior Design.”

Seunghee says she has found SMC students to be very dedicated and hard-working and the teachers to be open. “They make us study hard but their teaching method is very organized,” she reports. After completing the two-year program in Interior Design, Seunghee plans on returning to Korea where she hopes to find work in window display for retail stores. “It’s great that you can have a whole different career after only two years of college,” she says. “And in Korea, if you can speak English it’s really beneficial in finding a job, and also if you’ve studied in America.”

Seunghee hopes to do more traveling around California before going back home. During this year’s Spring Break, she toured some of the National Parks, including Sequoia and Yosemite, and also visited San Francisco and Oakland. “It was nice seeing the parks and we met a lot of people who were on bicycles or camping. I had a great time.”

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