Written by Steven Chandler
How hard is it to make up the first week of class for a semester? Harder than you might think; just ask junior Jonghwa Lee, who was one week late getting back to school this January.
Lee, a junior double major in Accounting and Management Information Systems, is from Seoul, South Korea, and decided that after two years at Harding he would go home this past Christmas break to visit his family. His trip home was scheduled to last from Dec. 22 to Jan. 12; however, America was not the only country with large snowstorms over Christmas break.
Lee was scheduled to fly out of the Incheon International Airport just outside of Seoul when it started to snow. His flight got delayed a few hours and was ultimately cancelled. This turn of events opened up another opportunity: Lee was able to spend a little extra time at home with his sick grandmother for her 80th birthday.
“I got stuck, but at the same time I chose to stay longer,” Lee said. “I was a little worried about all my classes and all the homework and quizzes I’d be missing, so the first thing I did was email all my teachers and told them and told them what was happening. They said ‘OK, it’s fine.'”
“Based on his current situation, I did not feel I was setting a precedent for other students to skip their first week of classes,” said Brian Burks, Dean of the College of Business Administration and one of Lee’s professors.”The burden of catching up fell on his shoulders, and he is doing that right now.Time will tell if this will impact his ability to succeed in my class, but he is a good student and should be able to put in the extra work to catch the rest of the class.”
Lee also had friends looking out for him in his classes. He was able to get in touch with junior Timothy Harless the day before classes and told him about his situation.
“We have a bunch of classes together, so I helped him stay up to date on the classes through Facebook, just keeping him up with the assignments,” Harless said.
“By Wednesday (Jan. 13) a bunch of friends Facebook-messaged me and they were like, ‘Where are you, I don’t see you anymore? I don’t see you here, are you not coming back?'” Lee said. “I’m really glad to be able to have friends like that, but it really was not that big of a deal; everything turned out to be fine.”
It was not only academics and his social life that Lee had to worry about, he also his job. Lee serves as a Resident Assistant in Keller. Lee got in touch with the other RAs on his floor and informed them of his situation. The other RAs on his floor, senior Matt Parks and junior Andrew Riley, took turns picking up the slack and checking Lee’s rooms until he was able to get back. They initially expected Lee to be three days late, which is especially late for those serving as RAs. However, they helped him out until he was able to return.
“Checking Jonghwa’s hall every other night was interesting for me because it gave me a chance to meet the guys on his hall,” Parks said.
Finally, on Sunday Jan. 17,Lee left South Korea at 10 a.m. and arrived at Little Rock 23 hours later at 4 p.m. on the same day, ready to start school one week late. Even though it was good Lee was able to spend a little bit more time with his family, it came with a great deal of work to get caught up on.
“I’m making up all my homework and quizzes now,” Lee said. “In theory one week of missing class sounds really easy to make up, but it’s not. It’s really hard to keep up with the current stuff and the stuff you missed.”
