Hello everyone!
I’m wondering what kind of new students will be attending iU, when we commence the 2020-2021 school year?
I’m curious.
I was so curious and decided to chat with some of the iU students about their decision to attend our university.
In year one, many of the now sophomore students, had a firm intention to enroll at iU, and had already started sending Twitter messages before they began their studies, so it was easy to make connect with them.
It’s amazing to be able to connect with complete strangers so easily.
This time, the student I’m interviewing is Masashi K. who is originally from Hokkaido and will be an iU student from Spring of 2021.
Masashi’s profile
Currently, is a third-year high school student living in Hokkaido.
He loves soccer, however during the winter of his second year of high school, he was injured.
Later he went to the U.S. to study programming and was greatly influenced by the people he met.
Since then, he has aspired to start his own business. Let’s learn more about his life.
Q: Could you tell me about the time you were in high school?
A: In my local high school in Hokkaido, there are three different departments, and I chose the information department. I learned about computers and bookkeeping.
Aside from my studies, I played soccer, but injured my meniscus in the winter of my second year and was unable to play for a while.
I have always loved playing soccer, since I was in kindergarten. In fact, I continue to do so to this day.
About my injury, while I was in the hospital, my brother asked me if I wanted to study programming in the United States.
After I got out of the hospital, I decided to follow him there.
Q: How was your experience studying in the U.S.?
A: I stayed in the U.S. for roughly a month and learned programming with local students. It was really hard for me to keep up with them because I didn’t know anything about programming.
Also, I really wanted to stay with an American host family, but my leg was still not completely healed. I felt like it would cause me a lot of trouble, so I
gave up and decided to live with Japanese hosts.
So, it was me, my brother, and my hosts who were a working couple. The two are very good engineers and I was able to hear many interesting stories from them.
Q: When you were young, did you have any dreams for your future?
A: I always wanted to be a clerk in a soccer store, that’s because when I was in high school, I was having trouble finding spikes that fit me, but the staff at the soccer store helped me find them.
That was the start of my desire to become a soccer store clerk.
However, as I talked with my two U.S. hosts, I started to think that being a soccer store clerk was not everything. They told me that I should start my own company and do what I like.
They told me that if I wanted to start my own business, I should study at a
university, and that’s when I first started thinking about going to university.
Q: How did you find out about iU?
A: I found information about it through a Facebook ad. Actually, when was in America, I used Facebook for communication purposes.
At first, I thought it was suspicious. But I was really interested in entrepreneurship and was looking for a university, so I clicked on the add and it looked interesting. Later, I attended the online information session.
It was interesting. Finally, I attended an offline information session and talked with many staff, and that’s when I decided that I wanted to attend iU.
Q: What was the appeal of iU for you?
A: Of course, the fact that there is a lot of support for starting a business is appealing.
But I also think that there are a lot of interesting people here.
I’d like to join iU and meet and talk with a lot of interesting people.
Q: What do you want to do when you finally join iU?
A:I love helping kids. I want to teach, what I learn about programming, to them. When I first learned programming, I was amazed at how much detail was involved in writing code.
I believe that by having such experiences, while they are still young, children will be able to broaden their options. Programming is now compulsory in elementary schools.
I believe that if the teachers are not familiar with programming, they will not be able to teach well. I would like to work together with teachers who are struggling with programming education in order to help teach children.
Editorial note
For this article, it was the first time for me to talk with a future iU student. I was a little nervous, but we had a great time talking.
iU is the university that we will both attend, iU, which is a new school that opened in 2020.
Students study three pillars: Global Communication, Business, and ICT. There is only one undergraduate department and the total number of students is approximately 200.
And compared to other universities, the number of students is quite small, but the interaction between students is deep.
It’s exciting to think that there will be many interesting people coming to iU from now on. I’m looking forward to seeing the number of students increase during the upcoming school year.
The iU Blog will continue to interview iU students, both who are Freshman and Sophomores.
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