BY RACHEL TANG

With midterms approaching soon, I wanted to focus more on my experiences with Thammasat University. Thammasat has two main campuses, but the international campus is called Tha Prachan, where almost all the international students attend. The campus is not too large and is located near the Grand Palace, which is about 5 miles away from the city center. It takes a little under an hour to commute to downtown Bangkok.
Thammasat has one main library and other libraries within each department. There is free printing and access to wifi throughout the campus. Classrooms are quite small, which is a large contrast from most classes at UCLA. My classes typically range from 15-30 students. Each professor has his or her own teaching style, but I find the pace of the semester system here to be slower than the quarter system at UCLA. Classes are taught in English and a large amount of professors are international professors who are experts in their field of study.
My political science and Thai language courses mainly focus on one midterm, several quizzes, a presentation, and a final. For midterms and finals week, students have the entire week off of classes depending on their department. Thammasat University has a lot more holidays than what we have at UCLA. These holidays, such as University Games and the Songkran Festival, are usually week-long breaks. This makes traveling much easier. This past break, I was able to visit Myanmar just before my midterms week. Below are some pictures from my trip.

Rachel Tang studied abroad in Bangkok, Thailand, in spring 2017: http://eap.ucop.edu/OurPrograms/thailand/Pages/thammasat_univ.aspx