[alaya_dropcap]A[/alaya_dropcap]fter all the excitement of graduation day finally subsided, the College of Social Science was happy to interview two students from the International Master’s in Asia-Pacific Studies (IMAS) program about their thoughts and time here at NCCU. Tomas Königs (The Netherlands) and Tyler Prochazka (United States) were kind enough to take time out of their celebrations and give interviews.

Both Tomas and Tyler said they feel like graduating from NCCU was like the end of an era, and that it was an exciting journey along the road to finishing their thesis. While they are excited to have graduated, both said they are looking forward to the next stage of their journey, seeing where it might take them in the future.

During his time in the IMAS program, Tyler said the most enjoyable part for him was, “Getting connected with really brilliant people from around the world and working with really incredible professors.” He also noted that because of the IMAS program he had many cherished friendships that he hopes to work with professionally in the future, and that they taught him, “much about the world [he] couldn’t know otherwise.” He also said that he would recommend the IMAS program here at NCCU because of the great amount of institutional support. But he does warn, “make sure to start your thesis as soon as possible!” Which he might have been inferring to how much work a thesis can be, so you do not want to wait until it is too late to start it.

Newly graduated Tomas Königs told the CSS Newsletter that the most enjoyable part of IMAS (and what he will miss the most) will be the classmates. He stated, “Given that my bachelor program

had a great number of international students, I did not find myself in a new situation per se. However, I [can now] better distinguish between the personality traits of people from different Asian countries, such as Taiwan, China, Thailand, and Vietnam.” He also recommended the IMAS program, but for a different reason than Tyler. He stated that the program was highly relevant to his field of study, so it was much easier to access the information for his research here than it would have been back home.