MayX Mayhem!!!

Hello! Welcome to another blog of mine! In this post, I will be talking about MayX programs that Furman offers and how I’m having to make a super difficult decision of choosing which one I want to participate in.

If you don’t know what a MayX program is don’t fret, I will give you a rundown. Furman offers 2 credit courses every May that occur just after the school year has officially ended. May semester programs are led by Furman professors either on campus, across the United States, and even around the world! MayX courses on campus are of no cost to the student, but the ones that go away from campus typically have a cost associated with them. The great thing is that the Furman Advantage helps fund abroad experiences including MayX courses by giving need-based scholarships for the first time you go on a program. Both the on-campus and abroad courses are very unique in their curriculum, especially the away ones which you have to apply for. Here’s an example from this year’s selection of courses.

This isn’t even the whole list but you can see that there are a ton of options and plenty of different places you can go! I went on one the May of my sophomore year to the United Kingdom, specifically Scotland and England. The program was called Medical Mysteries & Histories and was led by Dr. Victoria Turgeon in the biology department and Dr. Carolyn Day in the history department. I also did I one on campus the May of my junior year called Introduction to Biomaterials. I say this to show how truly versatile these courses are and the subjects are usually a mix and not one discipline the whole time.

This year there is mayhem because I not only applied for three MayX programs but they were all competitive, so honestly I was pretty nervous that I wouldn’t get one. Turns out I got accepted into all three!

The way this works is that you get all of your decisions on the same day and if you get more than one program you have to decide what program you want to participate in. You have two weeks from the day you were accepted to commit to a program, which is usually easy because the reality is you may only get into one and get waitlisted or not accepted to the rest, so the decision is kind of made for you unless you wait for the waitlist to get to you. My dilemma is that I loved all of the MayX programs I applied for, not expecting to get into all of them, but now I have to make a really tough decision. I’ve looking into almost everything like things to do, currency exchange rate, temperature, flight times, and even asked people which one they think I would enjoy the most (which really didn’t help because the answers have been all over the place) and still haven’t been able to decide. I have to say that this is by no means a BAD situation I am in but it is hard as I am terrible at making decisions.

If you’re reading this and plan to come to Furman (which why wouldn’t you? It’s great!) then you should most definitely do at least one MayX because they are such great programs and are so versatile in cirricdulum and location that the possiblites are all so great!

10/10 would recommend and hopefully I can reach a final decision soon.

By: Jaylon Goodwin