I picked this up while I was surfing in YouTube-everybody should watch this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSrAJsWvEIc
2012년 4월 22일 일요일
2012년 4월 7일 토요일
Who I Am
“Who am I?” The question popped up in my head when I was trying to write yet another college essay. It was past midnight, all the lights had been turned out, and only the soft snoring of my roommate filled the room. I had been sitting in front of the monitor for almost two hours, to draft the 10th, or maybe the 100th version of my college essay that was supposed to be touching and humorous and insightful at the same time, or in other words perfect to guarantee my admission to a top university.
My peers had written remarkable essays about the sorrow they felt towards an AIDS patient they met during voluntary service at a hospital, or the insight they gained from experimenting the “Fluid Bridge” while competing in the Korean Young Physicists’ Tournament, or the pleasure they’d felt while they were conducting the school orchestra on Beethoven’s Symphony No.9. I envied them. Their essays were so outstanding that whoever read them was moved, impressed, and forced to like the personalities of the writers. All their stories seemed to have their own unique colors, just like an ideal college essay.
On the other hand, mine didn’t make its readers laugh or cry with it. After reading some of the best essays written by students from our prestigious high school, I was anxious to “produce” something that was more than, or at least as impressive as, my friends’. I tried to decorate my life with the colors similar to those of my peers’, hoping to astonish my friends as their essays had done to me. But no matter how much effort I put into imitate others, no matter how hard I tried to invent an authentic feeling for AIDS patients or to imagine the ecstasy of conducting physical experiments or orchestras, my essays didn’t show who I was. I would always get the same response, “Hmm…the essay doesn’t really…come to me.”
That’s how I flunked the previous 9, or perhaps 99 versions. It was past midnight, and I was tired, frustrated, and running short of colors to plagiarize from. Then for the first time, ironically, the most fundamental and important question popped up in my head, “Who am I, really?”
The answer was here, all along. I am me. I don’t know a terminal AIDS patient, and I’m not a physicist or a conductor. I am someone who was unable to write a successful college essay, but nevertheless didn’t give up and is trying for his 100th time in spite of the immense fatigue and frustration he feels for sitting alone in his dark, lonely room. This was the attitude I’d adopted all along in parliamentary debates I did instead of physics; in singing at festivals instead of leading an orchestra. I am someone who was jealous of others for their talents, for their dazzling achievements, and who strived to be magnificent like them. That was the passionate personality that enabled me to claim first class-honors and receive merit scholarships.
I didn’t have to create an “artificial me,” an imaginary physicist or conductor, but to just honestly show myself: a good debater, a decent singer, and an excelling student. I didn’t have to be someone else. I should have been proud of my own colors and painted my essays with them, which I am doing right now.
And even if this 100th version still doesn’t come to the readers, I know I’ll be sitting back at my chair to draft the 101th. The relentless ardor, the jealousy generated from a sense of inferiority, the desire towards perfection motivated by that jealousy, the fatigue and frustration I’m feeling at the moment, and the confidence I’ve restored in myself as I’m finishing this essay.
This is who I am.
My peers had written remarkable essays about the sorrow they felt towards an AIDS patient they met during voluntary service at a hospital, or the insight they gained from experimenting the “Fluid Bridge” while competing in the Korean Young Physicists’ Tournament, or the pleasure they’d felt while they were conducting the school orchestra on Beethoven’s Symphony No.9. I envied them. Their essays were so outstanding that whoever read them was moved, impressed, and forced to like the personalities of the writers. All their stories seemed to have their own unique colors, just like an ideal college essay.
On the other hand, mine didn’t make its readers laugh or cry with it. After reading some of the best essays written by students from our prestigious high school, I was anxious to “produce” something that was more than, or at least as impressive as, my friends’. I tried to decorate my life with the colors similar to those of my peers’, hoping to astonish my friends as their essays had done to me. But no matter how much effort I put into imitate others, no matter how hard I tried to invent an authentic feeling for AIDS patients or to imagine the ecstasy of conducting physical experiments or orchestras, my essays didn’t show who I was. I would always get the same response, “Hmm…the essay doesn’t really…come to me.”
That’s how I flunked the previous 9, or perhaps 99 versions. It was past midnight, and I was tired, frustrated, and running short of colors to plagiarize from. Then for the first time, ironically, the most fundamental and important question popped up in my head, “Who am I, really?”
The answer was here, all along. I am me. I don’t know a terminal AIDS patient, and I’m not a physicist or a conductor. I am someone who was unable to write a successful college essay, but nevertheless didn’t give up and is trying for his 100th time in spite of the immense fatigue and frustration he feels for sitting alone in his dark, lonely room. This was the attitude I’d adopted all along in parliamentary debates I did instead of physics; in singing at festivals instead of leading an orchestra. I am someone who was jealous of others for their talents, for their dazzling achievements, and who strived to be magnificent like them. That was the passionate personality that enabled me to claim first class-honors and receive merit scholarships.
I didn’t have to create an “artificial me,” an imaginary physicist or conductor, but to just honestly show myself: a good debater, a decent singer, and an excelling student. I didn’t have to be someone else. I should have been proud of my own colors and painted my essays with them, which I am doing right now.
And even if this 100th version still doesn’t come to the readers, I know I’ll be sitting back at my chair to draft the 101th. The relentless ardor, the jealousy generated from a sense of inferiority, the desire towards perfection motivated by that jealousy, the fatigue and frustration I’m feeling at the moment, and the confidence I’ve restored in myself as I’m finishing this essay.
This is who I am.
2012년 4월 6일 금요일
Why Penn
Why Penn Prompt: 'Considering both the specific undergraduate school to which you are applying and the unique aspects of the University of Pennsylvania, what do you hope to learn from and contribute to the Penn community? (Please answer in one page, approximately 500 words)
When I was young, I used to aspire after my father, as boys usually do in their childhoods. My father was a university professor at Public Health Policy and Management, but I wasn’t old enough to fully understand what his profession was about, so I comprehended it as something similar to medical science. Therefore, when he had answers to my questions on the political scandals of the Korean President and his private business, or to the scientific debates on the intensifying global warming, I was astonished.
So one day, I asked him, “Dad, how do you know about all these different stuff? Aren’t you someone like…a doctor?” That was when he explained to me that his job wasn’t related to medical practice, but it was to setting the blueprints of Korea’s public healthcare policies. When I asked him what that had to do with knowing things about engineering or biochemistry or economics or contemporary issues, he replied, “If you want to propose a healthcare policy, you have to be more than just a doctor. You have to possess a certain degree of knowledge about medical science. You have to understand the economic and political factors involved with your proposal.” And then with a smile, he added, “But it isn’t just my work that requires comprehensive knowledge, Hyung Seok. Whatever you do in the future, it is important for you to try to understand multiple different aspects of the world, because it will eventually help you in many ways. If you want to become a big person, you have to grasp the big picture of the society.”
Growing up, I heeded his advice, trying to diversify my interests in numerous subjects. Apart from political science or history, my personal favorites, I tried to devote myself to mathematics and science too, my least favorites. And although I wasn’t good at everything I tried, I could prove my father’s beliefs true: knowing about the biomedical causes of the mad cow disease helped me deeply engage in class debates; understanding the economic concepts of supply and demand furthered my interpretation of the Great Depression or the Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis. Then, comprehensive knowledge in different areas led to a more profound understanding in each of them, and profundity to insight. Dispersing my interests really did help me to become a much better person.
This is the reason I believe the Interdisciplinary Dual Degree and Minors Programs in University of Pennsylvania would be my perfect fits. Unlike many other institutions, U.Penn encourages me to explore a variety of academic possibilities, which I’m confident that I would like and excel at. Whether it’s learning about Business Management in Wharton, Asian American Studies in School of Arts&Science, or even Urban Real Estate and Development as a minor course, I believe they will all contribute to my improvement as a person. Conversely, my insatiable greed towards studying different subjects would also contribute to the all-around development of the Penn community. If this university shares similar ideas with my father, and wished to tell its pupils “Don’t be confined to a single major; it’s just one small part of the big picture,” I am its model applicant.
When I was young, I used to aspire after my father, as boys usually do in their childhoods. My father was a university professor at Public Health Policy and Management, but I wasn’t old enough to fully understand what his profession was about, so I comprehended it as something similar to medical science. Therefore, when he had answers to my questions on the political scandals of the Korean President and his private business, or to the scientific debates on the intensifying global warming, I was astonished.
So one day, I asked him, “Dad, how do you know about all these different stuff? Aren’t you someone like…a doctor?” That was when he explained to me that his job wasn’t related to medical practice, but it was to setting the blueprints of Korea’s public healthcare policies. When I asked him what that had to do with knowing things about engineering or biochemistry or economics or contemporary issues, he replied, “If you want to propose a healthcare policy, you have to be more than just a doctor. You have to possess a certain degree of knowledge about medical science. You have to understand the economic and political factors involved with your proposal.” And then with a smile, he added, “But it isn’t just my work that requires comprehensive knowledge, Hyung Seok. Whatever you do in the future, it is important for you to try to understand multiple different aspects of the world, because it will eventually help you in many ways. If you want to become a big person, you have to grasp the big picture of the society.”
Growing up, I heeded his advice, trying to diversify my interests in numerous subjects. Apart from political science or history, my personal favorites, I tried to devote myself to mathematics and science too, my least favorites. And although I wasn’t good at everything I tried, I could prove my father’s beliefs true: knowing about the biomedical causes of the mad cow disease helped me deeply engage in class debates; understanding the economic concepts of supply and demand furthered my interpretation of the Great Depression or the Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis. Then, comprehensive knowledge in different areas led to a more profound understanding in each of them, and profundity to insight. Dispersing my interests really did help me to become a much better person.
This is the reason I believe the Interdisciplinary Dual Degree and Minors Programs in University of Pennsylvania would be my perfect fits. Unlike many other institutions, U.Penn encourages me to explore a variety of academic possibilities, which I’m confident that I would like and excel at. Whether it’s learning about Business Management in Wharton, Asian American Studies in School of Arts&Science, or even Urban Real Estate and Development as a minor course, I believe they will all contribute to my improvement as a person. Conversely, my insatiable greed towards studying different subjects would also contribute to the all-around development of the Penn community. If this university shares similar ideas with my father, and wished to tell its pupils “Don’t be confined to a single major; it’s just one small part of the big picture,” I am its model applicant.
2012년 4월 4일 수요일
“Don’t cry.” I order myself. “I shouldn’t cry.” I assure again. But whenever I watch the terminally ill patient in “My Love beside Me” say his final goodbyes to his lover, or Alan Shore deliver his heartfelt speech in “Boston Legal,” or the fringe ski-jump national representative team claim its championship through painful endeavors in the 2007 Torino Olympics, I am unable to hold back my tears, again. Every time after I shed my tears, I become abashed at my namby-pambyism, but I can’t help it; I’m just moved too easily by heart-moving stories.
Like many other countries, Korea had a taboo against boys crying. There is an old Korean saying, “A boy is allowed to cry just three times in life. When he is born, when his mother passes away, and when his country perishes.” As ridiculous as it sounds, the three-time crying idea represented the deep-rooted and popular bias against boys, and “crying” in times other than the three was considered unmanly, or even deserving mockery.
Yet, despite being born with Korean blood, I cried a lot more than my allowed three chances. And yes, sometimes I cried because I had broken a bone or two, but most of times there was something more than physical pain behind my tears. It was this inexplicable sense of overwhelming that always made me cry. Sometimes it was sympathy, and sometimes it was extreme happiness; however, no matter in which shape or form it came, such overwhelming always brought a certain sort of awe and admiration along with it. The unconditional love between the soon-to-be-dead and his lover in “My Love beside Me,” or the profundity or genuineness of Alan’s speech in “Boston Legal,” or the perseverance of the team members in the Torino Olympics all stirred up a sense of marvel inside me. I was impressed by such people, fictional or nonfictional, because they displayed great qualities that could move the human heart, such as sacrifice, honesty, and strenuous efforts.
And slowly, impression triggered imitation. Whenever I encountered some great challenge or was discouraged by some terrible source of fear and sorrow, I would substitute myself with that Alan Shore or the Olympic Gold Medalist and urge myself to do what they would have done. When it was my turn to make a speech in the grand finals of a debate championship, I would tell myself, “Would Alan, the greatest attorney in America, ever be afraid to deliver a speech in front of a little pack of audience?” After I concluded the answer is, of course, no, I bravely marched to the podium. Or, when I was afraid that I would screw up my last shot in a basketball game, I would think, “I’m the hero of this game; I’m the gold medalist in Torino!” Unfortunately, a lot of speeches I gave were lousy, and even more shoots bounced off the rims. Nonetheless, it was the successful rest that mattered to me: some of the speeches were exceptional, and few of my last-minute shoots were the buzzer-beaters of the game. Then sometimes, my achievements would present that particular sense of overwhelming, and I would cry. The tears I shed were tears of immeasurable joy and happiness, and they were rapturous enough to make me ignore the embarrassment that would eventually come.
Everybody has his or her own secret pleasure in life, something that replenishes the vitality worn off from daily boredoms and becomes the motivation to try harder. For me, that pleasure is the ecstasy I can feel only when I am overwhelmed by myself; maybe because I’m truly proud of what I’ve accomplished or grateful for what I could do. Often, when I tried to pursue my secret delight, I had to pluck up the courage to confront challenges and make sacrifices, imagining what my personal heroes would have done in my situation. And that has made a great difference, allowing me to rise up as the national debate champion, a decent basketball player, and a much better person.
And now, recognizing what crying has brought into my life, I am thankful of the moments when I had burst into tears. The taboo still exists in my country, but I am no longer ashamed. In fact, I love to cry now, especially when I am proudly overwhelmed with my life. Some might say, “You’re too weak.” Too weak? Well, I am weak to my sort of stuff, but I’m glad that I am, because that wanting to cry has made me much stronger in many ways.
Like many other countries, Korea had a taboo against boys crying. There is an old Korean saying, “A boy is allowed to cry just three times in life. When he is born, when his mother passes away, and when his country perishes.” As ridiculous as it sounds, the three-time crying idea represented the deep-rooted and popular bias against boys, and “crying” in times other than the three was considered unmanly, or even deserving mockery.
Yet, despite being born with Korean blood, I cried a lot more than my allowed three chances. And yes, sometimes I cried because I had broken a bone or two, but most of times there was something more than physical pain behind my tears. It was this inexplicable sense of overwhelming that always made me cry. Sometimes it was sympathy, and sometimes it was extreme happiness; however, no matter in which shape or form it came, such overwhelming always brought a certain sort of awe and admiration along with it. The unconditional love between the soon-to-be-dead and his lover in “My Love beside Me,” or the profundity or genuineness of Alan’s speech in “Boston Legal,” or the perseverance of the team members in the Torino Olympics all stirred up a sense of marvel inside me. I was impressed by such people, fictional or nonfictional, because they displayed great qualities that could move the human heart, such as sacrifice, honesty, and strenuous efforts.
And slowly, impression triggered imitation. Whenever I encountered some great challenge or was discouraged by some terrible source of fear and sorrow, I would substitute myself with that Alan Shore or the Olympic Gold Medalist and urge myself to do what they would have done. When it was my turn to make a speech in the grand finals of a debate championship, I would tell myself, “Would Alan, the greatest attorney in America, ever be afraid to deliver a speech in front of a little pack of audience?” After I concluded the answer is, of course, no, I bravely marched to the podium. Or, when I was afraid that I would screw up my last shot in a basketball game, I would think, “I’m the hero of this game; I’m the gold medalist in Torino!” Unfortunately, a lot of speeches I gave were lousy, and even more shoots bounced off the rims. Nonetheless, it was the successful rest that mattered to me: some of the speeches were exceptional, and few of my last-minute shoots were the buzzer-beaters of the game. Then sometimes, my achievements would present that particular sense of overwhelming, and I would cry. The tears I shed were tears of immeasurable joy and happiness, and they were rapturous enough to make me ignore the embarrassment that would eventually come.
Everybody has his or her own secret pleasure in life, something that replenishes the vitality worn off from daily boredoms and becomes the motivation to try harder. For me, that pleasure is the ecstasy I can feel only when I am overwhelmed by myself; maybe because I’m truly proud of what I’ve accomplished or grateful for what I could do. Often, when I tried to pursue my secret delight, I had to pluck up the courage to confront challenges and make sacrifices, imagining what my personal heroes would have done in my situation. And that has made a great difference, allowing me to rise up as the national debate champion, a decent basketball player, and a much better person.
And now, recognizing what crying has brought into my life, I am thankful of the moments when I had burst into tears. The taboo still exists in my country, but I am no longer ashamed. In fact, I love to cry now, especially when I am proudly overwhelmed with my life. Some might say, “You’re too weak.” Too weak? Well, I am weak to my sort of stuff, but I’m glad that I am, because that wanting to cry has made me much stronger in many ways.
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