Common Application

08 Nov 11

English 3

Paul Kang

Common Application

Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.

For about 16 years, I was confined in a huge, solid stronghold. The thick barricade was to restrict myself to only studying in order to satisfy people’s prejudice on educational background. Good score and big school were only the absolute criteria of my thinking. I couldn’t do anything but academic works; I had no fun doing cramming; I didn’t mix well with people but thought them as mere rivals; I viewed the society and people on the basis of only educational backgrounds. Such narrow-minded nerdishness was destroyed when I joint ‘Youth Special Congress’(of which job is to improve recognition about youth and environment for growth and protection of youth). I could not only ‘realize’ my short-sight, but also ‘challenge’ against and ‘free’ from the fooling barrier through the activity.
Comparing myself to other members, I became aware of small size of my thinking and its impacts on me. Different from my whole focus on scholarly activity and name of school, their matters were on individuality, dream, social responsibility. While I mentioned my school-which is one of top schools in Korea-and brief introduction at the first meeting, they explained their own activities and hopes in YSC. And at the same time as I accepted discussions of each meeting as just a chance to develop debating skills, they tried to understand difficulties of youth with heart and seriously pondered on how to resolve the problems. Burning their eager for themselves and society, they looked happy even without ‘top school’. The fervor, the challenge was not same with the intense anxiety to keep my reputation among people. I was pursuing a socially-biased academic score, not a ‘really’ authentic desire. And ridiculously I was judging complex human being only in one aspect ‘school name.’
Shameful and anxious of sadly restricted thinking, I challenged to overcome bigoted wall surrounding me and find my real value to fuel my eager and become happy. To conquer hidebound ego, I had to throw out both my academic pride and personal dignity. To comprehend different viewpoints from mine, I shared my opinion with other members. I tried to clarify my point in discussion time and to get along well with others. The provocation cost me with severe criticism of my reasoning on policy or sometimes with degradation of myself to adjust to people’s attitude and harmonize with them. Efforts to illuminate youth problems in terms of the society let me lower and treat myself as one of many components of society. It was shocking that the world would work well without me. Not only the challenge to grasp various points of view and recognize in a big perspective, but also I did my best to discover the most precious thing to me. I made an effort to do something fitted to my aptitude and contemplate on them. I read journal magazine like ‘the Economist’ to know the flow of the world. Also I joint youth press to get the flow with my authentic experience. Breaking the barrier continued in this process because the journalist activities involved most of YSC. Challenge to stupid nerdishness and my dream precipitated the unnecessary self-esteem a lot.
Though extreme and painstaking, the destruction of decorum from academic background allowed me free from the boundary and see beauty of all things. I was no longer a stubborn academic-superiority-oriented guy but a liberal challenger who was able to view the world with various viewpoints and chase my dream. And I knew that people around me are not my rivals but helpers to teach me lessons. Lastly, I could feel the society. It’s full of interesting things and supported me lots of chances to realize my dream and be friendly with other people. For that, people should help each other and unite.
YSC was wonderful chance to demolish my limitation and savor the enjoyable life and society. Without any barricade, and with knowledge about the beauty of this world, I’m going to fly far to the world. Freely moving around the earth, I want to observe and report events. It won’t be easy but I will deal with the setbacks courageously as I did in my YSC experience. And I hope Northwestern be the midst of challenge and free life.

Journal Entreis #2

08 Nov 11
English 3
Paul Kang
Journal Entries #2

Anguish of Reading

Reading is very funny activity. It not only satisfies my curiosity about the world, but also teaches how to live the world. The more I read, the more I’m absorbed books. But in this process of devotion, some problems emerge.
First difficulty of reading is abundance of reading materials. I am interested in lots of areas: science, philosophy, international relation, foreign language, journalism, psychology, etc. And there are more books to read concerning those fields than my capacity. I start to read then I get another interest in other fields so throw out the book and pursue new books. This cycle repeats and on the result, I get many books but no intellectual satisfaction of knowing about something.
Second obstacle of reading is speed. As I mentioned, I aspire lots of books to meet my wondering on the world. Basic tool required for me is ‘speed reading’. If I can read fast, then I can feel pleased for realizing lots of things. But I’m not so good at speedy reading as well as exact reading. Even understanding organization of the contents is burdensome for me. Such unskillful is another stress for the one who desires for reading.
Reading is very enjoyable. But It’s also true that such pleasure is sometimes annoying for problems in the midst of reading : Too many things to read ant low speed to meet my greed.

Journal Entreis #1

Yongsu Cho
08 Nov 11
English 3
Paul Kang
Journal Entries #1

Wind and Sunshine

One of the most valuable things that I learned from my high school period is that sunshine is really stronger than wind. The lesson didn’t come from science class or literature class but came from relation with teachers.
During my school life, I saw many students arguing their rights to teacher. Most of the students seemed unreserved especially when the matter was from teacher’s faults or their justifiable right. But such audacity usually motivated teacher’s anger rather than solved their problems. Those situations let me know that teacher is not cold, god-like existence to be only moved by ‘logic’, but emotional human being who sometimes gets angry when faced with students’ voice to chastise teacher’s fault.
It’s men’s defensive instinct to become offensive when they are stuck with criticism. In this viewpoint, effort to get something through audacity is useless. That trying only caused clashes between them. Furthermore, it can cause emotional hatefulness which doesn’t reveal superficially but effects on other thing surreptitiously.
Other than this direct, straight strategy, soothing and then requiring is more effective. If teacher attribute the matter to oneself, then first understand their feelings and accept that ‘indirectly’(Direct acceptation can charge oneself with whole burden of the matter even it’s not related with oneself). After appeasing their emotion, ask the teachers what I want. I got what I wanted mostly through this ‘peaceful and moderate’ way. And also some teachers officially recommended this way accepting they are partly affected by emotion even when deciding official matter.
To force like hard storm motivates only anger and clashes. On the other hand, sunshine strategy is more effective dealing with humans.