Chain Writing - Love Letter

Chain Writing - <Love Letter>

          "It was March 17th when I first saw you. That was the time when I just arrived in American and couldn't speak English except the simple words like 'yes' or 'cool. School was a torture every day. I couldn't understand a thing that teachers talked about. I couldn't hang out with anyone because there was nobody next to me. I was lost in a middle of nowhere. I felt abandoned and alone. That's when I saw you, next to me, shining as brightly as a star upon a black sky.

          Yes, I have a crush on you. Every single word from your mouth was beautiful, even though I couldn't understand much of it. I was quite sure you were saying something pretty. I strongly desired to listen and speak to you. However, the obstacle of language segregated us so firmly. I couldn't speak a word to you because I was afraid that you'd avoid me.

          I wanted to tell you many things. I wanted to tell you that you smile lit the darkest corners of my life. I wanted to tell you that my heart was yours. But the only thing I was able to say to you was just "yes" and "cool". Because of this language barrier, all I could do was to wait for that day I'm able to communicate with you fully, and just watch you pass by the lockers every day. A year passed and my patience had reached its limit. I started the morning with a thumping heart.

          You are beautiful, as usual, and I am no more than a coward. You stayed next to me and helped me to go through everything I suffered at school. However, I now have the courage. And today is the day. I am here, behind you." she said, as she read through my letter.

            Behind her, with my heart thumping, face red as a tomato, I held my breath as she turned towards me......

Asking a Girl Out - Short Story mixed with some personal experience

<Asking a girl out>

“Ha ha” “Oh Too bad” “Hey, look at that.” “Man, that’s really wrong, lol.” Laughter and jeering was the only sound it could here. Everybody was looking at me, giggling, laughing, and pointing. I couldn’t do anything but laugh out like them. But still, inside, I could see myself burning up with embarrassment, wanting to get out of that place as fast as I could.

     As we live through our lives, we experience many embarrassing moments. Some of them come from the choice of inappropriate words, others come from silly, unintentional actions like farting or… messing up your first try of asking a girl out.

     “Today we are going to make a French toast in a group of two. Group one is John and Ashley, group two is Austin and Jessica, group three is Jun and Aida…” That was how I met her the first time. In the cooking class, making French toasts. She had a beautiful blonde hair that could be recognized 100 steps away, perfectly balanced nose and eyes, with a smile that can make any depressed person happy. If it was only for that, I wouldn’t have liked her that much.

“Jun, that’s not how you do it. Maybe you misunderstood the instructions. Here, let me help you out a bit.”

She repeated this more than 10 times in 1 hour, cooking a very simple food called French toast. But she never showed any sign of annoyance or frustration.

“I’m sorry Aida. I not good at English and… can’t understand or speak English well.”

     “(smiling) It’s fine. I had the same problem when I first came here from Sweden. If you don’t understand something don’t just stand there but ask me!”

     She was the first person who reached out a hand for me, a stupid Asian boy who couldn’t speak or understand the English at all. And that was the only thing needed to make me fall in love with her.

Even though I really liked her, I couldn’t do anything because I wasn’t in a position to ask anyone out. I was short, pimply, and stupid. Only thing I could do was to watch her from far away, and promise myself that one day, I would ask her out.

    That one day didn’t come soon. It took me 1 year and a half to consider myself to be sufficient enough to ask Aida out. At that time, I was taller, less pimply, the vice-president of the student council, and the main player of the basketball team. I was fully adjusted to U.S and could understand English very well along with speaking it fluently. With confidence, I planned my move on the Valentine’s Day.

     “All right students, please turn your books to page 37…” Nothing came into my ears after that. Only thing in mind was how I going to confess in the lunchtime. The time passed teasingly fast. Soon, I found myself 50 steps away from Aida with head blank and shivering with nervousness.

     Squeezing up the last bit of courage, I went up to Aida, and stood in front of her until everyone around me was staring. My head was spinning and I couldn’t look anything but my feet. Then I thought ‘Gosh! You can do this man!’ then said,

     “Aida, I’ve liked you since I first saw you. Can you come to the dance party with me tonight?” Nothing could be heard except the sound of my heartbeat. Blood was gushing up to my face. I wanted to see what kind of face Aida was making but didn’t have enough courage to look up. Everyone’s attention was on Aida’s reply. Just before the concentration was going to pop, Aida opened her mouth and said,

    “Um…I’m so sorry Jun, but Jack already asked me out…and… I said yes. Maybe next time…” That was enough. I could feel my legs get loose. I could hear all the laughing, booing, jeering, and the sound of sympathy. Only thing I could do was to smile shyly, telling Aida,

     “Hey, it’s fine. Really, it’s fine.”

But inside, my heart was bursting with embarrassment.

Slowly, I turned around and walked away, defeated, humiliated, and sorrowful.

Passion and Creativity

Passion and Creativity

             “Hey! What did you get for the score?” “Is this right?” “No, the answer for this is number 3!” “Oh, no!” These are the similar sentences and sound that is heard in the classroom every time after an exam. As I heard this over and over again, I began to think why they are so clinging to the tests that are all over. Of course, scores are important. Wait, are they important at all? Than what is important? What do we earn from good scores? Why are we studying in the first place? I had these questions for a long time in my head but couldn’t get clear answers. However, Ken Robinson cleared everything with his talk in TED. Out of all the talk, there were two sentences that cleared my head the most – one about mistakes and another one about universities.

             First, “And we’re now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make” said Mr. Robinson. I couldn’t agree more. Ever since I was in elementary school, I was taught of the ‘right answers’. There were no other answers except the ones that the teachers told. As this process continued through middle school, the idea of ‘one right answer’ came to be a restriction that bound me down from thinking more than what I was told to be right. Every time I tried to propose something different than the answer, it was considered to be ‘mistakes’ and received a punishment called ‘bad scores on the test’. As I took more tests, these mistakes turned out to be the worst thing I could do. However, are these mistakes ‘wrong’? I don’t think so. In my opinion, mistakes are what generate development. Through our mistakes, we learn how to avoid it and think about a better way.  Mistakes cause us to analyze and ponder over the problems. On the other hand, being taught about one right answer causes us not to think, only to memorize. Over time, this memorization of answers that public education gives restricts our creative thinking and imagination, bringing no progress at all.

             Second, “If you think of it, the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance” said Mr. Robinson. He is absolutely right. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford… we all hear about how great are these top and prestigious universities around the globe. After that, we hear how awesome and successful it is to attend to such universities. However, is being accepted to one of the top universities around the world the only way to define ourselves successful? I think not. There are numerous people that our society defines as ‘successful’ who didn’t graduate top universities and same number of people that our society defines ‘failed’ who attended top universities. Society defines people successful when they attain certain amount of income and earn respect from people around them. Although that may be true for some people, in my opinion, being successful is being happy with our lives. Of course, it is true that there’s more chance of being happy with much income and respect. Still, money and popularity doesn’t guarantee anyone anything. I think doing what you can put your best passion into can guarantee a happy life. Without passion, you will be bored or easily frustrated and even get stress from what you are doing sooner or later. Unfortunately, our public education doesn’t give us much chance to search over what we are passionate about. Public education is all about studying and going to universities. However, allowing time to find out what we are truly passionate about is the only way to let us grow up to what we want to be and bring about great developments, as Ken Robinson mentioned in Gillian Lynne episode.

             As some readers are reading this essay, they might think “so what?” Mr. Robinson did an excellent job on pointing out what kind of problems that public education has, but never gave any solutions to the actual problem. Come to think of it, it is our job to find the solutions. In my opinion, those who have to change in order to solve the problem that mentioned in the paragraph above are the parents. Most parents share the same ideas with the public education since they went through that kind of education as a child. It’s the parents who force their children to do what children don’t really want to do and it’s the parents who emphasize the importance of receiving good grades to go to good universities. Everywhere in our education, parents are there to restrict and bind us down. Some parents may not, but most of them do. We need to break their paradigm. The education that our parents went through may have required only one answers and good universities, those are not true in our generation. In our generation, what we need is creativity and passion. We need creativity that drives us forward outside of the same, old box and need the passion that can keep us going no matter how difficult our job is. Parents have to change in order for us to attain creativity and passion.

             As we live through the 21^st century, we are flooded with the change of educational paradigm. Only few decades ago, getting the answers right and going to good universities could guarantee people satisfactory life. However, those kinds of things don’t happen these days. The 21^st century society requires us to have both creativity and passion - creativity for innovation and passion for devotion to the work. Unfortunately, public education today is blocking the students away from those qualities. It is doing so by having only one right answer and by being only focused for the university entrance. As Ken Robinson mentioned, this must change. Not only the parents, but students must change too. We must search thoroughly about what we are passionate about and try to think outside the box. We must remember, public education don’t form our intelligence – it only aids us form it. With our efforts, combined with the aid from public education, we will be able to change. Through that change, we will earn two things – creativity and passion – two ingredients that can drive us forward today.

September 23, 2011
10b4 111080
You Jun Seung

Morning Exercise

Morning Exercise

 

             “Head! One! Head! Two! Wrist! One! Wrist! Two!” mixture of breathless shouts, occasional outbursts of desperate mumbles and many sleepy grumbles can be heard in the gym. Correspondent to the shouts, about a hundred of bamboo swords come down, some of them stopping at the right place, but mostly missing it. From Monday to Friday, 6:30 through 7:00 in the morning, KMLA students do morning exercises. No matter what exercise you do, it is all same that waking up around 6:00 in the morning everyday to do exercises is a very painful procedure.

             Morning exercise counts as a necessary course, which makes us to attend it despite the hardships. Going to morning exercise every day, we always complain about the cruelty of it and dream what we can do if we don’t have morning exercises. Necessity of morning exercise was questioned ever since it was created. Most students despise it and pray every morning that they don’t have one. This ‘feels’ true. We can feel it through dozing in the classes or going to courts.

             However, despite the general trend, some people argue that morning exercises aren’t as unnecessary as others say. They claim that morning exercises give us some positive effects. Through continuous exercise, we make a habit of sleeping early as we can since it is impossible not to doze in the classes with 3~4 hours of sleep. This habit leads us to manage our time compactly as possible. Loaded with tremendous amount of homework, we always fight against time to gain as much sleep as possible. Also, morning exercise provides a good chance to exercise for students who doesn’t do any sport activities. It helps us to set a periodic and un-squandering life in KMLA, so they say.

             Considering such criticisms, we cannot deny that morning exercises are durable if we don’t let any IR or self-period time slip by. However, morning exercises cause us more than physical pain. For one, morning exercise is one of the major causes of conflict between roommates. Usually, there’s at least one student in every room who doesn’t wake up so fast. Other roommates wake him up since missing morning exercise will cause 3 penalty points. Sadly, shaking off a sweet lure of sleep is difficult for any student. Sometimes other roommates forget and miss waking other roommate/s because they are late or too sleepy. Done intended or not, events like this stir distrust and discord in the room.

             Also, ironically, morning exercise is the main reason we let our precious time slip by. Since it is crucial for our studies to not doze during the classes, we endure beyond our strength to stay awake. However, staying awake doesn’t fill up the lacking hours of sleep. Inevitably, we satisfy our body with rest in IR periods or self study time. This pushes us to do assignments until late in the night, thus causing another day without enough sleep and makes a continuous cycle.  

             Unfortunately, we must admit that absence of morning exercise won’t fully satisfy our desire to sleep and similar cycle will appear. Despite that, pain from morning exercise is too much to ignore. Thus, it is impossible to get rid of morning exercise but it can be tried to make some improvements in current system. For one, the can be a ‘save my soul’ policy. Even for the most diligent student, there at least one day in 2 weeks where all the assignments, papers, and presentations are due. We can make a policy to let students to miss morning exercise once every two weeks. In this way, students can keep up with the classes and sustain a rhythmic life even though they stayed up late.

             Morning exercise is a double-edged sword which can be productive or painful Take a moment to think which side of the sword you are on, a thought that result seems so clear yet unavoidable. Without our efforts nothing can be improved. We need to show the school that we can take on the new policy, whatever it is. Let us remember, the revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.

What KMLA means to me

Up

            “Don’t get disappointed even though you get rejected. You tried your best.” That’s what my mom said right before checking the result for final selection in KMLA entrance examination. I said yes. However, that was not true. First, I have not tried my best, which I was regretting at that time. Second, I would be more than just disappointed. Ever since I began my journey towards KMLA, I have never thought of going to high schools except KMLA. With utmost luck, I was accepted to Korean Minjok Leadership Academy.

             But why did I want to be accepted to KMLA? Was it good college? Or was it fame and admiration from the people? It was dream; a dream to be a person like Steve Jobs or Barak Obama, a person who can change the world. To achieve my dream, it was necessary to study in global universities, meeting various people from all over the world and taking on their different ideas and characteristics. KMLA was one way to achieve that; actually, the best way. And that’s what KMLA means to me - a wing. KMLA is a wing that can take me to the land of more possibility to achieve my goal, and also a step, that must be taken to reach the next floor – global university.

             However, ‘wing’ itself can’t describe KMLA enough for me. Despite the fact I was accepted to KMLA, I was disappointed at myself for not trying my best even though I longed to be a KMLA student. I was accepted because I was lucky, not because of my intelligence or any other qualities to be accepted. KMLA provided me with a chance, a chance to prove myself to ‘myself’. I wish to show myself that I achieved what I hoped for due to efforts, not luck. By succeeding to meet my goals in competitive school like KMLA, I’d able to prove myself.

             A wing and a chance to soar up, to reach the expectation – to be a man who can change the world – that’s what KMLA means to me.

My Writing Style

111080 You Jun Seung 10b4

My Writing Style

          As I sit right in front of my computer to write an essay about my writing style, I’m pretty stuck. I’ve never, ever have thought about my writing this seriously at all. Of course, I thought about ‘what’ I was going to write about, but never ‘in what way’ I’m going to write it down. Still, I can find some similarities between my writings.

          The first similar characteristic is that I write as if I’m telling someone a story. For example, in the sentences “Tick, tock, tick tock…” Sound of the clock seemed to retreat from consciousness rapidly. I sleepily looked up at, and checked the time – it was 3:30 A.M. I looked down again. My ‘Word Smart’ was open. Every week, in English class, I had this horrible vocabulary quiz,” from my autobiography, we can clear see the characteristic. Some people will say “you write as if you’re telling a story because it’s an autobiography”. That is true. However, there are many ways to write down autobiography such as monologue. I use this technique since it helps the readers to feel close to my writing. If I write my work with just hard sentences, readers won’t be able to feel the same thing I wanted to describe about.

          The second similar characteristic is that I like to put it sounds to elaborate the situation. Let’s compare the sentences “Head! One! Head! Two! Wrist! One! Wrist! Two!” mixture of breathless shouts, occasional outbursts of desperate mumbles and many sleepy grumbles can be heard in the gym” and “Hey! hey! Here! Pass!” Even from far end of the field, players’ call for the pass could be heard. Their rough breaths, ever moving legs, and passionate shouts aimed for only one thing – a goal.” As you would have already found out, all of the examples that I presented starts with a ‘sound’. The first one starts with “tick tock”, the second one starts with “Head! One!” and the last one starts with “Hey! Here!” I use this kind of writing technique (even though there’s not much to be called a technique) in order to grab the reader’s attention. Instead of starting my writing with some boring statement like my thesis statement, I like to have a hook. Out of all the hooks possible, I use the sound because the sound helps the reader easily imagine and configure the situation that I’m talking about my writing. For example, in the first example, the readers can easily guess that I’m doing some urgent work late in the night by just reading “Tick, tock, tick tock…” Sound of the clock seemed to retreat from consciousness rapidly.”

          Lastly, as this whole writing shows, I’m only able to write the organized “first, second, third” essay unless I’m writing an autobiography. I’d really like to be out of this official TOEFL form of writing style, but I’ve never thought much about other ways to get my essay organized. I've tried some different styles to present my idea in a organized way, but it just didn't seem smooth. In order to break such boring form of writing, I intend to try various new types of writings. So far in my life, I've written tens of opinion essays (which all follows "first,second third" form) and very few autobiography, but nothing more. I hope to write stories, speeches, journals, and other genre of writing.

           I believe that I have a far way to go in order to present a good piece of writing. Since this was the first time writing about my ‘style’, I hope to keep upgrading my good styles but fix those that are bad. Moreover, as I mentioned in the fourth paragraph, I will write down more various form of writings to improve my work. To do this, I'm planning to post my writings (even though it's not a homework) here in the blog and see what I can do to upgrade my style. So far, none of my essays were able to persuade me to think of it as a great piece of writing. I head for a day when I will get impressed by my writing. I hope that day will come soon.