Change The World(2020): Personal Structured Statement

Being born and living in a specific culture impacts who you are as a person so much. Throughout the semester, I realized who am I as a person and what I think is deeply related to me being grown up in both Korea and China and living in the U.S right now. It is not uncommon to have a person who lived in three different cultures but thinking that I’m an engineer who can communicate through three different thoughts makes me stand out little more toward the world. Even though I’m still a student who’s very unsure about his future, I believe that this trait gives me a place to contribute more to the world.

Every time I’m introduced to a new culture, I always feel the invisible barrier that splits me from it. My language skill is proficient enough to make conversation and has no issue speaking and listening to other people. However, it’s the difference in perspective, or paradigm that makes it difficult. For example, I remember the moment that I felt the most paradigm shift recently. In Korea, it is important to send and receive messages passively with the hints. If your roommate is loud and you want them to be quiet, you should not say “can you lower the voice” directly, rather, you should give them passive messages like sigh or eye contact. It is also considered rude to not being able to recognize these passive messages, which means that there is no real issue between Koreans. However, in the U.S, passively sending the message is treated as rude manners instead. You must tell them what you want from them and then discuss them to solve the problem. This is something that I had the most issue with, and still is some issue when it comes to talking to people. People with different paradigms cannot easily understand each other – Korean people will think the U.S people are rude, while U.S people will think exactly the opposite.

When I look at issues that happen around the world, they are often caused by the difference in culture and lack of proper communication. Because people have a hard time understanding each other, they rather choose to be against them instead of being with them because that’s a much easier thing to do. I became more aware of this issue as I lived in different cultures, and hoped if there was a better way to deal with this. As a person, I value meaningful work that I will achieve some point in my life, used by many people. I also hope I can be somewhat influential to other people in a good direction. Since my young age, my goal for life was to make (create) something that will be going to benefit people and make them enjoy. Though the form of this goal is not fixed, the idea will be very related to what I’ve been explaining above – making people understand each other better.

The most important value I was seeking at Olin when I first came here was the “community”, and “being like them”. I wanted to be friends with people from different cultures, and I thought that unless I am like them, it will be hard to befriend them. This was a simple miss I made – you have to understand them, respect their cultures so that people don’t think you are rude, but don’t have to be like them. However, I did not know this answer back then. I realized it’s almost impossible to neglect my cultural background when I’m communicating with other people. It was very challenging to understand people’s viewpoints sometimes, making me hard to get used to the mood. As a result, I ran away from this burden. I started being stuck inside my room for a long time, refusing to communicate with the group of freshmen people who I was getting stressed just by being with them. It’s not like those people are bad or anything – the natural mood created by this people’s culture and paradigm was something hard for me to understand and dive into.

For example, the culture where you say “what’s up?” or “how are you?” scared me so much. Nobody back in Korea started a conversation like that so suddenly. Most you would do is saying “Hi” and pass by, or wave a hand at each other. I just didn’t know how to react, and people were confused because it’s something so natural in this culture that you don’t even think that it might feel awkward to someone. Sounds funny, but I minimized time being outside of my room because I was afraid that I’ll suddenly meet a random person outside who will be going to start a random conversation. It took me some time before I realized you can still make friends without changing yourself too much. As you are trying to understand other people’s paradigm, some people will be going to understand your cultural background too. Another meaningful value I found here was the “Balance”. A good relationship can happen when both people understand each other’s culture to some extent – they do not have to fully understand and be like each other but have to know at least what seems to be rude and what seems to be nice to each other. I call this the balance of the paradigms – two paradigms can mix without interfering with each other too much.

As I learned this fact, I realized I was naturally acting as a stimulant to people at Olin. Unlike me who lived in several different cultures and are used to this “cultural shock”, several people who I met at Olin never had experience interacting with a real foreign student. During class discussions, the ideas I make can be very different because the viewpoint I have can be very different. Normal conversations about my culture can be very interesting to multiple people because they are very exotic to them. For example, my story about Korean military service was something that can easily trigger a group of people to concentrate on what I’m saying because it breaks the paradigm they had about “what should the military be like” from what they’ve seen from the U.S media. I remember the discussion I had with other people in this class about the Maasai tribe. While we were going through the conversation, we discussed the topic where the Maasai tribe is a very patriarchal society. We had a brief discussion about how equality in gender is not happening in the culture, and polygyny is a common thing for them. As we were talking, I realized that we are implying that patriarchy and polygyny as cultures that should disappear. However, I came to a thought that we are thinking too much in our perspective – What would Maasai people talk about this culture? Do we have the right to say it’s right or wrong? It was surprising that nobody was mentioning this. Instead, I realized that I can think in this way because I came from different cultures and gone through multiple cultural changes in my life – a thing where you learn your way isn’t always the right way.

Before thinking about my long term goals, one short term goal that I’m setting as a college student is to develop myself as an engineer. This might sound like a “so what?” statement, but this is very important for me. My viewpoint toward the world is that you should always be prepared. Chances barely come in the exact timing you want – it might be too early, or a little too late. So when the chance comes you have to be there with the knowledge and skills that can support yourself with the chance. For example, I remember the day when I somehow went to the “Google Design Challenge 2019” during my freshman year. I was excited, but I was not ready. All the puzzles and challenges were designed so that you need minimal coding knowledge to solve the questions, but I did not have that skill set. There were moments where I thought “only if I learned this”. However, it was too late for me to regret it at that moment since I was already in the situation. For my ultimate goal, I just have vague ideas – but I at least don’t want to regret myself for not having the skill when the time comes, so that’s why I want to develop myself more as a skilled engineer.

It is very difficult to define what a skilled engineer is because this judgment can be very personal. The first thing I can do is at least focus on college classes. They are designed so that people who follow the same track can graduate with the knowledge they will need to work on specific fields. This will be done in the next two years, or a little more if I choose to leave Olin for a semester or two. One more important thing to find out is the way to motivate me in learning new knowledge. After all the courses for this semester became online, I’ve realized that I do not feel motivated in an environment where I’m not expected to be graded strictly. However, engineering is a dynamic field where expectations on you change on yearly bases, where I always have to learn new things. Unless I find a way to drive myself to engage in learning even without external pressure, I will go through a hard time later on.

I never really felt I was a skilled or talented person. Since I was young, I always knew that I learn things fast compared to my peers, but I was always impressed at people who can do much better than me. I lived my life believing that there are always people who are better than you, and that belief is still inside my mind. However, during the last semester, I had a chance to test my talent out – the POE project. Because I was the only person who’s capable of CAD, I was in charge of designing, building, fabricating every physical part of our project. I never thought I will be able to do that, and sometimes suffered silently due to the excessive amount of stress I was getting, but I managed to achieve it by the end of the semester. At that moment, I started believing more in myself – I might not be a genius, but I have enough ability to achieve something that I want. I realized I have an environment where I can explore myself, being able to learn all this knowledge without worrying about financial issues, or other critical problems.

One thing that popped up while thinking about myself was that video game has been the core of who I am as a person. Since childhood, video games made me imagine things, socialize with friends, and motivated me into this thought of creating meaningful work in the future. Even though as I grew up the meaningful work does not just mean video games anymore, video games motivated me into learning coding language because I always wanted to make one. It might sound funny, but I will not even be in the U.S or even be at Olin if I were never interested in video games as a child.

The game industry in South Korea is often treated by the parent as an “Evil thing that prevents their children from studying”. This might sound true if you see thousands of PC cafés and millions of teenagers spending time there. However, I realized this prejudice is very wrong as I observed people living in the U.S – Korean children are forced to play games because it’s the only way to socialize with your friends. Most of the young children living in Korea is sent to private academies since as young as age 4 to 5. It might sound very unrealistic, but they are often forced by their parent to study in the private academies as long as possible, until 10 PM which is the time limit set by the law. This is not the end, because the child has to finish homework given by those academies too. This happens every day, just changing the type of private academy they are sent to – one day to the English academy, the other day to the Math academy. While doing this, a lot of children is prohibited to spend time with their peers. It is really hard to see children playing physical sports outside, like baseball or soccer, because a lot of Korean parents consider this as “waste of time”. I might sound extreme, but I remember my friend in high school baseball club getting a direct shout from his parent saying “Quit the school if you are to waste time like that”. Unnecessary competition and vanity are words to explain Korean education. Because children are banned from doing so many other activities, they found another way to socialize with their friends – video games.

I was little away from the topic for a while, but the main point I wanted to focus on was the fact that video games can act as a great platform to socialize with people even at distance. With a set of rules, nothing else really matters between the players – culture, religion, or politics those not have any meaning at this point. The way I became a friend with my first roommate at Olin was through playing the same game over the year. Even though there was a cultural barrier between us, we were able to understand each other better through the same platform. With this experience, I foresaw the possibility of the game acting as a great tool to communicate between different cultures, thus being a good introduction for people to understand each other better. For one of my challenges, I’m trying to develop a multiplayer game that can be serviced globally. To achieve this goal, I’m currently learning the Unity Engine, which is a toolkit to develop video games. Even though I’m at a development stage where I’m learning beginner level knowledge about the tool, I foresee the future where I can form my team and try to develop a game that can be meaningful to me. Just creating a game can be achieved in the short term as I’m already developing games with my high school friends, but creating a complete game that fulfills all the requirements will going to be one of my life goals.

I truly believe that a video game is a multidisciplinary piece of art. It’s not only coding that’s important, but the art, music, story, and experience are the key aspect of games. Humanities and social science often take part inside games too, in the form of economy or human behavior study. Without a proper combination of these features, video games are just a piece of self-satisfaction, not becoming a true entertainment for the users. I admit that I cannot mix all of these features alone, and that’s the reason why a team is needed. With the proper combination, I would be able to cross the border of the STEM field, into completing more multidisciplinary piece of work.

A challenge that I don’t think I will be able to go through in the short term is creating a global platform in a website or app form that people can communicate through without cultural barriers. For example, there is a lot of platforms where you can communicate with other people – like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and so on. However, none of this platform is truly global, because people tend to just stay inside their cultural fence. There can be multiple reasons why, but I think one of the biggest barriers is the language and the cultural context. I have no exact clue about how to resolve this challenge – just translating the language is not enough to explain the cultural difference. There should be something that triggers people to try understanding other cultures better, but I don’t know the way to do that naturally.

By engaging with these challenges, I hope the world to become a better place where people embrace each other instead of excluding each other. This statement is more about me explaining what I can do as an engineer who lived in different cultures and what I can try, than I can make the world a better place. As a person who thinks Korea as his background, I always confronted a lack of understanding of my culture. A lot of people consider Korea to be part of Chinese culture, even though it is different at the root level. I still remember the shock when I heard from my Chinese roommate saying “China was always able to conquer Korea, but they just didn’t” – we Koreans know from history classes how we managed to keep our independence despite being such a small country, but people outside my culture will never know about these facts! I first hoped people to just understand more about my culture. Then I realized there would be hundreds of different cultures that are experiencing a similar problem as us – people who do not have global power, easily being misunderstood and ignored by people. Will it be possible to make people understand more about this group? Is there any way to do this? That’s how I popped up with all my possible goals. By going through the goals I set above, I’ll be hoping my platforms to have a positive effect on breaking the cultural barrier that is prevalent in the world these days. Nothing important might happen. Like a lot of new games those, it might just be forgotten forever by people or never become popular. Also, my website or app might not even be published due to the difficult steps I have to go through creating a global platform. Also, I can not guarantee when this will going to happen, as I am just a college student at this point who cannot promise an exact plan of the future. However, there’s the old saying “Well begun is half done”, or “Better late than never”. Doing something that you believe to be true will be a meaningful challenge to take rather than doing nothing.