Ben X

             In every group in our society we find someone “out of” the group. They fail to join the others in the group and always tend to be alone. It seems almost impossible to prevent those “outsiders” spring up, but there are differences between those who are “alone” and those who are bullied.

 

In the movie Ben X, there is a boy who is bullied by his classmates because of his autism. He is bullied so badly that he considers quitting school even though his grades are good. Looking other students laugh, making fun of his being confused with his pants pulled down by the mean boys, I thought of a girl in my middle school who was bullied badly by boys.

 

Her “reason” for being bullied was her economic situation. When the boys found out that the economic situation of her family was not very good, they started making fun of it. Their mischief became severer and severer that they even spit on her hair or kicked her with their feet. It took almost the whole year to get over, even with the help of the girls in the same class. It must have been a terrible, traumatic experience to her that she would never forget throughout her life. After witnessing that, I have always been against bullying, even though those who bully always say that it is for “fun” or that they have a “reason.”—nothing is for fun when the one who is experiencing it doesn’t feel fun, and nothing can be a reason to bully someone.

 

I do not think that it is possible to prevent someone being out of the group. Though it might sound inhumane, it is a natural tendency of humans to find someone who doesn’t fit in to the group. Yet, it is possible to prevent bullying. In the movie, we see no concrete and realistic solution searched to prevent Ben from being bullied. The teacher only yells the boys to stop, but doesn’t come up with any fundamental approach to the problem. This is same for some of his classmates who pity him. Only when Ben decided to shock people by coming up with a powerful, persuasive solution did the problem seemed to be solved. Ben imagines committing a suicide every day. He even attempts to do it, but realizes that it would not make any change, and changes his plan. Ben decides to pretend that he committed a suicide, and videotaped it. The video was screened in front of the entire school, which made everybody feel sorry and guilty, and then he revealed that actually he had not died.

 

Imagine that you bullied someone for fun and he suffered so much that he committed suicide. Is that still fun? Ben said he learned to “die without quitting” and to “quit without dying.” It was a fortunate solution in that he didn’t commit suicide. We should always keep in mind not only not to bully others but have interest and care for those like Ben, coming up with clever, fundamental approach to save them from the “hell” they are in.

 

Do Koreans Eat Poo?

Logging into Facebook, I read a message on my wall all the way from New Zealand.  A small picture showing a blonde guy wearing a soccer uniform is asking me if I still “eat poo.” I laugh, and reply that indeed I do, and I still love it. This is an inside joke if there ever was one, and I hope our emoticons make that obvious. As silly as it sounds, this inside joke taught me a lot not so many years ago.

 

It was at age 11 when I left Korea all by myself, heading to Christchurch, New Zealand. It was the first time in my life to stay alone so far away from my parents. I was excited, and everything started wonderfully. The beautiful house I stayed in had a blue roof and walls made of red bricks. There was green grass next to a large garden full of flowers. More importantly, my homestay family was welcoming and extremely kind.  Everything was so wonderful…. until I went to school.

 

 On the first day, I realized that nobody wanted to play with a little Asian girl who hadn’t yet mastered English. During “tea time,” I accidentally ate my lunch, thinking it was lunch time. No one told me that I was mistaken. In P.E. class, no one told me where the tee ball field was. I was the last to arrive, and I had to use a left-handed glove that was left last.  Last, just like me. I had no clue. The first weeks were the most sorrowful days in my 11 years of life, and I felt like a fish out of water.

 
      But time passed, and I was finally getting used to things. I didn’t have “friends,” but some of the girls in my class started playing with me. More importantly, the mean boys   became bored of exploiting my lack of English. But at the same time, I was missing the familiarity of Korea and “home sweet home.” I told my homestay mother, who was Korean, that I was sick of eating sandwiches every day. I wanted to eat Korean food for lunch. She happily made Jajang-bab, a traditional dish made of rice and black bean sauce. When I opened my lunch box the next day, my heart throbbed with delight.
 
     “EWWW. DO KOREANS EAT POO?”

     Instant horror. The mean boys had just found a new joke. The blonde guy who liked pulling my hair was insane with laughter. His gang circled around me and started to snicker at my delicious food. I tried to ignore them and started eating. But I couldn’t help bursting into tears when I heard the following: “Ewwwwwwww!!! She’s eating poo!” I had to stop eating and run to the bathroom.

 
     That day, I told the teacher that I felt sick and skipped P.E. class. In the empty classroom, I ate my lunch alone secretly, still crying. As I swallowed the last of my Jajang-bab, I decided I’d have to strategize and adjust, but never back down. I went home, thanked my homestay mom, and requested the same lunch for the rest of the week. I made a firm decision that no matter what, I would eat my lunch with the happiest face I could make, as if I was eating the most delicious food in the world. And I was.
 
             After a few days of gritting my teeth, trying to believe the advice that “boys were just boys” and maybe not so mean, the boys seemed to lose some enjoyment making fun of the “poo eating” as before. It was then that I dared that blonde boy to try some “poo.” I needed to screw up all of my courage to ask him so, and fortunately he accepted the challenge. “This poo is delicious!” he’d announced. More laughs, and the joke was no longer on me. It became our joke. For me, that was an apology.

             Often, it is better to laugh instead of cry, even if boys could be really stupid sometimes. I’m glad that blonde boy learned something that day. We both did, and we both still remember Jajang-bab fondly. I click the “Like” button, knowing I’ll have to remember that lesson again as life goes on.

Outliers

     Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell shows a quite realistic viewpoint about success. It emphasizes the importance of hard work, mentioning "the rule of thumb" or "the 10000 hours rule", but at the same time, it also stresses the importance of luck, to be in the right place at the right time. Every single chapter has an episode that shows such thought of the author. Of all, what comes to my head the most is chapter 9, Marita's Bargain.
     The chapter talks about an education system called KIPP. This is a experimental public school education that took place in mid 1990s. Under KIPP, students are expected to work much more than normal students. KIPP class start at 7:25am and they all do a course called thinking skills until 7:45am. They do 90 min of English, 90 min of math everyday. Everyone does orchestra and they leave at 7:oopm. In this way, their learning time is 50-60% more than traditional public school student. In Saturday, they come from 9-1:00 pm and during summer, it is 8-2:00pm. In order to reach school by 7:25 am, kids wake up at 5:45 am and after coming back from school, they study for 3 hours to do their homework. The students showed brilliant advance in mathematics, and this also worked in poor neighborhood in Bronx, but it turned out that during summer, rich kids learned way better than those in the poor neighborhood.
     This actually reminded me of my school, KMLA. We work more and harder than other students. Our good results sort of come from those hard works we do. At the same time, we are "in the right place, in the right time" for our good results. We compete and sometimes cooperate with others, improve ourselves. That is what happens generally in this school. Not only does this atmosphere naturally make us work hard, but it also make others think of us as hard working, brilliant students, sometimes even more than we actually are. That is why our school is the "right place" for us.
     This is sort of like what comes after the story of KIPP: the story about the math olympics. Every year, students who are prized at math olympics are mostly from Singapore, South Korea, China(Taiwan), Hong Kong and Japan. This does not surprise me, but reminds me again of the "right place". It's not that students from those countries are born with brilliant brains that fit mathematics, but that their surrounding make them outperform others in math. This is how "chance", which can never be ignored, works in our lives and our success.

Chain Writingㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

     If I could change one thing about my life, I would go back to the time when I peed in my pants. It was indeed the most embarrassing moment of my liofe, but I learned life's the most important lesson.
     Back in second grade, I was a very shy and passive student. On that day, I went to a field trip with my classmates and my homeroom teacher. the destination was an amusement park, and we had to go two hours on the bus. I was very lively and chit-chatted with my girlfriends until I sensed "a signal: from by bladder. Yes, it was the nature's call.
     Maybe, my first yet the most regrettable decision was to hold it until the bus arrived at the destination. I had a false notion that 2 hours will pass soon, but it was proven false-I found that it is no longer possible to hold it any longer.
     It was a painstaking experience. My face turned red-more accurately, it went from rose to hot pink to red to magenta to blood crimson. My legs trembled violently, my fingers hurt from gripping my knees too tightly, I was going mad. Finally, when about an hour had passed, my body had reached its limit. My muscles refused to comply to the ordes from my brain, and the next thing I knew, my pants were wet.
     In reminiscience, I felt that it was the most terrible moment ever in my life. If I had recognized limitations of my muscles earlier, I would've never peed in my pants. I was so naive. From then, I became humble; now I know that I have to fully recognize my limits.

Outliers-1

     Outliers: The Story of Success is a book by Malcolm Gladwell, written about his thoughts about essential factors of success. He gives many stories as examples to support his thesis. What he believes is a bit differnet from what I thought would usually affect one's success; one's environment and background, mostly. Another thing that he emphasizes is the '10,000-hour rule'. It is a rule that says 'greatness requires time'. The rule basically means that one needs to spend 10,000 hours doing something in order to succeed in it. The author illustrates his thesis by giving stories of hockey players, the beatles, Bill Gates, etc.


     His theory seemed not to agree with what I used to think-I thought success has to do more with one's talents and efforts. Here, the author agreed that efforts are necessary, but he emphasized the environment and background more than other factors I could come up with. It seems that the author thinks that luck is something that counts as the most important factor of success, and it seems that this, actually, is pretty much true. Nonetheless, still I think talent is something really important as well since many people who succeeded not only struggled for achievements but also had talents that others didn't have. Especially here in KMLA there were chances that make me realize the importance of talents. It seems that at times talents even outweigh efforts.

commissioned essay

     It is dark on the stage. The light turns on and I am standing on the stage, looking at the face of the people standing in front of me, looking back at me. The drum starts to beat. Looking at each others’ eyes, we start to play the songs. The moment that we start the show-that is the moment when I feel the most heaved with happiness.

The first time I sang as a vocal of a rock band was after I got into KMLA and became a member of PLZ, the school band. At first, I applied as a rock band vocal just because I liked singing. I didn’t have any experience of singing with a band or not even much experience of singing on a stage. I didn’t know much about rock. It was a whole new thing to me. I started to listen to new songs that I used not to know of and watch live videos of bands that I used not to have interest in. In the process, I learned that singing as a band vocal was different from just singing alone; it is like playing in a sports team. It is important that each one of us do well on our parts, but it is also important that we play in harmony as well. If we didn’t listen to each other’s sound, we wouldn’t play it well, even if we all did well on our parts. That was what I liked about singing in a band; I wasn’t just singing alone but singing ‘for’ the whole group.

     Once there was a time when we were banned to perform because of the liability for food delivery to school. Many people ate delivered food, which was against the school law, at the third floor of Chungmu hall and left the trash there. The problem was that our practice studio was there. Teachers decided that we were responsible for not managing the third floor, and for the punishment, we were excluded from the list for the performance at the welcome party. Since it was true that we were those who used the place the most, we couldn’t resist the decision. At the party, we all felt depressed, and that was the time when I wanted to be on the stage most. Fortunately, on the party day, after all the performances were over, we were allowed to perform just one song, which became the stage that I will never forget. That was the time that I realized how meaningful PLZ was to me. Since then my life at KMLA cannot be explained without mentioning PLZ.

     About a week from that, we performed in Rock Festival that took place in KMLA. That was the show that I enjoyed the most. When we sang ‘Happy Ending’, which was the favorite stage of mine, I felt different from what I did at the debut stage in Christmas party. As I had eye contact with every people under the stage, I felt like talking to each one of them. I really felt thankful to all of them, that they came to see our show, that they listened to our music, and that we could play for them. When I heard someone say that of all the stages that day, ‘Happy Ending’ was the most moving, I felt so proud of our members and myself. Maybe he could also hear me say ‘thank you’ to him as I sang the song.

I learned and felt many things as I played in PLZ for two years, about harmony, about working together with our members, and about being on stage. I have changed a lot, from a shy little girl who couldn’t even sing in front of her family and who quit learning piano because she was afraid of contests, to a school band vocal who freely expresses herself. I am still a shy person at times, but more of the time, I am an passionate, enthusiastic person, always active and alive.

30 things about me

1. I am a positive, optimistic person
-I always try to think in a positive way. I believe in the power of positive spirit. When I believe that things will turn out to be fine, it always does. At least, I don't get to give things up and learn something from difficulty.

2. I like making friends and understanding other people
-I like meeting new people and building deep relationship with them. I like listening to people's thoughts and I find out that I grow up as I share my thoughts and feelings with others.

3. I am more enthusiastic than anyone when I am doing what I love
-I put all my efforts in when I am doing what I love. That passion is what makes me feel alive.


4. I have talents at art, music, and physical activities
-From when I was young, I always liked art, music, and physical activities, and I was good at it. I really enjoy them and and they have always been my favorite subjects at school as well.

5. I like singing
-I like singing and I think I sing pretty well. I sing as the vocal of the school band, PLZ. I love to sing, and I really feel happy when I sing.


6. I like dancing
-I also like dancing. From when I was young, I learned various kinds of dance. I learned ball room dancing, jazz dance, and also classic ballet.

7. I like decorating things or making beautiful stuffs
-I like making beautiful things, and alway loved arts.

8. I sing for the school band, PLZ
-PLZ is the club that I am devoted to more than any other club. I feel and learn many things as we play together, and also love the strong bond between the members. I also like the shudder I feel as I look at the eyes of the audience when we are playing on the stage.

9. I am a member of the department of school broadcasting
-The department of school broadcasting is another group that I am devoted to.  As we play the films we made in front of all the students of KMLA during Minjok Festival, I feel really proud. People clap and laugh as they watch the videos, and I feel really proud.


10. I am good at making videos
-I love the process of making videos. We(the members of the department of school broadcasting) do everything-conference for ideas, casting, filming, editing, and rendering- on our own. This is a very time consuming and difficult task that sometimes make me even stay awake all ninght, but I still love it.


11. I am a member of the school cheerleading team
-It hasn't been very long since the team has been made, but we all love the team, and enjoy it even though it is sometimes a hard strain.
12. I am a member of school swimming club
-I am a member of school swimmin club, H2O. Last year, I won the third place in 800M relay game. The process of training was exhausting, but the overflowing joy I had as I earned the result exceeded it.

13. I like enjoy movies, musicals, and plays
-I love movies, musiclas, and plays. I especially like musicals and plays because I like stage arts that give more impression to me.


14. I like ballet dance
-Ballet dance is one thing that I once loved so much. I even dreamed of becoming a ballerina. As a middle school student, I would watch ballet videos whenever I had free time, and go to ballet performance as well.

15. I am pitiful

16. I am emotional and easily touched
-I easily feel touched or cry as I read books or watch movies. I believe that emotions are very precious and they are what make a person alive.

17. I am somewhat shy
-I do not look shy, but actually I am. But I always overcome that.

18. I easily feel lonely
-I easily feel lonely when I am alone. This may be because I am the youngest child in my family.

19. I try to be nice and friendly
-Always trying to be nice make others be nice to me as well.
20. I like beautiful things

21. I am curious

22. I am sociable

23. I do not stand well doing what I don't like
-I can be more passionate than anyone when I am doing what I love, but I do not stand well doing what I don't like. But I know that I cannot live my life doing only what I like. So I am trying to do what I don' t like as well.
24. I am confident
-I am a confident person who believe that I can always finally gain something valuable. Even just believing this way can make me a better person than I am.


25. I love my life here
-I love my life here because here, I could try new things that I had never tried before, and I found what I love, what I am good at, and who I am.


26. I like trying new things

27. I like Spanish language(maybe pretty good at it too)

28. I don't like science and math
-But the physics teacher is the one who is the colsest with me, ironically lol

29. I like thinking and I think a lot

30. At times I am a bit indecisive