Wednesday, August 28, 2019

School? - Extension of IMHO


What matters school? We can go to school to-morrow. Whether we have a lesson more or a lesson less, we shall always remain the same donkeys.
Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio

Perhaps Pinocchio is right - you learn more things vital for survival outside of school. In such viewpoint, I made a relatively prodigal choice, to pursue education and study deeper. Ever since I watched a documentary on high school education in my youth, it has been my dream to go to a boarding school, which is strange, considering my antisocial personality. Somehow I did end up as a student of the school I admired, but that was quite different from the utopia of school I have imagined. 

I guess I were lucky, given a chance to follow the curriculum made by me made for me. Being able to participate in club activities, and choosing subjects I wanted to take. Yet unlike me who had an extremely wide range of choice, a lot of my friends complained about how they could not benefit wholely from what the school provided. For instance, they had to take mandatory subjects which colleges expected them to study. Tests such as KSAT, SAT, and AP were also another reason to limit their selection. Eventually, the results were rigid policies on advanced courses requiring to take a series of subjects mandatorily and homogenization of selection due to strong preferences over the courses to take. Nobody - neither the school or the students - were content on what happened, which was quite the opposite from the original intention.

Talking to my friend on this topic, I began to wonder what made me like going to school. I was not social or idle in class, so it was pretty abnormal for me to prefer being in school. As I searched through my old diary, I slightly found what might explain what I enjoyed going there.

Flashback to class in grade 5. After school class on music.

My entrance ceremony as the first-grader consisted of the school orchestra, where I first met the beauty of strings and decided to learn to play the violin. I soon joined the orchestra which became one of my prior concerns and hobby in life, shortly after beginning to like classics. I remember even taking after school classes on music and going to concerts, watching and performing, as a member of the orchestra. Comparing what I felt about music now and then, I realized that the difference depended on how I interpreted the subject, which was heavily influenced by the academic focus the education system emphasized.

When we were younger, bigger variety of topics were allowed to seek. There was no limitation on fields of interest: sports, books, games, musicals, and et cetra. In the status quo, the range of choice remains the same on the surface, but when being realistic, there are too many practical burdens to overcome to track all subjects in favor, which would have been the reason to feel that the school was much fun when we were younger. And for me, it was the after school activity that intrigued me.

Sharing my memory with others, I also realized that this experience was not available for everyone. For some of my friends who were never given the chance to seek what they liked or did not know what they preferred, education was more like a path designed for them to follow. Education should provide the opportunity, also for them, to discover what the world awaits with them.

Thursday, August 22, 2019

Curiouser and curiouser - who is she?


Do you suppose she's a wildflower?
Lewis Caroll, Alice in Wonderland

Basic information
A unique girl who likes awesome things
Most people who know me prefer to refer to me to be 'unique' (which I take as a compliment). In both good ways and bad ways, my friends agree that I'm not the type of person who can be simply classified into one characteristic. I have discovered a marvelous way of description on myself, which this margin is too narrow to contain - and so which I will substitute by describing in the form of introduction on my favorite things.

my favorite things movie에 대한 이미지 검색결과
My favorite things from <Sound of Music>. While Maria prefers raindrops on roses and whiskers of kittens, I would like to introduce some of my fields of interest - reading, photography, psychology/neuroscience, and music.

Reading


The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.
Roald Dahl, Matilda

Oddly, I am one of the rare people who enjoy reading side of the cereal box. Though I sometimes suspect myself to be dyslexic when being tired of comprehending text, it is a great joy for me to refer to classic texts conveying dynamic plots. Some of my favorite authors are Bernard Werber and Rick Riordan; I love to follow the adventure, playing to be naive as Alice - 'feeling rather glad there was no one listening, as nothing sounds at all the right'. I also try to share ideas on books by participating in book club activities - also engaging in  Facebook page for bookshelves of KMLAians.

Photography


Dandelion from below. Picture taken in school.

이미지: 식물, 꽃, 나무, 하늘, 실외, 자연
Red flowers of spring. Picture taken near home.

Basketball hoop on a sunny summer day. Picture also taken in school.


It's a poor sort of memory that only works backward.
Lewis Caroll, Alice in Wonderland

To capture the moment of the fluid in the present, I find photos effective as a way of deliberate expression. I enjoy taking pictures of portions of my daily life, which I plan to share on this site, too.

Psychology & Neuroscience

Have you ever wondered why you oversleep sometimes? Or did you have days you were feeling so blue, and couldn't quite figure out why? Maybe there were moments when you crammed the night before the exams, hoping for better memory. Perhaps you wondered if AI could ever think like human beings, or if the thinking works in the same mechanism. All these concerns are related to the role of the brain in the human body. My fields of interest are psychology and neuroscience. I wish to understand the complex compound of sleep and memory, and all there is intertwined to compose what the brain does for our daily lives. Combined with philosophy - the humane understanding of humans - I'd like to understand what the organ 'brain' means, anatomy performed in a realistic and human perspective.

Music

I am not handsome, but when women hear me play, they come crawling to my feet.
Niccolo Paganini

I'm no Paganini, but I enjoy listening to and playing some music. I play several instruments, but the violin is my favorite of all. Hilary Hahn is my favorite violinist, but I also enjoy the music of Twoset Violin and MozART.

It is one of my future goals to study the history of aesthetics and connect the relationship between sculpture, fine art, and music, which were previously put in a hierarchy by the sequence of their development. Classics may sound boring, but it is one of my goals to uncover the value hidden the pleasure derived from the display of art and to create them in a modern way.