Harvard Interview

I had thought that I was done with interviews but I was still left with more. Today I got a mail from a Harvard alum for an interview arrangement.

I am worried that this interview would be the toughest one. The reason is that it is Harvard. I am almost certain that the alulm would ask me why I want to go to Harvard but to be totally honest with you, I am not really interested in Harvard. I was quite happy to find out that there was no “Why Harvard” essay in Harvard Supplement. Well, there must be something in Harvard that makes it unique, but just as “Why Columbia (University)” essay is difficult because of its quite-obvious strength–such as its location, a “Why Harvard” question is perplexing to answer.

My answer to “Why Harvard” that I can now think of is Harvard’s emphasis on students’ independence. In comparison to some other universities which boast their careful and intensive attention on each students (especially liberal arts colleges), Harvard gives much latitude in students’ studies and life. Would this be a good answer? Or do I need to think of a better ansewer? I think this can be a decent answer if I elaborate more on it.

Surprise News

Dear Yoonhyun:

Congratulations! I am delighted to inform you that have been chosen as a semi-finalist for the Robertson Scholars Program at Duke University. As the next step in the process, we invite you to participate in a phone conversation on the weekend of March 1-2, 2008.  These conversations, in conjunction with candidates’ admissions applications, will help us select 100 students to invite to our Finalists’ Weekend on March 29 – April 1, 2008.

This phone conversation will allow you to elaborate on the accomplishments, interests, and passions you expressed in your college application. Also, it will help us discern how participation in the Robertson Scholars Program would enrich your college experience and the experiences of your peers.

Your selection as a semifinalist for the Robertson Scholars Program means that you have been accepted to Duke University. As with all offers of admissions, this offer ultimately depends upon your maintaining high standards of academic performance and personal behavior.

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Above is a part of the email I received two days ago from the Robertson Scholars Program. When I first got this mail, thinking it as spam, I was to discard it. As I opened it up, even after reading through several paragraphs, I failed to grasp the situation. It was completely unexpected. I haven’t heard of the Robertson Scholars Program. Besides, it was quite hard for me to understand/accept that being a semi-finalist means that I have been accepted to Duke. Have I really got into Duke then? I still doubt it…

Although I still do not completely understand what had happened to me, it was very delightful to receive this mail–to be selected as 150 out of thousands of applicants and to be given a possibility of being selected as finalists

The mail said at Duke University, the scholarship provides full tuition as well as a laptop computer and funding for up to three summers of service, research, and travel in the United States and abroad. What an amazing opportunity!!!

Since I have not done a phone interview before I am a bit worried if I could do successfully. The interview will be held either on March 2nd or 3rd. I will do my best

Test

Word of the Day

So Yoonbin and I have recently begun the advanced reading and writing curriculeum offered by Batiq.

One really important part of this curriculeum is expanding our English vocabularies and I have a tool that I use everyday to help expand my vocabulary.

I have subscribed to Dictionary.com’s (free) “Word of the Day” email service.  The title says it all- Everyday, dictionary.com emails me a word and its definition right to my mailbox.  It really is a great way to keep your vocabulary sharp.

It is so easy to enroll.  Just go here, plug in your information and you’re good to go.

I highly recommend this to everyone and anyone interested in learning new English words and phrases!

Good luck,

-Connor

Long Time No Post!

Long time no post! I have recognized that I haven’t posted for a while but for some reasons, maybe because Connor and I haven’t had sessions for a few weeks, I did not feel any pressure or responsibility to write a post (although that is not to say that there should be/is any pressure for me to write on the blog).

To go over what I have done so far, I had served as a Program Assistant in the camp titled, “Global Leadership Program for Students. ” I checked kids’ diaries, made announcements, and took care of elementary and junior high school kids.  After working at the camp for two weeks in January, I got back to home and there I realized that my college application process was not yet over. I had unpredictable number of interviews!

Using the Chinese New Year holidays (aka Lunar New Year which is in February and people celebrates for three days), I scheduled two interviews with a Brown alum and a Middlebury alum. Prior to this, I had already done UPenn interview.

What was fascinating about UPenn interview was that I got a chance to visit Google regional office in South Korea! A UPenn interviewer was working at Google office and his main job was intevestment with other companies, merge & acquisition, and so forth. If I had understood correctly, his job sounded to be something which he had to buy companies and merge them into Google. Although I talked most of the time during our interview, I liked to hear about his job and his life at UPenn back then. My first impression to Google office was that the entire office gave the perfect feeling of “google.” Interior design and color, and google earth map that was projected from the projector were amazing. A UPenn alum had asked me a few tricky questions. As an answer to his Why UPenn question I used College house which is a residential system in UPenn similar to one in Princeton or Yale. Then, a UPenn alum asked me if my answer was persuasive enough considering that a residential system is something that other colleges are also equipped. So I said that uniqueness in UPenn College house is that unlike a residential system in most other universities UPenn integrates different fields even in students’ residential life. For instance, in Arts House at UPenn, students enjoy arts and music, and dancing yet at the same time they interact with students from different backgrounds and by doing so encourages cultural exchange. A UPenn alum seemed to be satisfied my answer but who knows… Another tricky moment was when he asked me if I had just “done” too many activities. So I explained how my activities were connected to one another. For instance, I explained how “Intergovernmental Youth Exchange to China” was related to my interest in China and how my VANK club activity was related to my interest in global affairs and interaction with diverse people.

An interview with a Brown alum was done in a coffee shop. She was young and was acquainted with one of graduates from my high school who is now in Brown. The interview was informal and because we had quite a few things in common I felt comfortable talking.

An interview with a Middlebury alum was also done in a coffee shop. He was also quite young and was very kind to me. He told me to contact him any time I want if I have any questions about colleges and college admission process. He said he would like to help me out with anything he could even if I don’t go to Middlebury.

Now I am learning Spanish and Chinese and because I scheduled so tightly I am quite exhausted. So I am planning to cut down my schedule a little bit from next month. It is my first time I learn Spanish and perhaps because of that reason I enjoy learning Spanish more than I enjoy learning Chinese. My worry is that if it would be effective and efficient to learn both languages at the same time. For now, it is manageable. But considering that I would be taking only one language course in college, I am worried if I should forsake one of the two.

Because I have not used English for a few weeks and have learned Spanish and Chinese instead, I feel I have already lost some feeling of using English. I feel like I already forgot some words and phrases. But! I will get back my feeling soon

Realizing how you really feel…

So Yoonbin and I have recently been talking about the Implicit Association Test or the IAT, which she has been reading about in the book “Blink.”

I thought it might be helpful to make a separate post regarding the IAT because I think it touches on a very important lesson in terms of cross-cultural interactions and interpersonal relationships.

The IAT is a test that can measure people’s implicit (or unconscious) prejudices against other people. I think it is important that we are conscious of the ways in which we perceive people, especially when we are meeting and interacting with people from other cultures or countries.

So, here is the link to the IAT test, which you can take in just a few minutes online

Just follow this link:

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

I think you will be very surprised by the results. Hopefully you will be able to learn something about yourself and your implicit perceptions of other people and groups!

Enjoy,

-Connor

Another Review on Blink

I am now more than halfway through the book and I am finding it getting more and more exciting

I was surprised to find out how much unconciously I might have been influenced by my environment and surrounding factors. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) clearly demonstrated people’s bias which they themselves were not even aware of. It was quite depressing to find that even in the most important positions, our selection decisions are many times distorted and one of the most important criteria one needs to qualify to be a highly potential CEO in terms of one’s appearance is imposing physical stature which is a criterion I hardly fit in! But I do agree people often make the Warren Harding error. People are so much prone to judge others by their looks and reflecting on what I have done, I do the same. But for sure there are many exceptions to this rule for instance, Napoleon, who was under five feet in height  and James Madison, the fourth president of the United States who was 5ft and 4in. (Although uncertain about this, I remember I read that Napoleon was not really short at his time. May be I am wrong though.)

Reading about Bob Golomb, a successful car salesman, I was impressed by the way he treated his customers. He wrote letters or gave calls to each of his customers. Taking care of the number of people who I barely know by writing and calling them must have been annoying but only because he tolerated that process, he could succeed. A few days ago, on a television, a habit of the richest CEO in South Korea before he met his customers or any other people was introduced. Surprisingly enough, his habit was take a shower. That was the way he built his image as a neat and clean person thus giving a positive image to whomever he met. Just like Bob Golomb and the riches CEO in South Korea, most of successful people, especially those in high positions, seem to have their own way of maintaining a good relationship with others or making a positive image of themselves. And I want to ask you, Connor, as the president of your class, if you have your own strategy or habit like this

Just as we can see from the novel Pride and Prejudice, which had an original title of First Impression, we are prone to get fooled by first impressions. Although in many previous experiments it has proven that our snap judgements are more powerful than we think and from my real life experiences I find this to be true, we should be alert that our judgements can be distorted. But the problem here is how can we know if we are making a correct judgement or not? Will this be answered in the later part of the book?

Session 4

Connor and I talked about things to work on for the rest of our sessions especially in terms of English ability. When Connor asked me to choose one out of speaking, writing, listening and reading, I replied I want to work on all. Although Connor complemented on my English, I am not really confident in it. I can talk with people on any subjects, I can read and I can write but I feel my English is insufficient to study and adapt to the university and environment in the States. Although being anxious does not mean that I am doing Spartan training to equip myself, I am worried about so many things at the university from listening to lecture to class discussion to writing papers!

Connor had pointed out that I should be working on writing the hardest which was great advice in that it suggested me a direction to study. Actually that was what Daniel Clemens had suggested me the other day. He said writing skill is the foremost thing to practice for preparation for successful college life. I should be reading a lot and writing a lot. Writing a post as Connor and I had agreed upon would be a great way to improve and practice my writing.

Connor and I also talked about difference between Western culture and Eastern culture. Connor told me Western culture tends to stress individualism whereas Eastern culture stresses collectivism. I second that idea. “We” is a very important concept in Eastern society. My question is how such difference is reflected in the way I behave or the way Connor behaves. There must be a difference which I assume would be quite notifiable in my behaviours but because a difference is so subtle and I was brought up without being conscious of how collectivism has affected my behaviors I do not know how it would be reflected upon my behaviours.

Such difference is another thing I am worried about. Interacting with the most heterogeneous group of people I have ever encountered in my life, I assume there might be a case when misunderstanding occurs due to difference in culture or social norms. Misunderstanding can be easily resolved through conversation but my worry is if neither of people recognized that discomfort sprang from misunderstanding and did not make any attempt to resolve it, it might lead to one of many problems in college life. May be I am just over-thinking though

Book Review: Blink

I was planning to write this post earlier but I had been putting off. I would write a review on the first part of Blink, a recommended book from Connor. In reading this book, I tried to be as much critical as possible and tried not to be convinced by the book entirely because this book is suggesting a hypothesis, not an established theory, based on empricial evidence they obtained through experiments.

Thin-slicing is the ability of our unconsciousness that is repeatedly stressed in the book. In accordance with the definition of thin-slicing which is the ability of our unconsciousnes to find patterns in situations and behavior based on narrow slices of experience, does this mean that seemingly hastely-made decisions are after all unconsciously deliberately-made deecisions? If so, is what this book calls and what we call “intuition” not actually “intuition” but rather an outcome of a course of methodical thinking process?

The very question that lingers in my head after I read the first chapter of this book is how much credence should be given to experiments used to support the hypothesis in the book. Although the author supported his hypothesis through various kinds of experiments, I am not fully convinced by them. The part that I was least convinced was where it said “Gottman has found, in fact, that the presence of contempt in a marriage can even predict such things as how many colds a husband or wife gets; in other words, having someone you love express contempt toward you is so stresful that it begins to affect the functioning of your immune system.” I know many people say stress is the origin of all diseases but it is quite hard for me to accept that the presence of contempt, which can happen in a large portion of couples, can PREDICT the number of colds one gets. If this also has tangible and concrete emprical evidence proven by some research paper of some kind, i would be very much surprised.

What has just come to my thought is that if this book is dealing with an instant decision-making or in other word, “blink,” shouldn’t people be able to predict if the doctor will get sued or if the couple will break up without analyzing the tape? This book said a process of such an analysis is what our brain is doing by thin-slicing but then in order to prove the power of blink I think it is only logical to see if people can predict even without being educated to rate.  

Although many questions are remaining in my head, I find this book interesting and expect it to get even more interesting. I want to share with you about my opinions on this book. Connor, does this book somehow relate to what you learn in your social psychology class?

Inner Compass

Connor and I talked about Inner Compass. Inner Compass is like following the gut: doing what I want to do, listening to my inner voice. In talking about the case when I followed my inner compass, I brought an example from softball. Although I hadn’t even heard of it before I got into a high school, I chose to do it and I am satisfied with my decision. Connor told me about his decision to study psychology despite other people’s worries(?). We also talked about the case when I did not follow my inner compass. I could not think of any during our session but now I can think of one example. One day my friend suggested me to participate in the “Business Plan Competition.” It was a kind of competition which a group of four students set up a new business and made out a plan to manage it. Although it could be interesting, I was not that interested in business by the time she asked me for that competition. I hesitated for long because the entry fee cost quite much! (more than 100 dollars I remember) After days of thinking, I confirmed to do it but still I was not 100% willing to participate. I just did it partly because my friends persuaded me to do so and partly because I love “tring” itself. May be because I was not prepared to pull out my passion and enthusiasm into this competition, the result was disappointing. We earned nothing. From this experience, I decided never to do something I do reluctantly.

I am a kind of person who rarely regrets whatever decision. But, I think there might be a case when I regret my decision after I follow my inner compass. I am trying to think of any example but I can’t think of any for now