After Watching a couple of videos about "Elon Musk"

  I think I first heard the presence of him from an anecdote about where Robert Downey Jr., got some idea for his role as "Tony Stark". Since then, I haven't really tired to figure things about regarding him. About two months ago, however, I ran into an article from The New Yorker regarding how people working for him, or used to work for him, have a completely different opinion on him, compared to most other people and mass media. I was a bit shocked after encountering all the unexpected stories about him. There was a girl who had been working for him for many years from the beginning of business as a secretary. As she became pregnant and wanted to have a maternity leave, she asked for it, and he replied "yes" with a smile. But later she got a message, saying sort of like "You don't need to come. Take a rest forever from work." Some other stories referred in the article delivered the description of his cynical side hidden beyond his public image.

  After watching two videos about his talk at TED, at commencement, and at her office, I think I might have a completely biased opinion on him. According to several interviewees in the article, he was a super workaholic and if an employee could not meet the standards he set up at work, regardless of how many contributions the employee has made, he would fire him in anyway. Well, let me briefly talk about being workaholic, or in a better term, being hard-working. It kind of makes sense to be honest. He has built his own business, and it is obviously booming with applauds. Who would not work super hard if tons of money from his pocket was invested in his own business? I would even stay way longer at my office than at my house, sleep only a couple hours, and focus significantly on my stuff to do during waking-hours. And I would be cynical to incompetent hired employees. 

  Anyway, This is not what I want to talk about. For some natural scientists who are also thinking of beginning their own business, Elon Musk must be a hero. He specialized in Physics at undergraduate school, which is totally the opposite of making money, and kept pursing the same major until he finally gave up his Ph.D. course after 2 years. And he successfully started and expanded his business on a huge scale, beginning from PayPals, then expanding to other unrelated fields, SpaceX, SolarCity, and Tesla. Now we might be wondering what in the world would encourage him to do all sorts of things? At the TED talk, he answered to that "I don't really know." But later he added to what the interviewer instead answered to, "Works super hard, not only that, self-analyze.", "Reason from First-Principles, approach then go step-by-step upfront from them.", "Appreciate negative but sincere feedbacks that your friends give to you" "Risk Now before getting hampered by the obligation most would see."

  Such beautiful pieces of Advice! Some narrow-minded people would definitely criticize his idea, saying "Oh, he was just lucky.", "He was an innate genius", instead of looking into its cores with an open mind. At present,  He is obviously at the forefront of the development of advanced technology. In addition to this, He has become a inspiring motivator to business-planning people, and even to distinguished entrepreneurs. I also should try absorbing and applying his mindset to become a competent worker at this fiercely competitive world.

Why do some foreign teachers have difficulty living in Korea?

After talking with my friend who is soon leaving back to America, I felt like crystalizing my thoughts by writing down here. This is kind of hilarious and bitter, but this has been true to most foreigners I have met for the past few years. 

Even at this late night, some foreigners might be having a sleepless night, lying down in their bed and trying to figure things out. These would be either trivial things that would fade away the next morning or fundamental things, such as the reason for teaching English in Korea,  unfair treatment by their boss or Koreans in general. 

These things are pretty much happening to many foreign teachers, and logically a lot of Koreans would think about those things too. But there is a thing that seem to show a huge difference between two groups of foreign teachers, ordinary ones and desperate but lonely outsiders. 

The first group, ordinary foreign teachers, is a typical one we can easily think of when hearing about what their life would be like, and I am not being presumptuous. Based on many conversations with them, they just live like other normal Koreans of their age. Work, Hangout, Relax, Hobbies. 

Whereas, The other group, desperate but lonely outsiders, is a bit tricky. On the surface, their life seems pretty much the same like other foreign teachers, but many of them are actually being ruled out from both expatriate community and Korean community. They don't belong to any of the groups, sadly. And some features appear to what's common to the type of people, such as spending much time on social networking, trying to look happy by faking their emotions and situations on the cyberworld.

Then why is this kind of difference happening?

I am not really sure honestly, but based on all the information accumulated through careful observation, I can list typical characteristics of both groups.

For the first group, let's say a social group, the first thing I've noticed is that they have almost no difficulty getting used to the new environment. As far as I'm concerned, the language barrier or the lack of Korean skills does not matter. I've seen many foreigners who had no problem getting along with Koreans, regardless of their English level. most of them are positive and energetic. At work, they were competent and their colleagues liked them. In addition, they loved or, at least, didn't hate Kids. So at work, both Korean/Foreign teachers have a good opinion on them, and they are also likely to get along with people outside. 

For the second group, on the other hand, the first thing I've noticed is that they usually have difficulty getting used to the new environment. They are pretty negative and pessimistic about their life in general. They hate teaching kids and usually ended up failing at handling them. (Kids are not idiots. they can feel it) What's worse is they think they are working well enough to be fairly treated by their peers or boss, which isn't true at all. They keep complaining about the situations they are stuck at(but many co-teachers ended up not caring or snapping at them, saying that before complaining you should do your job at work.) Who wouldn't hate foreign teachers who keep complaining about kids, working environment, under the circumstances that they don't do well on their job? Nobody wouldn't be willing to sympathize with them. It's awful! 

So,,, they keep moving over and over, not working at the same place for more than a year, no matter how good the working conditions are.  Lastly, I would be a bit careful to say this, some of them are a big fan of K-pop. It is undeniable. But the majority of expats don't really like K-pop and hate talking about that. And what's funny is most Koreans also don't want to talk about K-pop, including me. It will be okay if they know K-pop in depth and mention some 80s~2000s all-time popular singers. But they are just interested in noxious K-pop 20s or 30s are not interested, if not unconcerned, anymore. That's why they become an outsider from both communities. If this is okay, then it's fine. None of my business, but if you want to make some friends, it's better not to show the zeal for K-pop (Well, I've seen that they, who like K-pop, often gather up to go to a K-pop concert. But this is out of my point.)

As I mentioned earlier, the whole description might not be true, and rather be biased. But if you're familiar with statistics, I've talked and met with more than 100 foreign teachers, and at least with a third of them we had a conversation about that in depth. the data distribution is arbitrary across Korea. So, from the point of an engineering student, it is okay, it is credible.

My Writing skills: present and future

In our current society, more and more people are sticking around a sedentary lifestyle; and thus, they are more likely to communicate with one another in the internet: Facebook, Instagram, and even blog posts. Then what elements are important to judge someone on this kind of communication? We can easily rule out conventional things that used to have sweeping effects on building a relation, such as physical appearance, voice, tone, gesture, and even subtle smell. Only one element comes to  distinguish from those elements, our words. Our word are all we have. People judge us based on the style of writing, word choice, and structural cohesiveness. 

What Korea has dismissed and is heretofore seemingly oblivious to is the importance of official writing education. It is such a shame, but I - of course, most people around my age - am barely aware of how to write a compelling, clear essay. Because we simply haven't had any chance to sharpen our writing skills. It means that we can't critique and edit our own and others' writing, reliably explain how our writing is structured and how words in a sentence interact. So, when I happen to read long comments on a certain article or blog posts, I sometimes furrow my brows in concentration and need to put extra efforts to grasp their intents.

Our words are the projection of ourselves in the physical absence. For example, if applicants use poor grammar and can't properly write their resume - extenuating circumstances would be applied to English language learners -   job recruiters will conclude that these are not qualified for a position. It would be frustrating if we have heard from a company we applied for that we were excluded due to some grammatical errors on our resume. 

This is why I decided to hone my writing skills - especially academic writing - gaining the benefit of free online courseware distributed by kind, knowledgeable instructors. As far as I am concerned, the US, where I am planning to pursue my career further and eventually settle down for a bit, puts much emphasis on the education of writing, so that American undergraduates are required to do several folds of writing assignments compared to Korean students. I can assume that, not to speak of my colloquial language, I would awfully have difficulty keeping a pace with well-trained counterparts in terms of written language. 

At present, I definitely lack writing skills; however, I won't let my weakness hold me back from achieving my goal set up for later in the US life.

The Joy of thinking

Every now and then, the expression pops up into my mind and lingers there for a quite amount of time. But soon after, it disappeared leaving no trace of what I have once contemplated on. Thus I wasted many times and my mental faculty as well, at the end of the day, I always ended up with a deep remorse.

Today I went to a library to check out a book for an essay on my graduate program. While searching for the book, strolling around bookshelves, a book caught my attention, "What the best college students do" by Ken Bain. I did not look for this book when I went by the library, but I picked it up without a hesitation. I have just read the index section of this book, and I feel this could be a life-changing book; because I feel I have been sticking to a mediocre way to study, and it will definitely yield an adverse effect.  

Let me encapsulate what the book says; by doing so I can reorganize my thinking. 
"Scores do not matter." "learning shallowly and strategically will jeopardize you." "there is no limit on your talent" "Think, question, and debate" "Love yourself" "Learn actively, not passively" and "Writing practice will strengthen your communication skill"

I think I already like this book. I remember when I started a good day and was able to think clearly, the day always went great, but it didn't last long. With this book, I want to learn more about me and challenge myself.