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| Seoul at night. (wikipedia) |
The Daily Pennsylvanian’s editorial staff has expressly forbidden any sort of reflective, last-post-of-the-semester in which we would reminisce over everything we learned in our semester-long foray into the thick of armchair journalism. Fortunately for them, I have learned absolutely nothing this semester (a side-effect of already being perfect) and as such have no reflection to share with you other than on how great it is to be me.
I’m not really one to dwell on the past anyway. Ever the visionary, I prefer to look forward, and forward I see finals hell and Adderall summer!
Needless to say, no properly ambitious and overly competitive Quaker spends even their freshman summer at home doing, well, summer things. No, the students of dear old Penn all trade in their swim trunks (and souls) for suits as we embark on our annual mass exodus to New York, DC, LA, or other glowing hubs of finance, commerce, and shameless self-promotion. But while crushing the competing interns from NYU is both fun and easy, it is not the only way to spend a summer.
The summer after my freshman year I threw caution to the wind and accepted an offer from a private school in Seoul, South Korea to teach SAT prep classes to frighteningly ambitious Korean students. Speaking absolutely no Korean, it seems, was not an impediment to being hired in Korea.
There in Seoul, far away from America’s i-banking hives, I had a wild summer that changed my life. I made a great bundle of money, started learning a language that the State Department says is in “critical” need, added an eyebrow-raising line onto my résumé, and discovered a world vastly different from the West that I had left behind. I also met another American who became one of my very best friends.
I didn’t learn much about finance that summer, but I sure did learn a lot about the world.
Oh, and that best friend I met in Korea? Now we’re forming a startup company.
Dare to tread off the beaten path, this and every summer.
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April 19th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
Oh yeah, and I’m sure your parents were all too happy to shell out the money for your plane ticket across the world…you should remember how privileged you are before you go on another one of your rants about how great you are because your passport is full of stamps.
April 19th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
The Korean company pays for airfare, bub.
April 19th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
to first comment - they also pay for your housing. and even if they don’t pay for your plane ticket, you make that money back in like a week. literally.
April 20th, 2007 at 2:12 am
Sounds like someone is jealous. The world is our oyster. But most people are too lazy to take advantage.
April 21st, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Sounds interesting. What program was this?
April 25th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Seriously, what program?!