In this blog post, I will present a detailed summary of the personal statement I wrote for my application to the Department of Media and Information Studies at Kyung Hee University.
Efforts Devoted to Academics
Writing While Distinguishing Between Facts and Opinions Ever since elementary school, I’ve often been told at school that I’m a good writer. In particular, I was skilled at expressing my thoughts persuasively in writing, so I frequently wrote diary-style essays or explanatory essays on specific topics. Then, starting in middle school, I began winning many external awards for my writing. As I gained recognition from those around me, I focused on essay writing during high school. The genres I primarily practiced were expository and argumentative essays. Among these, argumentative essays—which are closely related to the essay section of college entrance exams—are a crucial element in the actual admissions process, so I believed that practicing and studying them extensively would benefit my future. To prepare for the essay section, I mainly utilized online lectures and after-school classes. I covered basic concepts and requirements through online lectures, making use of the systematic courses provided by educational broadcasters. After that, I enrolled in an after-school program where I received feedback on my essays from a college student instructor. During this feedback process, I received comprehensive guidance on everything from spelling to overall composition skills, the ability to develop content, and the use of persuasive techniques. One point that was consistently pointed out was my failure to distinguish between facts and opinions, often mixing them together in my writing. Typically, the core of writing an essay lies in developing a logical argument based on facts and then adding one’s own opinion to support that argument. However, I often made the mistake of including facts in my arguments rather than using them as evidence, or presenting my opinions as if they were valid evidence. Since I couldn’t correct this on my own, I tried to improve by reading exemplary essays written by others where this issue was clearly highlighted. After persistent effort, I eventually learned to distinguish between facts and opinions and clearly separate arguments from evidence. Realizing that the root cause of these mistakes was a lack of background knowledge, I began reading various books related to the essay topics. As a result of these efforts, by the time I was preparing for college entrance exams, I had gained confidence in my essay-writing abilities.
Extracurricular Activities
We’re the cultural event planners at our school! During my freshman year of high school, an announcement was posted on the bulletin board for the entire student body. It was a call for students interested in participating in the planning of various school events, both on-campus and off-campus. Curious about this department, I applied and, by chance, ended up joining the Cultural Event Planning Team. Once I joined the team, I realized that this was actually the work traditionally handled by the Planning Division of the Student Council. At our school, while the student council wasn’t very active, another department operated to take on its responsibilities.
The Cultural Event Planning Team was tasked with planning various events held on campus. Including myself, there were about twenty members from different grades working together. About half of us were assigned to the planning team, while the other half belonged to the operations team. Of course, since members of the Planning and Operations teams rotated their roles on a regular basis, I was able to gain experience with the work of both teams. I started out on the Planning Team. Our job was to hold meetings to decide, one by one, what kind of event to hold, what the content and theme should be, the specific process and procedures for the event, and what was needed to carry out those procedures.
For example, during the second semester of my freshman year, we planned a festival as a school event. We decided the festival would run for two days, arranged for each club to operate one booth, and established a system where classes could apply separately to conduct sales activities. The planning team provided all necessary supplies and basic operating costs for the booths, but we carefully allocated these within the budget to prevent any issues during the final accounting process. On the second day of the event, we set up a stage so that each club could put on a performance, and we also accepted applications from individual students or teams within each class to perform. While this might seem like a standard procedure, there were many details to attend to, and allocating personnel and budget resources was no easy task, so we worked very hard.
In addition to the festival, our planning team organized events such as the spring picnic, field trips, the school fair, the library film festival, and the playground camping event, and we worked hard to ensure their successful execution. While all events began with ideas and discussions in meetings, ultimately, cooperation with the operations team was crucial for running them smoothly. Our role was to accept applications and establish event procedures, while the operations team’s role was to actually carry out these plans and deliver results. When I was part of the operations team, I was so busy being called to different parts of the event that I felt like I needed two bodies. During events like the flea market or camping trip, there were many students asking questions from all over, and with so many requests to address, I could truly feel the challenges of running the event firsthand as I worked to verify and resolve them all. These activities with the Cultural Planning Team provided me with diverse experiences and served as an opportunity for personal growth.
Examples of Consideration, Sharing, and Cooperation
Planning an Event for Multicultural Families. I was active in the Cultural Planning Team for over two years. At first, I participated in the operations of general events such as festivals and field trips, but later, as I gained experience, I took the lead in planning events myself. In particular, during the second semester of my sophomore year, as the most senior member, I was responsible for overseeing the overall operations and worked on planning activities alongside new members who had just joined the team. At that time, I heard that there was a student from a multicultural family among the newly admitted freshmen. So, I met with that student in person to talk, and since I believed that fostering an understanding of multiculturalism was essential, I decided to plan a related event.
After hearing my proposal, most of the team members agreed with me and gave it positive feedback. We approved the event plan by majority vote and decided to hold the event over the weekend under the theme of “An Event for Multicultural Families.” Initially, we planned to hold a family gathering by inviting parents and children from multicultural families, as well as families of regular students. We had intended to keep the event small, but after posting an announcement on the bulletin board, many students showed interest, causing the event to grow in scale. Consequently, we expanded the event beyond our original plans and organized it as a camping trip on the school grounds, featuring booths, games, and cultural activities.
During the two-day, one-night event, we decided to screen an independent film featuring stories from multicultural families on the first evening, and I took charge of organizing this part. Since we needed a tent and a projector to set up the screen, I prepared these separately. I also called the production company directly to explain our good intentions and was able to obtain the film file. Thanks to these efforts, we were able to successfully prepare a meaningful event, and I felt a great sense of fulfillment in organizing an event where many families participated, laughed, and had fun. In particular, we created a banner with the event slogan, “A Changing Society, We Must Change,” which helped attract the interest and participation of local residents.
Educational Background and Career Plans
It has long been my dream to become a next-generation journalist with strong planning and execution skills, and I applied to your university to make this dream a reality. The fact that I was able to nurture this dream without major setbacks throughout my high school years is largely due to the influence of my family environment. My family consists of just three members—my parents and me—and we grew up in a close-knit household. Although I have no siblings, my parents were always by my side, sometimes acting like friends or siblings, never sparing any encouragement or support. Therefore, with my parents’ full support, I approached my school life with a strong spirit of challenge and passion for anything I wanted to try.
To be specific, my goal is to become a culture reporter. I am so drawn to the work of reporting and writing articles that I don’t mind whether the medium is a newspaper, an online outlet, or a magazine, as long as I can write for the culture section.
During high school, I was active in the school’s cultural planning team for over two years. In this department, I primarily planned and directly managed cultural events. Although I did not conduct interviews or write articles as a journalist, it was a valuable experience that allowed me to acquire various knowledge and information related to cultural events, bring those ideas to life, and develop my planning and execution skills.
As for my future career plans, I aspire to become a freelance journalist with my own studio. I do not believe that all journalists need to work within an organization. In this new era, I think we will see an increase in journalists who work as freelancers, conducting their own reporting and editing independently. This trend is already evident in the growth of social media and the rise in the number of bloggers. Therefore, I plan to be both a profile journalist who primarily writes interview articles in the field and an author who uses the results of those interviews to write books about people. Through these activities, I intend to straddle the line between writer and journalist. My future career plan is to be a friendly, public-friendly journalist who conveys cultural activities and lifestyle news rather than focusing on social issues.
