While my last two posts were some emotional crap, this is going to be something more serious and realistic.
Do you have a goal?
I’m a highschool student, and everyone used to tell me to have a goal in life. And every other highschool students are pressured or had been so to have one as well. One of many differences between me and some of the others is that I do have a dream, and that I am not at all pressured, but proud of it. I’m pretty sure there are a lot out there who are proud of their dreams as well. But are you sure you can explain it in great detail? About what you plans are, what you are doing to achieve it? I personally am not sure if I can.
So here’s my post, and I’d like anyone interested to try as well. This is the format I’ll be using:
(1) How my dream came to be. (2) My Goals and Plans
Take my story as an example if you need one - this post is made so that I can organize my plan anyway. If you care for some reason, it be nice if you could comment on it. If you don’t feel like reading a long story that you can’t really relate to, you can skip (1) as the important parts come after it.
(1) How my dream came to be.
We are all biologically programmed to hope for immortality. This is proven obvious by our acts of passing down our genes, researching cures for health problems, and some by trying to remain as a sentence or an artifact in a historical record. I too dreamed to become someone who would be remembered forever in people’s minds and in history. I had to become someone terrifically amazing and honorable, or terribly evil and disgraceful. I obviously chose the former.
My very first dream was to become a president. And this was all before the thought of becoming superbly famous. It was from hearing that one of my cousins saying she dreams to become a president. I don’t know why I remember this so clearly, but as a seven year old, I told myself, “Yeah, I should become one too and get rid of alcohol and cigarettes!”
I grew up to realize the realistic-ness of the dream with my other unrealistic dream of wanting to become a historical figure one day growing together. I dreamed to become an actor or a singer, but the latter got crushed when my mom told me I was terrible at singing. Not that it’s her fault and she probably didn’t mean it, but I always thought I was damn good. And it may have been the trigger for me to start being more aware of my actions and think critically about them whenever I could.
As a Korean myself, I got along with group of Koreans in our class (I should’ve mentioned that I studied in an International School in Malaysia under a British education system). The most popular game we played back then wasn’t computer games, but book games. I’m not talking about the ones where you read a story and make your own choice by flipping to the corresponding page. We drew in pages as if they were computer games (for example, a page for inventory and another for a shop), and drew in more, erased and replaced things, according to however the game was meant to go in the many pages that corresponded to many different places/menu players could access. I decided to make an original game (since so many students just copied each other by a good amount) titled ‘Search for a Land’. I won’t explain the game much, but it was somewhat very close to Minecraft mixed with Civilization. I didn’t know both games existed back then.
Something different about this game with all other games back in my class was that mine was closer to reality than anyone else’s. By that, I mean that you needed to know science to play my game. I was very specific with producing clean water from seawater, making paper, growing plants, and other little things I don’t remember anymore. With my game growing in popularity (a student tried to claim copyright, which I fought against and won. And after the addition of cosmetics that could only be purchased with real money, people surprisingly bought them), I needed more scientific facts to support my game. How do you cook meat? How do you make a farm? Where do [insert plant here] grow? How do [insert war weapon here] work? And I believe that this sparked the light in my interest in science.
I have a diary entry made when I was Year 6, saying that I dream to become an astronaut one day, but that it seemed unlikely because of my poor eyesight and the stitches I have all over(I was told that astronauts shouldn’t have stitches, but I’m not sure about it anymore). I guess my interest in science mixed with being incredibly famous got me there, but it died out like so and I had no other dream jobs left. However, curiosity about the world kept me company. Here are some of the questions I left myself with in Year 6: How would it feel to reach the end of the universe? How does CPR even help? How does jumping help you grow taller? How do energies convert from one another?
I turned Year 7 and I knew no one in class just like every other Years, except this friend that I’ll nickname Aaron (trust me, that’s not his real name. Only the initial is identical), who was my classmate in Year 6. I never really talked to him back then, but from that day we were best friends. I eventually met Bonbon (nickname), who I still actively talk to. These two people fueled my dream stronger than anyone ever did. Their constant curiosity and talks got me interested enough to the point I slowly left my Korean group. They discussed about science stuff that I didn’t know of. What I remember till today is the discussion we had about particle-wave-duality of photon, and we were just Year 7. However, my interest level back then is nothing compared to now, as I was still a very religious child that couldn’t accept the idea of humans being created by nature, until I watched a Stephen Hawking’s ‘Did God Create the Universe?’.
My heart skipped a beat on the very thought of God being just a figure of our own creation, and not the other way around. It took me a while to persuade myself that God can exist before time and without time, but my religious belief started to decay from then.
I began asking questions that were out of the textbook. I felt annoyed by ‘You’ll learn that next Year.’ answers. I started finding YouTube channels dedicated to amazing science facts and enjoyed learning things I want to learn. And for the last brick of my building, Aaron lent me this book titled ‘Physics of the Impossible’ by Michio Kaku, allowing me to settle with a dream I was absolutely sure of for the first time: a scientist.
As time passed by, I learned that ‘becoming a scientist’ wasn’t specific enough. By year 10, I awkwardly decided that I should pursue somewhere around mechanical engineering, since ‘Physics of the Impossible’ was mostly about futuristic machines, and I was interested in coding, and also because I found that I enjoy working with machines when I was being educated for MASMO competition and in the competition itself as well. Also, robots are cool.
My first solid goal was set when I learned about exoskeleton suits and Virtual Reality (VR). The motivation I have for this goal is quite interesting, but I’ll leave that talk for later. VR was and still is a very popular technology predicted as the next generation simulation that would both change gaming experience, education, and scientific experiments. Bringing VR to one of our dominant senses, eyes, is a great thing, but I felt that it lacks haptic feedback. I’d want to feel the object when I touch it in VR. I want to lie down, kick, punch, fall in VR and feel myself doing so. A goggle won’t be able to do that - I need to integrate exoskeletons with Virtual Reality.
Think about it: Having a exoskeleton robot on you that restricts your movement and controls you according to the VR. Sound, touch, movement, and vision would be linked to VR, leaving out only smell and small imperfections that allows you to differentiate two worlds. This technology wouldn’t be restricted to VR; What if you link it to a controllable robot that moves to where you want to see things? Be at your desk without you being there. Be at a museum. A different country. A different planet.
From this I had these goals.
- Integrating exoskeletons with VR.
- An extremely compact battery for number 4.
- Solving latency problem.
- A robot that can fully be controlled by human movements.
If you’ve noticed, I’ve been using past tense for the goals that relate to mechanical engineering.
It wasn’t long before Biology came to my life.
I was initially planning to write here that the way I got in to biology was from YouTube videos, science articles and ‘/r/transhumanism’, but after a Biology Class I had today (I’m writing this post over many days, so by ‘today’, I mean 31st of May), it seems that I naturally find biology interesting. I have no reason for it. I mean, what really triggers my curiosity is about how much organisms can screw up their process enough to be considered ‘abnormal’, and how well the organism fixes it, or at least attempts to. I guess this is partially because Physics always comes with predictable and countable number of variables (excluding Quantum Mechanics, one of the biggest reasons why I do not wish to pursue Physics), whereas Biology shows that such microscopic things are affected by millions of variables, some of them by pure randomness of nature. Another reason is that the things we study here are alive- things that are well known to be random and unpredictable (for me, anyways). But Biology seems to be denying this and explain them quite successfully. I think these are why I find Biology so great.
But mainly, I find the idea of becoming a genius exciting. Someone who knows everything. I don’t really care about everything in our world, but mainly on what drives it. Physics is quite good at this, which is another reason I like it so much (except some parts, since some aren’t really applicational, and I personally don’t care as much about things that happen outside of our planet as I do for the inside). However, Physics fails to explain the details of the very things that made the study of Physics - humans. Organisms. We work so closely with them, and in fact are one ourselves. Doesn’t this mean that the study of Biology is more critical and more applicational than any fields of study? I’ll say that the answer varies with the current world situation, and as I’ll be explaining in the next few paragraphs, I’ll answer yes.
What are my goals with Biology? In Dec 2015 (by then, I was back in Korea due to financial problems), I was recommended by a teacher to write a self introductory essay to Korean Academy of Science and Technology (KAST), as they were planning a program to select 30 students from Korea for 2016′s Science-Talented Student. Having interest in both Engineering and Biology, I selected both fields as my fields of interest. Unfortunately, KAST replied that I could only choose one. This was a problem. After all these years of having interest in Engineering, and a solid dream to work with robots, I had Biology which recently came in my interest. I had to decide.
I listed the things I wanted to do and weigh between three things: my personal enjoyment, how important I think they are for the world, and how many people would support me doing these.
Number one on my personal enjoyment list was ‘Full Virtual Reality’, which is the ‘VR integrated with exoskeleton’ I mentioned above. However, I don’t think it is something in need - it isn’t something that we must have to survive in the future, but more of a better form of entertainment. It’d improve simulations and learning significantly, of course. But by the time I’d be out of university, VR would be as polished as it can be, and visual immersion would be enough for experiments. I mean, if I were to work in under a university, or a research center under the government, would they really support the financial costs for researching this technology? Is this technology more important than other things I could research?
What is the most important, then? To find out, I drew a spider diagram.
Bubbles with things that have problems in them, with arrows pointing at each other if one contributes to another. For example, the bubble ‘Non-renewable energy resources’ is pointing an arrow at ‘Air Pollution’, as it contributes to it.‘Air Pollution’ could be pointing at the ‘Health’ bubble, and the arrows continue.
This could be a product of asymmetry of information, but it was concluded that ‘Food’ was contributing to the most problems. It contributes negatively to ‘Air’, ‘Water’, ‘Land’, and ‘SuperBug’. This is the biggest problem in the world. It’s surprising, really. Not many people think there are any problems with food in our world, but after thorough research (I encourage you to read this paper, at least till ‘Introduction’), I knew what I should do to save the world.
(2) My Goals and Plans
Finally after all these years, I have a job I am very sure to thrive for(at least, I think it is. I’m still 17, so you never know if a thunder would strike me one day and change my goal completely): Biotechnology researcher.
…or a professor.
So what am I doing right and planning to do to reach this goal? I’m studying in a special class called ‘Cheong-Ah (CA)’, where only the top students in our school are grouped up to study for College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT). Along with this class and other additional classes I take in school, I get to stay in school for whole 13 hours every school days. As a student of Class CA, it’s not even a question if we can rest at home during holidays. Continuous school days until 2017 December with additional classes are planned to improve my scores for both school exams and CSAT/National Exams, which are crucial for university enrollment.
Personally, the school exams are easy, so I don’t have much plans for it other than maintaining my grades and continuously improve it till I take the first place in the entire school. I have no solid data to support my words, but I believe I sit as the second best student in the school.
About National Exams. National Exam are similar to CSAT; It’s simply a version made appropriate for which Year student may be taking it. Like CSAT, it is taken all over the country, and you get ranked according t how well you’ve done relative to others (Here’s a flipped picture of the Korean ranking system. By flipped, I mean rank 1 should be read as rank 9). My goal is to have myself at least in the top 11% (Rank 2) of all students nationally. For this, I’m first focusing on Maths and Sciences and will be til I score as top 11% for both. After achieving this, I’ll finally focus on Korean and Korean History. English is one of the subjects in the exams as well, but it should be obvious that I’d have absolutely no problem in being top 11% for it.
For CSAT, the final exam that’d decide my life, I plan to take Physics I and Biology II for my sciences (there are two levels for sciences, II being harder), and hopefully place in top 11% of the world.
I dream to enroll in to Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and major Bio-engineering, but following my teacher’s opinion it is more likely for me to enroll in to Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) as it’d be slightly more ‘realistic’ of a dream. Comparing both websites and the information I’ve read, there are absolutely no good reason I’d want to enroll in POSTECH instead of KAIST. But I guess that’s why my teacher thinks it’s more realistic.
After finishing my Masters, I plan to do my PhD in the University of Bath in Cell Agriculture Bioprocessing, get in a team, and carry on with my goals from then.
As for a minor change, I have cut down a lot of gaming time.
Lastly, if you have read (1) and wondered if I was selected by KAST, my answer is “I did.” As one of this year’s science talented student of Korea, I am given the chance to communicate with professors and work with them. We’ve planned to have me get used to lab conditions and experiments done by post graduates during late July till mid August. I also have their contacts available for my questions to be answered. (It’s now September as I edit this draft, and I have learned many sides of doing a research, and I have a clearer view of how I would need to carry out my research and work to reach my goal.)
Now to drop realism in all these plans.
First, being in Class CA doesn’t mean I’m smart. I’m just smarter than many of the students here. Our school was built just a year ago, meaning we are literally the first set of students this school have accepted. And unlike many schools, the school accepted just about anyone, majority who failed to have good enough grades to enroll in to others. So yes, our school is terrible with studies, and since the school doesn’t want to see an average of 20, the exams are adjusted to make a normal distribution graph for our grades. This means that the exams are relatively easy for me, which is why I’m not as pressured as I should be. If I have to count how many students are genuinely smart enough, my hands are all I need.
This also means that the level of teaching in this school is nowhere close to the exams in National Exams/CSAT. Ridiculously, our school’s average for this month’s National Exam is the bottom 15% of the entire country. Studies for these exams must be done by self, making it harder for me.
As for my National Exam average, I score just about average. That is not good enough yet.
Nevertheless, I am improving. I’ve been receiving useful advice from many teachers on how I should do and plan my studies, and it’s going well. Somewhat. I just need to get rid of my laziness and gain more motivation than I have right now to fully utilize my plan and time and reach my goal.
How have you guys planned your life?