내 하고싶은 말*

* = what I want to say.

Am I killing my readers with the overposting these days?  미안안안 (sorryyyyyyy).

I don't read Yale publications terribly often; I usually only run into an interesting piece in the YDN, the Yale Herald, etc if a friend links to it on Facebook or points me in that direction.  But I found this article in the online edition of the Yale Herald today, and that, coupled with the fact that I now (fondly) recall that I received news of my Light Fellowship funding to come back to Korea for a full year almost exactly one year ago, prompts me to post today.

For those of you who don't wish to read the article (shame on you!  I even hyperlinked it!), it essentially talks about the pursuit of a 4.0 GPA at Yale and delves a bit into 1) what the achievement of such high grades means and requires, 2) the general perceptions that students carry regarding grades, success, and personal merit, and 3) the implications of the first two items.  It's a difficult piece to summarize with a definitive point, so I will just post the paragraphs that I found the most interesting.

Professors often attempt to highlight the future insignificance of GPA by pushing students to take risks while at Yale. Fadiman believes that grades “can discourage students from taking risks, since it’s so tempting to keep on doing what has already earned them A’s in the past.” She finds that with the grade incentive removed it is often the case that students work “even harder than they would have for a grade” because “they can feel secure that they want to write because they love it and not because of a sense of obligation.”

Dean Besirevic-Regan, too, encourages her students not too place too much emphasis on the pursuit of a number, adding that she is not always “as impressed with a student who has a 4.0 but has done nothing else.” She advises her students to step outside their comfort zone, often finding that they are “more proud of getting a B-plus in a hard class than getting an easy A.” The “saddest thing” for her is seeing a senior take basic drawing for the first time only to find that “this is their passion and what they love.” Saussy encourages students to remember why they’re at Yale. “Previous human experience has shown that garnering rewards at one stage of life is no guarantee that you will be rewarded, or simply happy, at the next stage.”

I'll bite, I had a decent GPA at Yale - high enough to graduate with honors.  I was never UPSET if I got a low grade (I was, in fact, mostly happy with even my crappy grades, because I received them in classes where the expected outcome was mediocrity at best).  Rather, I tried to emphasize classes and content more than simply just looking at grades.  This lead to some interesting choices on my transcript - a class on food history (one of my favorites at Yale), two classes on biblical scholarship (not even tangentially related to what I was planning to do), a political science seminar on bioethics (hey, the lecture was really good), and a history course on the Roman emperor Nero (taught by the foremost leading historian on the Classics in the United States).  Oh, and of course - Korean.

When I look back on the courses that I took at Yale, sometimes there are things I felt I should have done that I didn't - I never took econ, despite the fact that I have long known that my own understanding of economics is crippling, and I missed the chance to take Keith Darden's seminar on nationalism (though I did manage to make it into the lecture).  But overall, I was happy with my courses, and for the most part, I enjoyed taking them and feel like they really enhanced my academic and educational experience.  And aren't those the most important things?

Well.  Those things are very important if you have an unreasonably high level of self-esteem and are able to shrug off the scrutiny of your peers like water off a duck's back.  But most of us are human, most of us are unable to do that, and to be upfront and honest, I was routinely berated for my choices at Yale and painfully so.  It was rarely done to my face - that would have been smallest kindness - but word always got back to me.  What were the criticisms?  To put them succinctly:

1) Dana only takes classes that are easy and will get her a high GPA.
2) Dana is actually just stupid and can't do math or science.  She doesn't take those classes because they'll hurt her GPA.  She is taking the easy way out.
3) Dana's high GPA doesn't accurately reflect how smart she is because all of her classes were too easy.  She's not as smart as say, someone who is double-majoring in a science and a humanities.
4) Dana's class choices are completely useless.

Thank you, the court has heard the criticisms.  Now, please allow me to present my defense.

You're right.  I am terrible at math and most sciences, principally because the fields of physics and chemistry do involve a lot of math (I'm almost disgustingly good at biology, but nobody ever acknowledged that because it's the "easy science" that just involves  a lot of memorizing.  Nevertheless, ask me if I can still recall almost every detail of the oxidative phosphorylation process - just try it).  On that vein, it should be noted that I absolutely despise math.  It frustrates me to no end, I hate doing it, I hated taking classes that involved it, and once I was finished with a torturous full year of high school AP calculus, I vowed to myself that my future profession would involve the minimal level of mathematics - preferably limited to balancing my checkbook and depositing large checks in the bank.

And of course, with that being said, it's obviously true (and I was well aware) that taking math and science classes would have ruthlessly murdered and dismembered my GPA.  It's also true that my grades from my science and QR (quantitative reasoning) required classes at Yale are the worst on my transcript.

But (and this bears repeating), I just do not like math.  I'm not good at it.  I did not feel the need to torture myself by forcing myself to take classes that would have made me both miserable and would have seriously called into question my ability to have a future.  So I avoided classes I would have hated (math) and took classes I was sure I would enjoy (various selections from language, humanities, and the social sciences).  Does that mean that the GPA I earned from taking those classes is an inaccurate reflection of my intelligence?  Should I have taken a bunch of math and science classes for a more accurate measure of how truly smart (or truly stupid) I am?

Even close friends used to say privately behind my back that they thought I was stupid, the "dumbest in my suite."  I knew how they felt about my choices, and you know what?  It hurt.  Because of their malice and their words, I felt stupid.  I felt of sub-par intelligence.  I felt that I didn't deserve to be at Yale.  Even today, I'll readily admit that the "numbers game" of measuring intelligence by GPA is seriously flawed because I know that even the most difficult political science class pales in comparison to organic chemistry or waste water treatment.  I truly believe that some of my friends probably possess a greater degree of intelligence than I do, but that isn't reflected on paper.

Does that mean that my "smarter" friends who chose difficult majors shouldn't have done so?  Does it mean that they should have taken the "easy way out" and majored in history?

No, of course it doesn't.  It comes down to personal choice, what you want to do and what you are happy doing.  I would have been miserable as a science/math major; one of my former roommates, who majored in biology, probably would have been similarly miserable as a humanities major.  In fact, if I recall correctly, she avoided humanities classes like the plague (I remember she got a C on her first paper in Writing 116) - but to my knowledge, no one ever made fun of her inability to write long, theoretically-informed papers or called her stupid or berated her intelligence the way they did mine.  Suppose me and this roommate switched places - we would have both wound up with horrifically low GPAs and less-than-fond memories of classes taken during college.  We would have been miserable.

I always wanted to say to my college roommates that I was happy, that I was doing things that I loved doing, and that my GPA was always less of a factor in my selection of classes than was personal choice, personal potential growth, and personal gain.  And as it happened, probably because I was more in my element, I performed decently in those classes and achieved decent scores.  And don't think there weren't struggles - Leslie Brisman's "The Bible as Literature" seminar was easily, easily one of the most intellectually stimulating and challenging classes I ever took (I got one paper back with four pages of single-spaced typed criticism - no fake).  But no, people - particularly those at Yale - are vicious in their judgment, and everything is a competition, and to them, I suppose it looked like I was winning unfairly because I was doing "easy" things.  But I wasn't trying to win, you fucking morons, any more than you were trying to "lose" by taking science and math classes that make PhD candidates want to rip their hair out!  I was following my bliss and you were, I hope, following yours!  We are all smart and intelligent and capable people - it just may manifest itself in different ways.

[As an aside, if anyone - I mean it, anyone - ever calls one of my musician friends "stupid" ever again (either to my face or privately and word gets back to me, you gossip-mongering horrors), I will never, ever, ever, ever speak to you ever again.]

Beyond vindication, I do have a point here, and I want to address it to people who are following their bliss:

People have expressed to me both private and public criticism of my decision to take and pursue Korean.  At Yale, Korean is almost a "gut" language; it's really hard to get lower than an A or A-, and the class progresses at a ridiculously slow pace sometimes.  It's not as academically rigorous as Chinese, not as notable in popular culture as is Japanese, and (here was the criticism I heard the most), it's "not useful."  Even though Korean is an incredibly, unbelievably, frustratingly difficult language to master, people at Yale used to look at the class as little more than a GPA boost because of the nature of the way it's taught.  I'll be the first to admit that the Korean department needs a bit of a makeover, but let me say this clearly:

I did not take Korean because it was an easy A.
I did not take Korean because the class was fun (the shock!  the horror!  a Yale class, fun?  but if it's fun, you're not learning!).
I did not take Korean because I had elaborate plans of how, exactly, I would implement the language into my professional future.
I did not take Korean so that I could put it on my resume (I'm looking at some of my Chinese-language learning peers).
I did not take Korean because I couldn't handle Chinese.
I did not take Korean because I am lazy, stupid, incompetent, or any combination of those things.

I took Korean because I fell in love with it.  Learning Korean and learning about Korea made me infinitely happy.  Because of Korean, I found my passion - my truest passion - and I know that I will continue to follow it for as long as I live.  Because of Korean, I feel every day that what I am doing has great purpose to my life.  Because of Korean, I have met my best friends, talented musicians, brilliant educators, and astonishing intellectuals.  I have lived in a country that has taught me more about life, learning, and success than did four years at one of America's most prestigious institutions of higher learning.

To all of the Yale students who will be awarded Light Fellowships to study in Korea, to all of those who aspire to do so, and to all who live in fear of scrutiny of their peers simply for following their dreams and passions: don't let anyone talk you out of your heart's desire.  Don't let the one-track minded Yalies whose dreams can be summed up in two years at an investment banking firm make you feel stupid or unaccomplished for following your path.  Don't worry about what is useful or useless in the eyes of everyone around you.  Do not begrudge others their happiness, but most importantly, pursue your own.

"내가 하는 일은 바로 내 일이라서 한다는 사명감을 가져야 합니다.  이게 성숙한 사람 아닐까요?  일을 잘 했느냐?  못 했는냐?  가치가 있는 일이냐?  가치가 없는 일이냐?  이런 생각에 빠지거나 다른 사람의 평가에 흔들리면 안 됩니다...우리가 이 세상에서 할 일은 내가 되어서 내 일을 하는 것입니다.  그러면 사는 것이 간단하고 쉽지요.  우리는 누구의 기대에 맞추려고 사는 것이 아닙니다."
Translation: "Because the work that I do is my work, it should carry with it a call of duty.  Is this not the reflection of a mature person?  Can I do this well?  Can I not do this well?  Is this a valuable job?  Is this not a valuable job?  Don't think about these sorts of things and don't be swayed by the analysis of others.  In this world, the work I choose to do is my work.  So living is simple and easy.  We do not live to live up to the expectations of others."
[excerpted from Sogang's Level 6 reading textbook, Lesson 6, "나의 일, 나의 길".]

포기하지마.  Don't give up.

Love,
D.