Tag Archives: Making transitions

A Korean-Canadian Transition

March 15th, 2013! (Picture from http://illinoispsm.blogspot.ca)

Tomorrow, March 15th, 2013, marks an important day for me.

Looking back to only a couple of weeks ago, I have a lot to say about the psychology of a Ph.D. student faced with the monster called the General Knowledge Exam (a.k.a., comprehensive exam). Through the ups and (mostly) downs of the GKE process, I have accumulated a few pages of venting in my diary and random post-it notes. But all of that is over, and I had my happy ending — for now (there’s the research proposal defense coming up soon).

But today I am going to look a little further back than just a couple of weeks.

Like… Way~ back.

Picture from: http://tricofoundation.ca

Tomorrow, March 15th, 2013, would mark the 13th anniversary of me and my family’s very first day in Canada as landed immigrants.

I didn’t think much of it at first. Every March 15th, I’d smile, thinking back the first day we landed in Canada. Some years, I think I forgot about it.

But this year, I realized for the first time (or at least it feels like the first time) that I have spent almost as much time in Canada as I have in Korea — 14 years in Korea, 13 years in Canada. This realization just kind of hit me with a bit of a mixed feeling.

For a while now, I have accepted myself as a person who is very much Canadianized (some people would equate this to the term “white washed” but Canada has very colourful demographics). I go back to Korea once in a while, and by that I mean once in three years or so, and I have less than a handful of Korean friends here. But now that I feel super comfortable living in Canada (and have been for a while), I feel this sudden urge to look for the next challenge. The next continent/country to live in. It feels as though I need to move around and immerse myself in a completely new and different environment every decade or so, just to keep me challenged and not settled in an overly comfortable state.

At some point, there was definitely a transition where, when someone asks me “where are you from?” I used to answer “I am from Korea,” and then started to say “I’m from Ontario” or “I’m from Canada.” When did this transition take place? I am not so sure.

I can still remember the night my family landed at the Toronto Pearson Airport. During the 12+ hours of flight from Seoul to Toronto, the flight attendants of the Korean Air we flew with were super nice to us, listened to my parents’ story of ‘en route to the mysterious and giant land of Canada’ and gave us a deck of playing cards with Korean Air marked on it.

Holding onto pretty coloured sheets of paper with the Government of Canada imprinted on it, my family waited by a special customs area with lots of other coloured people I had never seen in my life. We must’ve picked up a few Welcome to Canada brochures that was meant to be a super short version of a survivor’s guide to Canada. But despite its length, they were all written in English so I didn’t understand anything other than the word Canada — easy to pronounce, easy to spell.

Wendy’s burger combo reminds me of my very first night in Canada 13 years ago. Picture from http://blogs.chicagosports.chicagotribune.com

We had landed in the evening time. By the time we passed through the customs/immigration and found my father’s former colleague who welcomed us to the country, it was all dark and the entire family super hungry. So we made a quick stop at a Wendy’s on highway 401 on our way to my father’s colleagues’ house in London, Ontario.

It was perhaps the very best burger combo my sister and I had ever tasted in our lives. The fries were super fat and long (I swear they were bigger back then than they are now) and the burgers were giant compared to what I think I was used to from Korean fast food restaurants.

When I took my first bite of the burger, I thought to myself that Canada and I could get along just fine.

Contrary to my hopes and dreams that night, the first handful of years of my life in Canada wasn’t as beautiful and delicious like the first bites of the magically tasty burgers. Many immigrant families and international students will probably tell you the same. I mean, I think I have more embarrassing, depressing, and humiliating stories to tell than I can actually remember. And I think I lived as though I was always on my toes, because I felt that something ‘tragic’ (as tragic as a 14 year old girl’s life can be) could come hit me from whenever and wherever, and I always felt the need be ready for it.

But because of all the downs of moving to a new country, the little wins from day to day brought with them epic joy and a sense of victory.

Being able to speak in English comfortably used to be considered one of my biggest victories of life. People commenting that I don’t have an accent used to make me feel victorious. But when I realized I had spent enough time in Canada, both victories were to be taken for granted. Now that I think about it, having published papers (although co-authored) as the first author of a handful of papers could seem like a great life’s achievement looking back at where I came from. But then again, I’m in academia and been in Canada for over a decade… what do you expect, right?…

Anywho, I now have this weird unsettling feeling sitting in my tummy. I am really comfortable here now. I feel too comfortable. Is that a good thing?

I guess deep down, I’ve always associated myself as more of a Korean than a Canadian — I don’t have my Canadian citizenship yet anyway, although I could get it any time. It somehow feels as though my Korean roots would be threatened if I end up spending more time of my life in Canada than in Korea. I am not sure if I understand myself fully. But that’s not that important I guess. At the end of the day, I grew up, came this far from where I was, and Canada is definitely a happy part of my life now. For that, I am very thankful. And that makes the anniversary something to be celebrated.

In a way, I am envious of my younger self. I feel like the past me was more brave and stronger in facing various ups and downs of life compared to my present self. Perhaps it was more difficult of a transition than if my family had settled down in Toronto or Vancouver (rather than Barrie), where more Korean community could have supported us. But I am glad that I went through that process precisely because, when challenging time comes, I have my own experience from the past to refer back to and help shake things off my shoulders.

Mind you, a lot of my courage came from the fact that my family was always with me. We went through the same struggles together as a unit. And now, my family has changed quite a lot, but still as a unit.

Demographics in Vancouver is quite skewed, and is very different from that of the city of Barrie 13 years ago. Today’s technologies make the transition easier in a sense as well. But I understand that life’s struggles of being new in a place (perhaps as an international student) is very much difficult and different from person to person.

For those of you trying to “become comfortable” in Canada and going through the ups and downs of the process, cudos to you. I hope your journey is as funny, meaningful, and full of good stories as mine, but with less tears and more hugs.

MASc -> PhD: A preliminary check

Breakfast today: Coffee + taiwanese pineapple cake at 3am in the morning.

So….

I woke up super early in the morning to catch up on work. I just could not get all the stuff done yesterday (and during the Thanksgiving weekend for that matter) and decided that I’ll just start my workday early.

2:30 am my alarm clock went off, and I was off to a good start. Super dark outside, super quiet everywhere, slightly creepy with only a desk lamp lighting the entire half-basement lab before dusk. Perfect (?) condition to concentrate on stuff that I’ve procrastinating on.

This strategy to getting stuff done doesn’t always work, because I become very efficient at procrastinating as well. And this morning was a mix of both. I got quite a bit of work done (although not as much as I had hoped to, as is always the case), and quite a bit of nonessential chores done such as switching my phone plan etc.

One of these non-essential chores was updating the ‘about’ page on this blog. I hadn’t looked at it for a while, and it still said that I am a second year MASc student. That means it was overdue for like… many months.

So while my hunger for breakfast pulled my concentration away from the type of work I should be doing, I decided to update it. Well, modify it is more like it. Most of the contents are the same, except for the things that aren’t true anymore. And of course, I didn’t change my profile picture, since I don’t mind misguiding the audience of my age with my lack of dark circles.

But this modification process reminded me of some of the changes that have happened while I transitioned from a MASc to a PhD student. For example, I am no longer the Communications and Public Relations Director for MEGA (the UBC Mechanical Engineering Grads Association). Kristy have been doing a great job on that role for quite some time now. And my thesis isn’t particularly on making robots hesitate — although an extension of that project is still on-going. In fact, I still haven’t decided what I want to do for my PhD.

Printed copy of my MASc thesis! Yay~

I have some really exciting ideas, but haven’t done much of pilot testing. I have some exciting projects going on, but I am not sure if they will become a main ingredient for my thesis work either.

Yes. You could say that I have uncertainties galore, and that I should take some active steps to make things a little bit more certain. But don’t worry. I’ll get there.

So, while I was on this road to dangerous spiral of procrastination, I decided to look up what my thoughts were when I had just finished my MASc thesis. I had just returned from Miami (went there for a conference of course), and wrote this post outlining some of the things I wanted to change about me and my lifestyle.

The first item to tackle was my workaholic tendency. Just the thought of spending an extra day in Miami to chill and relax used to freak me out, some of my friends hadn’t pulled me aside to talk to me about their personal problems/issues for months because I was so busy with the thesis (what a terrible state to be in!!!), and everything and everyone around me seemed to work around my schedule and how my thesis dominated my life. So, back in April, I decided to change that about me. And I think I’ve been staying away from my workaholic attitude ever since then.

I don’t think about making the most out of every minute of my every day in the work-related sense of things. I have taken many weekends off, and attend more social events than I used to last year. Now it’s a bit hard to balance it, and to get lots of work done while finding time to chill. But don’t worry (again), I’m working on it.

My newly planted chamomile flowers. I know it’s hard to see, but there are sprouts to be found. I am serious!

Second item was to cherish little hobbies outside of work, such as gardening. I have too many of these hobbies now, and gardening is still an ongoing thing for me. And I do find that having these little hobbies are good for your mental health. During undergrad, talking and studying roboethics used to be a hobby of mine (nerdy, I know). And then I thought “hey, wouldn’t it be great if my hobby could be my main thing?” and so I made my hobby one of my main research topics. The idea itself was great, but that kind of robbed me of my list of activities I could classify as hobbies…! Now, I have these really non-work-related things like gardening, crocheting, and painting to fill up that hobby list again.

There are some other things I’ve noticed about me that are different from a few months ago as well. As part of my journey to find the next thesis topic I will be married to, I am starting to think big and reading books that weren’t within my range before.

What’s more, I’ve even started thinking about my 3.5 year plan. On paper, I am already past half way point of my first year of PhD. That means I am going to try and graduate within the next 3.5 years. There are so many things I want to do within these years that I couldn’t have imagined to do when I had just started my master’s. When do I want to do what? How much of my thesis should be done by when? And most importantly, what are the things I want to have accomplished by the time I receive my doctoral degree? Chances are, these things will change as time passes. But provided that my goals at the beginning of my masters were quite modest compared to what I was able to accomplish in terms of my personal goals and career goals, I think thinking big pictures in the beginning is the way to go.

In many ways than one, I am busy dreaming, planning, and thinking about the future now that I am giving myself some extra time to breathe despite the ever looming deadlines. Now, if only I can get one of those superpowers to make me stop procrastinating…

MASc -> PhD

Oh Miami, how wonderful you are.

Ah~ where should I start…?

It’s been so long since my last post, that numerous ideas on how to start this post are fighting in my head. So please accept my advanced apology that this post might be a little jumbled.

Well, first thing is first. Since my last post on the odds of dating, I have finished writing my thesis, successfully defended it (YaY!), travelled to Miami, and started my journey as a PhD student at the very same university that I now call ‘home’. Besides the things that most people consider a big deal (like getting my MASc stuff out of the way), there were some other big things that happened since February that I am quite happy about.

South Beach

For example, when I was planning my trip to Miami (for a conference of course), I quickly learned that I had literally been a workaholic who has a serious fear of taking vacations. My friends can tell you all about how I spent days worrying about whether it’s possible for me to actually have fun outside of the lab and spend days at a non-Vancouver location without work. In deciding how long I should stay in Miami after the conference (as a means to take a break from all that thesis writing and defence preparation), I was seriously worried that I would quickly get bored and start missing work/lab if I took more than a day to myself in Miami. Part of the reason was that I was going to be travelling alone, but I’ve travelled by myself many times before. What scared me was the thought of the amount of days I could be spending without working. I mean, what am I going to do by myself in Miami?! Anyways, upon much pondering, I left for Miami on a Thursday and came back the next Thursday. And I guess I don’t need to tell you that by the time I was heading back to Vancouver, I had shaken off the workaholic-ness out of me and did not want to come back.

The Wreck Beach, on campus!

Upon returning to work, I had an epic realization of a fact that should have been obvious three years ago — that Vancouver is an awesome staycation city. It’s a city filled with vacation-like things to do and vacation-like places to go. I mean, living on campus, I am practically only <10 minute walk away from a beach, short bus ride to many other beaches, have free access to the UBC Botanical Garden (I haven’t been to it yet by the way), not to mention the countless things that Whistler, the mountains, Okanagan, and other not-to-far places have to offer. Why did I not realize this before? Well, maybe I did realize it, but I kinda drove right into my thesis project and started my workaholic lifestyle when I got to Vancouver in the summer of 2009.

So, since my return from Miami, I began striving to live the mystical lifestyle that everyone’s been talking about for so long — a balanced lifestyle. Without intending to, my post-vacation attitude and the gradually summering weather of Vancouver has naturally pulled me away from work during weekends.

Two of the MANY plants I have acquired since my return from the mini-vacation.

There’s another big change I am happy about. I have become quite serious about gardening since my return. This is going to sound very cliche, but I have begun to notice things like flowers and such in a way I didn’t before. I’ve become so much more appreciative of the time I spend on things not work related, that I’ve decided to pick up another hobby — gardening. And guess what? Yesterday happened to be a big garden sale day at the UBC Botanical Garden (I still haven’t toured around the garden, but as of yesterday I can say I’ve visited the shop of the Botanical Garden). So I woke up early enough in the morning, took out one of those grocery caddies and happily went shopping for plants. Now I have a blueberry bush, lavender, basil, star flower, and many lettuce, spinach and other veggies planted by my windowsill and outside my door.

Just epic.

From now on, I shall wake up and see the beautiful flowers and greens by my window, and I shall go to work watching my blueberry plant grow. Oh, imagine how delicious the blueberries are gonna be, and how sweet scented my lavender filled room will be! So forget all the depressing odds about finding the right guy to make me happy and all. The mother nature is going to keep me happy with the interesting creatures I’m now a bit freakishly excited about (I can’t stop thinking about getting pretty clay pots to replant my plants).

Another big thing is that I’ve become a happier person after coming back from Miami. Well, the vacation probably has much to do with that. But I think it’s also the fact that I have, somehow, come to terms with my MASc thesis itself. I mean, near the end of the thesis writing process, I really had this thought of “I couldn’t care less about this, I just wanna get this over with!” But I wrote what I consider to be a humongous document with an enormously long title: “What should a robot do?: design and implementation of human-like hesitation gestures as a response mechanism for human-robot resource conflicts” and I feel proud to have finished it. Yes, I could have done things differently, and yes, there are many thoughts that need further thinking. But that’s what the masters program is for, right? You do research, but you are also learning along the way. So the things you worked on in the beginning is in a rougher shape than the things you did later.

Since April 18th of 2012, I have officially been a PhD student at UBC.

I still have the same desk, at the same lab, with the same two supervisors. In a way, my student status seems to be the only thing that have really changed from MASc candidate to PhD student.

Some people call it an academic suicide to get multiple degrees from the same university. But I believe I’ve made the right choice, and that whether I make my choice to stay a suicidal one is really up to me. Because the truth is, everything is different. Unlike almost three years ago when I started brainstorming randomly about what my research question should be (and also wondering what on earth research questions should look like), the randomness in my thought process has been tamed and self-guided. It feels like I’ve been given more freedom than before, because I now have the knowledge of how to properly seize the opportunities I want and have confidence in knowing what I want.

In a sense, I guess one of the biggest things that are different about me as a researcher now compared to me three years ago is my comfort level in jumping into the unknown/unexplored. The fact that research is about exploring things that haven’t been explored and answering questions that haven’t been asked (i.e., there’s no textbook and no solutions booklet) used to feel very daunting. But now, I am hooked at the very notion of jumping into the unknown. The less explored, the better. Because I have full confidence that, even if I fall into a chasm in research of some sort, the army of support network that I have in and outside of the lab are more than enough to pull me back up and onto the right path.

So, watch out world. Here comes the transformed AJung.

And here is the ironic ending to this post. 😉