Moon Sooin
When this semester started, I received an email from Hanyang University. It was about recruiting reporters for English blog that is supposed to be an informational blog for foreign students who came to Hanyang University to study for a semester. The moment I read the email, I was very excited to be a part of something that matters. It was one of those moments that all Korean men has, once they are out of mandatory military time. It’s because people don’t really feel like they are needed in the group of military people. Personally, military experience made lots of good for me, but on the other side, the entire experience was pretty much useless when I got out of the military. That was why, when I applied for this, and got called to the office, I was already planning on how to say hi, and make new friends. This was my chance to develop my half-dead social skills, and actually salvage somewhat left of my English skills, which I never used for 4 years, other than talking to myself. But when I got to the office, the manager told me that I was one of many applicants, and I might have to go through tough competition. Hence, I had nothing to do other than doing my best at the interview, and hope for the best. The entire interview was going very easy on me and gave me an impression that she is an open minded manager, which made me even more eager to get the chance to be one of the group, working with her. After the interview, I also joined another club that was supposed to be managing events and welcoming foreign students, which I also had to go through an interview.
When all the interviews were done, I had quite a high hope for the both. For the reporter case, I was confident for no reason at all, and for the other one, I knew one of the interviewee and we could talk about some common experience and thoughts. However, the result was not really good. For the club, I received a rejection message a week later, the same day that I was supposed to get the result of blog interview. While being sad by the fact that I was rejected, because at then, it was one of the first failures that I had to go through after finally coming back to the society, I waited for the result. I thought I failed for the blog, too. Again, I didn’t have any reason to think like that, but I had very low confidence, which was why I thought I failed when she never contacted me.
Trying to cope with two failures, I was focusing on how I can spend time more freely, with no tasks at hand. This was I was stunned when I got a call from the manager, and she told me that I have to be at the weekly meeting on Thursday. At first, I didn’t even know what this meeting was about, so I asked her, and she was very surprised. Then, she told me that I was probably omitted when she was contacting all the people who got picked, and that she was sorry. Unable to cope with this acceptance letter from society, I just said yes, I’ll be there, and hung up. It was only when I actually got to the meeting that I could understand what I was up to.
The first meeting, as I remember, was amazing. I tend to avoid some people with some specific traits, but the entire reporters’ group was clean. Every member had their own style, own ways and personalities, but none of them had any bad things to be annoyed with. As quite picky I can get, it was like someone up there saying “perfection”. And, so forth my semester as a reporter has started.
During the meetings, I had to come up with new ideas for the blog, which was hard because the blog was going on for about more than 3 years, and most of the predecessors wrote pretty much everything that could be introduced to foreign students. It was challenging, but when we were giving back and forth our ideas and plans for the month, topics usually came out and we only had to pick them up. So, for me, it was more about eating a free meal with some people around me. As I said, I knew no one in the school, because of the military time, and the fact that I was close to people who were higher grade than me, before I went to military, and obviously they all graduated. Therefore, it was very nice to have people around me, once a while. I’ve begun to pick some friends in the class during the semester, but it wasn’t easy. Although I never actually talked to the blog members, outside of the meeting, I never had any awkward moments or silence. The meeting was always enjoyable, and relaxing. I think it was because, everyone was doing their part, and we had a great intermediator, editor in chief, who always made a nice atmosphere to talk about things with my guards down. Another reason would be that the conversations that we had was always interesting. Everyone had nothing in common, but the fact that we were students of Hanyang University. So, we had somethings to share, but never boring ones.
Now, the end is near, and quite honestly I expected to do more meetings. All the meetings were very fun for me, and writing posts and talking about topics in English really helped my English skills come back to where it used to be. If I could I would, without hesitation, apply for the next semester’s. I wouldn’t even suggest this to the others, without confirming the fact that I can no longer apply for the seat.
myHUBS 
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