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 Communication at Kyung Hee University.
Efforts Devoted to Academics
Writing by Distinguishing Facts from Opinions Since elementary school, I have often been told at school that I am 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 receiving 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 essays 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. While preparing 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 essay writing involves 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 using facts as arguments rather than 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 distinction was clearly evident. After persistent effort, I eventually learned to distinguish between facts and opinions, clearly separating arguments from evidence. Realizing that a lack of background knowledge was the root cause of these mistakes, I began reading various books related to 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.
School Activities
We are the cultural event planners at our school! When I was a freshman in 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 internal and external. 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 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 those 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 roles, I was able to experience the work of both teams. I started out on the planning team. Our job involved holding meetings to decide, one by one, what kind of event to hold, what the content and theme should be, what the specific event procedures and processes would be, 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, with each club operating one booth. We also accepted separate applications to allow classes 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 ensure no issues arose during the final settlement process. On the second day of the event, we set up a stage so that each club could decorate their own section, and we also accepted applications from individual students or teams within each class to put on performances. While this might seem like a standard procedure, there were many details to attend to, and allocating personnel and budgets was no easy task, so we worked very hard.
In addition to the festival, our planning team organized events such as spring outings, field trips, flea markets, library film festivals, and playground camping events, and we worked hard to ensure their successful execution. While all events began with ideas and meetings, ultimately, cooperation with the operations team was crucial for running them smoothly. Our role was to receive applications and establish event procedures, while the operations team’s role was to actually execute these plans and produce results. When I was part of the operations team, I was so busy running back and forth 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 the place, and there were numerous requests. Trying to verify and resolve all of them made me truly feel the challenges of event management firsthand. These activities with the cultural planning team served as an opportunity for me to grow through diverse experiences.
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 my second semester of sophomore year, I became the senior-most member and was responsible for overseeing the overall operations, working alongside new members who had just joined the department. At the time, I heard that there was a student from a multicultural family among the newly enrolled freshmen. So, I met with that student to talk, and since I felt that understanding 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 a positive response. We passed 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 scope beyond our original plans and organized a camping event on the sports field, featuring booth activities, 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. Since we needed a tent and a projector to set up the screen, I prepared these separately. I also spoke directly with the production company to explain our good intentions and successfully obtained the movie file. Through these efforts, I was 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 enjoyed themselves. 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
My dream of becoming a next-generation journalist with strong planning and execution skills has been a long-held aspiration, and I applied to your university to make this dream a reality. The fact that I was able to nurture this dream without major issues 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 myself—and we grew up in a close-knit household. Although I have no siblings, my parents were always by my side, offering encouragement and support, sometimes acting like friends and other times like siblings. 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 platform, 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 reporter, it was a valuable experience that allowed me to acquire various knowledge and information related to cultural events, bring them to life, and develop my planning and execution skills.
My future career plan is 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 is evident simply by looking at the development of social media and the growing number of bloggers. Therefore, I intend to become both a reporter who primarily writes interview articles on-site and an author who uses the results of those interviews to write books about people. Through these activities, I plan to position myself at the intersection of writing and journalism. My future career plan is to be a friendly, public-friendly reporter who conveys cultural activities and lifestyle news rather than focusing on social issues.
