1. Once in a life time vs. 40 times

Yesterday, I met with the dean of WCAS to discuss my graduation date. I’ll be done with school next fall but I wanted to ask him if I could walk this June with my classmates. He asked me “why do you want to do that? Graduations are worthless and substanceless. I’ve been to 40 of them and every time I go I sit there thinking why are we doing this?” I was shocked and speechless. After all he is the dean of our school. For the rest of the meeting I had to sit there in his office listening to him how awful the graduation ceremony is. He started with the weather, then the venue, then the name calling...etc...etc. I said “its personal to me, I want my parents to be there to see me graduate and I want to celebrate with my friends” and he said “there is absolutely nothing personal about it. There is the whole school sitting in one place for about four hours just waiting their names to be called. And usually the person can’t even pronounce the names right”. I heard some awful things about graduation ceremonies and how boring it can be but I think it is more than just this impersonal ‘show’. Just because everyone went through the same system of education and training does not mean that everyone in Northwestern had the same college experience. We all came into this institution with different backgrounds, different thoughts and ideas and Northwestern was a place and an opportunity where we were able to share these ideas and learn from each other and our professors but it wasn’t a place to train everyone to think the same or to have the same experiences. Everyone made different and personal memories and struggles and it was disappointing to know what our institution thinks about the graduation and us as a student body.

2. Snowboarding

I love snowboarding. I used to ski when I was young but I started snowboarding in high school. Jake Burton, who graduated from NYU with economics major, made his first snowboards by hand in his garage. He is an innovator of snowboarding and Burton Snowboard Company has grown into one of the world's largest snowboard and snowboarding-equipment manufacturers. Today, half of the people in the ski slopes are snowboarders. It is very much about the culture that is associated with skateboarding, music and rebellion.

3. Obsession with beauty

Why do we think that big puppy eyes are so cute and pretty? I do not know why but I do know that whatever reasons there might be (biological, social, cultural) it is true that people think big eyes are more attractive then smaller eyes. When Lane showed us the article from the New York Times about beauty I automatically thought about the popularity of plastic surgery in Asia. Few years ago, Oprah Winfrey remarked that Korean women have “an obsession with plastic surgery” in one of her episodes which angered a lot of Koreans. I think people were angry because she was saying how American women are confident whereas Asian women have inferiority complex. I was offended that she was generalized all Korean women by just looking at female Korean celebrities. I would have to say that most Hollywood celebrities also go through plastic surgeries to look younger. It is true that in Asia more and more women are going through plastic surgeries to get double eyelids and to get more distinct features. I used to think that it was wrong and superficial but then as more I encountered people who have done it I shouldn’t be judging them. It is a personal choice. My friend once made the same argument during her speech class at NU and she was called ‘superficial’ by one of her classmates. The society does not criticize people who pay to get higher education, who pay to earn higher statues in the society but why are we so critical about women paying their own money to enhance something they don’t like?

4. www.cyworld.co.kr

This is a Korean version of MySpace+ Google that I am obsessed with. It is widely used in South Korea and everyone that I know in Korea has her or his own personal page. People call it 'cy' and it is where people post pictures, upload videos, write diaries and keep in touch with friends and families. It works like facebook in that it is limited only to your 'friends' to view your pictures and posts. It is very convenient because it is also a search engine where people can read news. You can also buy music, fonts and wall paper to decorate your personal page. Few years ago, they also launched websites for other Asian countries like China, Vietnam, Taiwan and Japan.

5. The Bad Girls Club

I used to think that movie stars, singers, celebrities are gifted, special, people who are naturally different from us, the common people. But as there are more and more ‘reality shows’ on T.V, today, everyone and anyone can be a star. In some shows like “The Bad Girls Club” you don’t have to be talented or beautiful you just have to have some anger and personality issues. This show was on Oxygen channel where seven ‘bad’ girls, girls with psychological and personality issues live together for four months. These girls were always fighting, getting drunk every night, hitting each other, hitting other people at bars, and destroying their house. The point of the show was to make these girls work out their relationship issues but it was ironic because the more and more they fought and more violence there was, the ratings went up. I think humans are so unique in that we like to observe fights. Even if it is totally irrelevant to us, as curious beings we want to know why they are fighting and how it is going to resolve.