179. Should college students be required to take physical education courses? Why or why not?

I think colleges should require all the students to take physical education courses in their school year because people need to maintain their physical and mental health by exercising. I am sure that the majority of the people, mostly the parents, might think that, ‘they should study in college since it is their once in a life chance to graduate in good school to get a good job.” I strongly believe the opposite, it is true that studying in colleges are once in a life chance, however, if the student is unhealthy and stressed out with studies which will not help them from concentrating. As a high school student I have tons of work during weekdays and even in weekends. I get lots of stress from working and also from my parents, because of two C+ I have, however, I play sports as one of my hobbies and it lets my stress go away. I once read in a Korean newspaper article, and it said “exercising not only keeps your body health, but also your brain healthy,” when I first read this article I wondered how can exercising keep people’s brain healthy, however the examples in the article made it clear. It said exercising lets out stress from people and also lets people’s brain relax. Because stress is one of the biggest issues for many of the student, physical education courses can possibly help them reduce the amount of stress they get from work, school, parents and etc. Not only because the students gets stressed out from things, but also for their physical health, which will eventually help them throughout their life. The reasons why people die before they reach the age of 70 and above are because of their physical health. Therefore the students should study in both physically and mentally healthy condition.

What confuses you most in life, and why? (University of Virginia)

Many people have a question in their mind, ‘What confuse me the most? How does it affect my life’ once in a while I also ask myself the same question. However everyone has different answers and I think my concern is similar to many people. I was not confused about anything in my life, but the recent decision made by Korean government; “from 2013 all the doctors have to get degree in Korean college to work in Korea”, made me think about my future goals and also confused me. I always had dream of becoming a dentist and working for my family’s community, but the new law made by Korean government destroyed my dreams and even brought chaos to my life. I am still not sure and confused about what courses I should take and what should I become when I grow up. This incident confused me the most throughout my life, however life needs to move on and I cannot stay at the same place thinking and confused about a single problem. I need to find a way out and get over the problem I am having right now. I am still thinking of what degrees I should get in college, thankfully I did take economy class this year therefore I can still go for a major in economy. When I get confused in my life I always think of the words my parents told me, “One day you will meet a barrier, but that doesn’t mean you will have to end your journey, you can still get over the barrier and continue to live and dream about your future.” Yes I believe in these words each one of us might have hard time in our life, but if we get through the hard time we can be stronger and happier.

#173. If you had to describe yourself as an animal, what animal would you select and why?

If I had to describe myself as an animal, the animal will be sloth. Sloth is an animal which describes my personality and my visual perfectly. Sloths are the laziest and slowest animal in planet earth, it spends most of its time resting on a tree or eating. I saw a documentary in National Geography, it was about the animals in Africa and Amazon, and it introduced sloth and showed what it does throughout the days and their reaction towards many different things. One part which I can clearly remember is, “what if sloth’s baby is in danger?” it showed a snake attacking baby sloths, however, the big sloths were to slow and lazy to even rescue the baby, so the humans, people who took the documentary, had to get involved and save the little ones from the snake. This clearly shows how carless and lazy those sloths are, they did not even try their best to save their own child. But sloth’s characteristics suit me, not in sense of being lazy to do my duty. Since I do similar things during the vacation and weekends, I spend time in my bed with my laptop or homework from my ‘great’ teachers. I had many experiences when I felt like I am one of the sloths, as an example when I was in 9^th grade I did not even keep up the homework on date. I personally think that it is because of the environment and surroundings, since we 9^th grade had to live at a dormitory which was far apart from school system. Even today I feel lazy to even go up to school in the morning and I don’t even want to get out of my warm bed. However, I still keep myself fit by playing soccer or walking up to school every day.

What do you think has been the most important social or political movement of the 20th century? Do you share a personal identification with this cause

I think the most important movement in 20^th century which affected my life is the Korean War, which was held from 1950 to 1953. During the war my grand parents were still a children, however if I think about the war if by any chance my family did not survive, I wouldn’t be alive right now. There was also a possibility of my family moving into North Korea, and if they did I would not know what would have happen to my family either. I really think my families lucky, thousands of people died during the war and many people lost at least one of their family members, however, none of our family members were involved in war. My grandmother told me a story about her experience during the war, she told me story about her family was hiding at a house near the mountains. One late night North Koreans came into the house with big, dead wild pig and asked my grandmother’s mother to cook them. She told me that the North Koreans had guns and it frightened each one of her family members. Thankfully the North Koreans did not do anything harmful to my grandmother’s family and left after eating the cooked pig. Because the North Koreans did not kill or did anything harmful to my grandmother’s family I exist. For my grand father, it was not a big deal, since he lived at the south edge of South Korea, the war did affect the cities at the south, but it did not affect his family much. As a result, Korean War brought change to many people in Korea, only in bad ways. I am proud to be a South Korean, but if I think about it, what if Korea wasn’t divided into half? Wouldn’t I be just called as Korean and we don’t have to worry about war and so many other things. As a result the war movement in Korea have changed my life totally.

If you had the power to change three things in your community or in the world, what would you change and why? (Middle East Technical University in Tur

If I had the power to change three things in the world it will be the unfair society, people’s stereotype and the studying system. I am part of each one of these system, however I really don’t get affected by them much, but I still have few suggestions for it. First the unfair society, thing about the cast system in India and compare it to other countries like US where there is no cast system. In India widows used to and for some people still have to follow two paths, first jump into the fire while their husband is getting burnt in to ashes or become an outcaste and live a miserable life with other widows. However in other society where they have free cast system they don’t have problem divorcing or remarrying after husband’s death. Cast system is just unfair for so many people in India, last month in a village one married couple was forced to split up because they were from different cast, but the couples ran away. The cast system just makes people’s life harder and miserable; therefore there shouldn’t be any cast system in the world. Secondly people’s stereotypes should also be changed, as an example gender stereotypes takes a big part in this. For the past thousands of years, women were treated differently from men. Women were always the low class people and in some countries they did not even have right to do anything other than being a household. In present days it has changed a lot, people started to treat women with more respect, however, because of the stereotypes women still have hard time. The older generation people have strong argument with the gender stereotype, they always say men are before women and women cannot do anything without men. But if you think about it, the stereotype not only applies to women, but also to men. Majority of the people think that men cannot cook or clean, however, majority of the chiefs in five star, seven star hotels are men. Because the world has moved on and majority of the stereotypes are not true anymore, it should be removed from people’s mind and from world. Lastly the one which affect me the most is the studying system. In Korea, I don’t know the reason, all the parents expect their children to study really hard and get the highest grade possible. Well I am sure all the parents around the world wants that, however, Koreans have different system. When they start to attend elementary school, they were told, sometime forced to attend the academies which they don’t even like. For example, my youngest brother only in kindergarten, but he already attends 3 academies, English, math and language. I do not think this is the correct way of rising up the children, they should have freedom while they grow up, at least until they reach middle school. This might be the reason why South Korea has one of the highest student suicide rates. Because the little kids deserve freedom and also to decrease the suicide rate, we should change the studying system in Korea.

Should prison inmates be allowed to take college courses? Explain why or why not.

I strongly believe that prison inmates should be allowed to take college courses, because when they get out of prison they can start their new life. According to statics I saw few weeks ago on Korean newspaper have mentioned that majority of the prisoners seems to repeat their crime when they get out of the prison. They just think it is a normal thing for them to do since they have already done once. I also saw many posters saying “once criminals are never to be forgiven.” This idea is wrong, what happened to all the teaching Buddha, Jesus and many other religions gave us, forgiving sins. People say they believe in them, but they do not follow their idea. I believe the inmates deserve to learn more things in the prison and start a new life when they come out of prison. It will not only be good for the inmates, but also for the country. It can also have negative effect, such as the inmates can gain more knowledge and cause even worse crime or the college system won’t even work in a prison since majority of the inmates are uneducated. As I mentioned, the majority of inmates seems to come back after they are free. They cannot do anything other than causing a crime to live out their livings. However, if the government is willing to provide them with free college education the amount of inmates will also decrease in a long term project. Everyone should be treated equally, even though they were once a criminal that does not mean all of them should live their life suffering from others fingers pointing at them or getting mistreated by them. I really think people should be forgiven at least once and should be allowed to start a new journey. For allowing the inmates to take college courses in prison will bring a brighter future to them.

98. History has recorded the American Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and the Sexual Revolution.

“History has recorded the American Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and the Sexual Revolution” (Northwestern). I think a war between the machinery and humankind will be the next great revolution, which can impact on me and the society. As technology and science develop and advance, many different kinds of robots or machines are all around people, and replacing people’s job in daily life. A main difference between robots and humans was that machines do not have any emotional feelings such as happiness and sadness before. However, robots nowadays can feel sad, mad, and happy about something that happened to them or that they saw or heard. Surprisingly, robots express their thoughts and emotions, and some can even do things that humans can not do. Actually, there are many films and literatures like Terminator, I-Robot and Matrix, which talk about machines overthrowing humans. For example, in There Will Come Soft Rains by Bradbury, humans developed the technology for themselves but, ironically, the technology does not care if humans are around to use its services, and just do what they were supposed to do. Brave New World is another example of a novel which has a similar concept as There Will Come Soft Rains, and shows how the technology controls the natural feelings or desires of humans. Just like the stories and movies, I have a strong feeling that robots that can feel, say, hear, see or smell will be invented by people in the future. The machinery may listen to what people say for awhile, but they will go against to humans or even will try to control humans, one day. The revolution will impact not only on me, but also on the society or maybe on the whole world. If the revolution actually occurs or the machinery wins, the humans will be controlled by robots, and it will change a lot of things such as life style, culture, religions and environment.