The Plan for College: Freshman Year

 In a previous post, I talked about how children from Eastern Asian descent were expected to not only take care of their parents, but to be mindful of the sacrifice of their parents. This required a bit of "noonchi" (눈치), or a awareness of their surroundings. This meant that while you go to school, partying too much and spending time with your friends was a waste of time and money; money that your parents had paid to put you through university. The expectation for their children was that they would solely focus on their academics, get good grades and graduate, and make great money. This was my intention when I was accepted into University of the Pacific's HESP (Health and Exercise Science) program in Stockton California. 

However, this was not the case for me, as well as many other Korean-American students around me. While we all tried our best to study hard and get good grades, we also played quite a bit. Most weeknights we would either go to gym to workout, play basketball, go bowling. or go out to eat in various different locations around the school. The danger of the city couldn't stop us from touring the city and taking in all of the various sites. Weekend nights were filled with shenanigans until the early morning with all of my friends, not including those that I would meet that night. 

Schoolwork was left on the backburners. 

Unfortunately, this lifestyle that I had led to many consequences: Studying for exams and big quizzes left for the night before, completing homework assignments right before they were due, poor test performance, etc. As fun as freshman year was, it was also an incredibly stressful period of my life. 

Not only did I have to worry about the self-induced stress in my life, I began to reflect on myself and why I chose this major and Pacific. I began to question my motivations behind why I wanted to study to become a physical therapist. The intentions that were once so clear and focused started to fog. I hated sciences, so why would I pursue a career in the science field. The exercise science classes that I was taking felt so dry and uninteresting to the point that I was disengaged for almost the whole year.

Why did I go to university in the first place? Did I come to chase after my ambitions and passions or did I come to solely go into a profession to make my parents proud?

I became lost in my academics, without any direction. I didn't know where to go, and I was completely adrift. 

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