맥다노르드

August 28^th, 2010

My dearest younger sister,
    Here's a little acronym reflecting upon my last trip to Korea and the most valuable lesson I ever learned: cultural identity.

I. I am Sang Eun Lee, born in South Korea but raised in the United States of America. I am eighteen-years-old and a freshman at New York University. I am a Korean American. I am an older sister and first-born daughter. Identity is a timeless habit everybody has. Interaction itself requires both parties to characterize themselves with various labels so that a relationship can form or be avoided depending on commonalities and disagreements. In a global culture, identity becomes increasingly difficult, especially since boundaries blur between characteristics. If one can be both Korean and American, what are you? In our society, the most influential culture is the United States of America. Intellectuals argue that distinctive traditions disappear or transform according to a dominating culture’s influence, which further diminishes identity. Imperialistic cultures that overpower smaller, native populations constitutes homogenization. In fact, one of the most effective ways homogenization occurs is through the economy, making a smaller population dependent on global products and international production or distribution. Indigenous cultures find their traditions uneconomical, causing them to abandon their rich cultures and prefer generic ones. In opposition to that theory, other intellectuals believe cultures benefit from global exposure. Increasing with globalization, cultural choices explode into the market that indigenous peoples can benefit from since people are not passive vessels and naturally able to uphold or denounce global influences. Inevitably, culture is in a constant dialogue, constantly changing in a vicious cycle of “people make culture, culture makes people,” (Yi Wang). In my opinion, the 21^st century global culture does not take away from my identity because my identity was never geographically located anyways and I express it how I want to express myself. I am an individual.

D. Date: June 28^th, 2010. Daddy thinks going to Korea would be a great experience for me to better know my heritage and catch up on “lost times” with my grandparents. “Definitely,” I replied, and the next thing I knew, I was on a fourteen hour flight to Incheon International Airport. Differences in landscape was the first thing I noticed: mountain ranges, ocean sides, and strange looking trees. During the three hour trip back into Seoul (it was supposed to be one, but the traffic was unbelievable), my heart fluttered at the thought of being immersed in a completely traditional environment for the next three months. Determined to return with customs I don’t normally practice back home, I welled with anticipation. Distinctively, I stood out like a sore thumb out in the countryside, but as soon as we entered the heart of Seoul (where my grandparents lived), I noticed something really interesting. Down the block from my grandparents’ apartment was probably one of the McDonald’s I have ever seen. Dumbfounded, I decided to explore further into town as soon as I was done unpacking.

E. Elle, Domino’s, Coldstone, Baskin Robins’ were all there and with further research, I learned that so many American companies are present in Korea that a U.S.-Korea Trade Agreement (KORUS Agreement) is in debate right now because it would open Korea’s $560 billion services market to highly competitive American companies, supporting jobs for American workers in sectors ranging from delivery and telecommunications services to education and health care services. Expectedly, disappointment plagued me in my gut, honestly, because I felt a little invaded and insulted at the incredibly-visible essence of American culture. Expectations must’ve been higher than I expected, ironically enough. Even though I thought Korea would be foreign, that I was more American than Korean, my experience showed me otherwise. Evidently, Korea is almost just as American as I am. Everywhere I turn, I feel right as home with access to my favorite fast food restaurants, brand names, and even an entire town was dedicated to replicating an American town.

N. Nevertheless, my lessons were priceless. Ninety days later, I returned home and realized how sorely wrong I was in my interpretation. Negatively, I assumed America would stay in America and Korea would be available for me only in Korea but in reality, I control that. Normally, I strictly follow Korean traditions, for instance, as I entered O’Hare International Airport, the first thing I did was bow to my parents and say, “anyounghasaeyo” like the traditional, formal, respectable korean girl I was raised to be. Next, as I entered my home, I took off my shoes and realized that I haven’t said a single word in English; I spoke entirely in Korean. Nostalgically reminiscing about my trip to Korea today is completely different than the I image I constructed for my mother over the phone during my trip. Now that time has passed, I realize I chose to express myself as an American there, that’s why everything was so familiar. Never will I ever let a geographic destination define what I call identity, although I do acknowledge its influence and importance, ever again.

T. To express myself as a Korean would’ve meant that I had to get accustomed to the school, the daily life, and the history there, which I didn’t. Technically, I am still korean. The definition of cultural identity various from person to person but author Ilze Bezuidenhout defines cultural identity as, “an image referring to external as well as internal characteristics of a specific group. However, a culture must be located in time and space to "anchor" it in terms of its past, future and place and to indicate or compare changes that took place within that culture.” The majority of the definition, I agree with. Today, I choose to adhere to the way my parents raised me: the good ol’ fashioned way. Traditionally, I bow when I greet adults, I speak in a formally conjugated language, I eat with chopsticks whenever possible, and I do exceptionally well in science or math-based courses (just kidding about the last attribute). To be an American, I support and love the privilege of the education system here, I call Carol Stream, Illinois my only home, I speak English perfectly, and I am proud to be a citizen. To me, identity changes with time, my time. These fears about globalization seem to be just about extreme nationalism and a rejection towards a new era, exactly emphasizing the Jihad vs. McWorld concept author Barber had. 

I. I am me. Interestingly enough, that’s all that matters to me now. Insecurities no longer plague me with existential problems such as who I am, what I stand for, and how I’ll be an individual. It’s all the same. Identity is enhanced by this global culture because the increased choices in the global market allow individuals to be more cultural, to understand one another, and to practice being a cosmopolitan. In fact, author Appiah was right, it is the age of modern cosmopolitanism. It’s up to us to recognize that globalization has always been a integral aspect of civilization; originality is dead. In hindsight, I wouldn’t trade my trip to Korea for the world because it did enhance my korean culture while better fortifying the American in me.

T. Therefore, cultural identity is a choice, a relative definition for the contemporary cosmopolitan.

Y. You should also find your own cultural identity, hopefully with the same rewarding experience as I had.

Your Newly Enlightened Sister,

Sue.

Dear Diary,

    Let’s envision my typical day in high school focusing on the classroom setting. I sit down two minutes before the passing period ends, notebook on the desk turned to a fresh page. RING. Class starts and I’m off. “A major theme in biology is ‘form fits function.’ The mosaic nature of the plasma membrane is filled with carbohydrates, liquids, ATP...” Crap, what was the last thing he said? Do the hydrophilic chains face inside or outside the outer membrane? Suddenly, I find myself snowballing down a hill of confusion. Whatever, I’ll just re-annotate the textbook later. After losing pace with my teacher’s lecture, I focus instead on the powerpoint, which contains bolded, defined vocabulary words and diagrams that vaguely represent what detailed explanation my teacher is trying to give. Usually by the time I’ve succumbed to last-resort note-taking, my notes become so sparse and easy to memorize that my work feels accomplished even though I probably didn’t understand the entirety of the subject. Then, I just let my mind wander until I hear the next passing period’s bell. 
    My college career at New York University officially started. First thing I noticed: connectivity. Everyone is linked to each other through the World Wide Web, constantly sharing files or messages with NYUClasses or NYUGmail. Also, I was typing my notes, not frantically scribbling them. With laptops in the room, class discussions sped up and included a variety of discussion rather than just the teacher’s cliche lesson. Last but not least, teaching and learning happens in both the teacher and the student in my NYU courses. In fact, my professor and I tweet, tweeting posts about anything from politics to blogging. Learning encompasses much more than pure memorization. Even with a lecture, merely explaining the material is not enough in some cases for students to absorb and get familiarized with the subject. Ironically, all those years in high school getting my cellphone or iPad taken away now seems detrimental more than beneficial at keeping me focused. The reality is we are living in the 21^st century and learning in a digital age. Therefore, despite my still being a student, I’ve compiled my past diary entries, comparing and contrasting my college academic experience with my high school academic experience, to reflect upon why the integration of technology to a certain degree is most beneficial.

September 8^th, 2012:
    I just finished my first week of school. In all honesty, I have whiplash trying to keep up with my courses. Some of them don’t feel much different from high school, aside from a smaller class size. We read a novel, come to class to discuss it, and then write an essay dissecting motifs of the reading. Actually, they're like high school on steroids with nearly 200 pages to read per night and a powerpoint presentation due for each of those readings. Yet, another class exists that's refreshingly new: Wri_108. The first thing Dr. Rectenwald said was, "All writing, reading, and conversing will essentially take place online. Our only assignment? Make a Twitter account." Pretty unorthodox, this class holds a lot of potential to challenge me, especially since I’m always terribly unsatisfied with my own writing. Our whole class will be constantly connected, splashing colorful additions to our discussion whenever, however.

September 15^th, 2012:
    In Latin American Global Cultures (LAGC), the syllabus pans out exactly what I will be learning about: The Mayans, Incas, and Aztecs. No news there, I’m simply repeating what I learned in social studies. In Cultural Foundations (CF), the feminists in my class have taken over and by taken over, I mean they dominate conversations and devour all opposition. We read about the double standard of women’s role in society and how a tiny Venus statue (the Woman of Willendorf) can be pornography. Two class periods have been wasted merely sharing everyone's relatively similar (and mundane, for that matter) opinions because we only had one source as background information. I give up. Social Foundations (SF) teaches ancient egyptian culture and ancient authors demonstrating bias. Love the subject material, hate the note-taking on a reiteration of the homework and by hand. In Writing, however, I learned about media convergence and its effects. Our conversations even went as far as discussing a sort of masochistic consumerism that exists in our society with the help of my iPad, which gave me all statistics I used to argue my position. Surprisingly, I was more engaged because multiples of sources or professional accounts meant a thousand different means of interpretation. We stopped wasting time on establishing understanding or definitions and started constructing our own understanding with material from contemporary times and real world issues. In fact, many research studies both in education and in psychology support the theory that students learn by constructing their own knowledge, not by passive absorption of information (Resnick, 1987, von Glaserfeld, 1987). I guess Google isn't making us stupid. Getting rapid facts online, although I do agree facts mean nothing without foundational understanding of the overarching concept, are definitely helpful. Technology allows facts to be known faster and to be more readily available than the exact same facts found the archaic way: books. As long as we're not "passively absorbing" information, learning is learning. My iPad just makes things incredibly efficient.

September 22^nd, 2012:
    I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s so interesting to see how something so insignificant as video games, originally meant for entertainment, manifest into something so necessary economically, psychologically, and physically. I mean, our industry is blooming because of games like Call of Duty and South Korea wants to make video gaming a sport for Pete’s sake. Further yet, a psychoanalysis of dreams show that they serve as a source of escapism for many individuals, a subconscious desire for control and competition to excel past boundaries of life that don’t exist in these pixelated contexts. All the while we discussed harmful effects, the internet didn’t stop us from seeing the benefits. Information poured out about accelerated ability to weed out unnecessary information or proper emotional ventilation. I saw it help Freddy first hand in gym class. The coordination and motor skills that come from Wii is incredible. That’s when I got inspired to write. For the first time ever, I could creatively, almost instinctively, start extracting my thoughts. My ideas spewed out and for a notoriously opinionated child like me, expression is the hardest. Surprisingly, my writing grows less and less formulated. The blogs give me a sense of individuality as well as structure, yet it’s still a homework assignment. Last week it was greek mythology and this week it’s a narrative. So far in all of my other classes, I’ve had hellish reading assignments and no grades to show for them. Discussions are fair in my other classes but we spend a lot of time recapping and clarifying passages more than digging deep into thematics of the chapters. Interesting read, but not I'm not too interested.

September 29^th, 2012:
    Pedagogy is everywhere. The discussions we’ve had so far in class have left me a skeptic, a critic, and worst of all, a fatalist according to Dr. Rectenwald. Teachers attempt to be liberal but don’t incorporate technology for fear of destroying the “intimate” discussions that are not occurring. With access to the internet and freedom to use information however I want, I’ve finally touched upon the concept of knowledge. See, that’s the thing. The reason I feel so compelled to speak up in class and really voice myself in my blogs is because I feel like I can become knowledgeable if I can use the information I have gathered in class. I have the experience and outlook to understand the information, I have the passion and interest to use it. I just need to figure out exactly how I would want to integrate and redisplay my perspective better. My flaws are obnoxiously evident in my writing and even more so in class, but improvement has never been more quick. In high school, I couldn’t even dream of knowing my flaws four weeks into school. Even if I had, my teachers tried to correct them for me but here I am, finally being a big girl and figuring it all out alone. Dr. Rectenwald likes to learn with us, discussing possibilities and interpretations, while teaching us certain ideas of the world that have been proposed but may be a little too advanced for common knowledge. I feel I had been following the "banking system." Educational theorist Paolo Freire argued, in his pioneering work Pedagogy of the Oppressed, that educators should reject this "banking" model, in which the teacher 'owns' knowledge and 'deposits' it in students. Instead, he promoted a 'problem-posing' method in which teachers and students learn together, through dialogue. Problem-posing education depends, then, on a dialogical theory of praxis and knowledge and revised relationship between teacher and student. In WRI108, however, a reformation is occurring. Dr.Rec doesn't encourage "container students" and allows dialogue to flow freely in his class. Technology is a lot more beneficial than I’d anticipated, I just wish I could use my iPad in some of my other classes. I’d take notes much faster and bring many more references to these amazing literatures we are studying. It'd help use class time way more advantageously.

October 6^th, 2012:
    I’ve never been exposed to so much material, had so much freedom, and still felt so concrete. The moment I am directed to write an essay, my heart ambitiously decides a meaningful topic and my head conjures up all the evidence I may need to start. I just wrote an eight-paged essay for my Social Foundations teacher on a comparison between Moses and Pericles: who’s the better leader? The rhetoric flowed, the anxiety disappeared. While I still referenced the text, I rocketed through pages in the internet to gather evidence that better focused my textual citations as well. The Renaissance man of the 21^st century must be this kind of a man, a man who can be literate and tech-savvy (or woman). Technology doesn’t have to be some estranged form of cocaine for the psychologically or emotionally needy. Multitasking is not a disease. Classrooms don’t have to be political catastrophes wavering back and forth between anarchy and totalitarianism. Technology has saved time and memory for me. Learning in a digital age improved skills I’ve struggled with, improvements that would not have occurred with the Stone Age’s paper, pencil, and grading rubric. God forbid I use the five-paragraph stencil in college with five to seven sentences in each paragraph... I think those types of restrictions serve no purpose except to restrict. My poor teacher. 

    Learning in a digital age means freedom. Yes, a chaotic, unpredictable, uncoordinated kind of freedom. Conservatists' argument that technology in the classrooms can be distracting, is true. Also, the exponentially increasing technological innovations causing difficulties in equal distribution or already-set curriculums due to terribly slow technological infrastructure is true. Regardless, I’ve learned that it’s my goal to know how to take what I need, understand what I want, and mold what I have envisioned to create my own masterpiece. Technology is the necessary medium, an inhuman connection to humanity that provides information as well as knowledge from all over. Saving time doesn’t imply kids are getting distracted multitasking or getting lazy. nsba.org actually quoted, "Of the hundreds of studies that show positive benefits from the use of technology, two are worth noting for their comprehensiveness. The first, a U.S. Department of Education-funded study of nine technology-rich schools, concluded that the use of technology resulted in educational gains for all students regardless of age, race, parental income, or other characteristics. [GET THIS] The second, a 10-year study supported by Apple Computer, Inc., concluded that student provided with technology-rich learning environments ‘continued to perform well on standardized tests but were also developing a variety of competencies not usually measured. Students explored and represented information dynamically and in many forms; became socially aware and more confident; communicated effectively about complex processes; became independent learners and self-starters; knew their areas of expertise and shared that expertise spontaneously,’" (ACOT). It’s a matter of perspective, a perspective more people would have if they at least try using technology, in the classroom or at work. After reviewing the progression of my journal entries, I conclude that I’ve learned a lot. I’ve grown because of this digital age and there’s no aspect of my education that could potentially survive without it, regardless of whether it’s in class or not. 

Yours Truly,

Susan (Sang Eun) Lee
Sunday, October 7th, 2012