It's 2013 for Goodness' Sake!

2013 has only been with us for a month and already I feel that it's shaping up to be an awesome year! My internship and classes have me very busy, making weekdays exciting and weekends all the more precious. As I continue on the route to becoming a contributing member of the workforce, I'm learning a lot about my professional preferences, my ways of communicating, and just myself in general. 

I've gotten to do a lot of cool stuff and had some great learning experiences at my internship, even after just a couple of weeks. I've written things that will show up in various local publications and created a strategy to increase event attendance. I feel like I'm becoming more confident in my skills and that's a pretty nice feeling!

Still, even the most confident intern (which I do not claim to be) has much to learn. I saw that last night in my Media Writing class. I consider myself a solid writer, especially since I started this blog, but writing for the media is way different than writing for myself. I've got to cut back on the big words and complicated structures while still maintaining a sense of personality. It's a whole new problem to solve and I'm excited to tackle it!

The more I learn about public relations, the more I feel myself being pushed and pulled into the direction leading to my future career. Sometimes it's scary, especially when I realize that I don't feel passionate about something. For example, even though it feels great to learn the skills that go with special events PR, I know it's not what I want to do for the rest of my life. In fact, I think I might like to try research, of all things! Luckily, there are still many possibilities after all the narrowing, and still many years left of my life to decide. 

Whether I decide to research the ways that K-Pop can become more popular in the United States, help organizations set up crisis communication plans, or do something completely out of the realm of PR, I know that at this moment I am enjoying my life and my experiences are taking me wherever it is that I need to go. So here's to 2013!

Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Since tomorrow is the last day of 2012, I thought I'd take this opportunity to reflect on the past year. It was a bit of a roller coaster, with various accomplishments, setbacks, comebacks, and curveballs, but I'd say the technological sector of my life saw more growth than even I expected. Here are some examples:

• This blog! I started it in February of this year and had no idea what I was doing. Now I'm using bullet points!
• Twitter: I came into 2012 with a few tweets and fewer followers. I still don't have a ton of followers, but I've had doors open up for me that I never would have imagined. The account that I started for the environmental club at my school broke 100 followers recently, I've been tweeting up a storm with the help of the marvelous iPhone, I got to work at a concert and see the bands for free, and I even got an awesome internship that I'm really excited about. All because of a little social networking site.
• Tumblr: What did I do with my time before I was on Tumblr? I must've been on Facebook much more often. I cringe at the thought. I feel like I'm part of a new society with an entirely different culture now. It's great. Let's just pray I don't get on Pinterest or I'll never have free time again!
• Youtube: In addition to my ever-expanding K-Pop playlist, I produced my own video and uploaded it to Youtube. It was a project for a class that I made with a friend of mine and it wasn't very interesting, but for a first endeavor, it felt like something to be proud of. Perhaps it's just the tip of the iceberg! 

With such a productive year behind me, I'm really looking forward to the adventures I'll have this coming year. I'm sure I'll learn a lot in my new classes and my internship, both about technology and  about life in general. Maybe I'll make some interesting Youtube videos and find something even more time consuming than Tumblr. Who knows? The future is wide open and I'm ready to dive in head first!

Going Mobile

Christmas came early this year when I received an iPhone 4 from my parents. The need for a smartphone was in the forefront of my mind for months for many reasons: 1. Keeping up with my various social media escapades was becoming increasingly difficult; 2. My old phone was absolutely awful, dropping calls and making texting almost impossible (typing "c" either meant typing "ccc" or nothing at all); and 3. Quite a few of my friends have smartphones and I was beginning to feel left out.

Now that I have my wonder device, although it's not the latest technology (I didn't feel I was innovative  enough for the iPhone 5...or affluent enough, for that matter), I have been using it constantly. I thought I was attached to my phone before, but that was child's play compared to my attitude now. Every spare minute, if I'm not texting or making a call, I'm checking Twitter or Facebook. OK, I'm also socializing with real people who are physically present and making sure I don't get run over by a bus, but the point is, my phone is a new and very close companion.

Another change that has happened with my new phone is a rekindling of my love for photography. When I brought my phone home, I downloaded Instagram, well, instantly! Since then, I've been taking pictures of every perfectly-placed nicknack in sight. It's really fun and I think it's bringing an element to my Twitter that was previously missing. Pictures seem much more interesting than just text tweets and I'm loving bringing some life to my online presence.

So yes, I am obsessed with all of the creative social media opportunities that have recently been opened up for me, but as always, I'm trying to stay balanced and keep one foot on solid ground while the other is in the cyber-world. Only this time, I'm finding that my feet are a bit closer together than usual. I can share all of the awesome, random things that I enjoy in my normal life by posting them in the technological universe without having to remove myself from the situation to stare at a computer. I feel really connected to people, near and far, and I think it's pretty amazing that I could have such a change in perspective from the palm of my hand.

Becoming a Professional?

During the new semester so far, I feel as though I've really been focusing on the future. I've been participating in more leadership positions in clubs, signing for my first apartment, looking for internships, and networking with more professionals than ever before. The technological world has been a fundamental part of my newfound seriousness. Recently, I've had two experiences that opened my eyes to what lies ahead.

The first of these experiences was going to the PR+ Social Media Summit hosted by my college. It was a conference for professionals and students where speakers presented their unique insights into social media and other public relations tools. As a PR major, I was pretty stoked about it! For part of the day, I got to tag along with one of the speakers, which was a rewarding experience. I felt very relaxed and yet excited because she was so kind and friendly. I sat in on some presentations by top PR execs and learned some very valuable pieces of information. One thing that really stood out for me (and that a lot of speakers emphasized) was that social media is not the traditional marketing tool; it must be customized to each company's or client's specific needs in order to create and maintain the best mutual relationships possible. Even though social media is a technological invention, it really is all about people.

The second experience I had was less exciting, but still pretty important. I joined LinkedIn and started connecting with some of the people I met at the Summit. It was a nice way to follow up. Although I'm still figuring out the mechanics and social norms of this latest social media endeavor (what else is new?), it's nice to know that face-to-face encounters can be paired up with online interaction. It makes the whole networking process a little easier.

I think what I've learned from all of this is that I don't need to be scared of meeting and talking with professionals. They were once in my shoes (some not too long ago!) and a lot of them are pretty awesome people. I can learn from them, but I can also just enjoy their company. I was always told to "be yourself" when going in for an interview, but until recently I took that to mean "be the part of yourself you think they will like". This notion, of course, is ridiculous because not only do I not know the individual interviewers or their preferences, but I also don't know how to be what I think they might want, i.e, the super outgoing go-getter with loads of experience and absolute professionalism. Sure, I've got some of that, but I've still got a long way to go. I may be 20, but I'm still a kid. Going to the Summit really showed me that. And that's OK because a little naivete and fresh perspective can be valuable in its own right.

Old and New

Recently, I made a trip to a couple of art museums in my area. I saw an exhibit on the "Posters of Paris", collections of really old stuff, and collections of some fairly new stuff. It was pretty amazing.

One thing that really impressed me about the posters (aside from the fact that they were once haphazardly displayed on Parisian streets) is that they were color lithographs, AKA prints on prints on prints. I could barely make a print with one color in my eight grade art class; I can't imagine layering different colors with different patterns on one space, and getting everything to line up perfectly and blend right. As a person with self-diagnosed artistic OCD, that sounds like the ultimate nightmare.

Even more impressive than the immaculate construction of the pieces, however, was the feeling that they conveyed. In some cases, I enjoyed the artists' painted rough drafts more than the finished prints. There was something in them that conveyed movement and made the scenes seem very real. I felt like I was in Paris, taken back in time.

I was transported even farther back when I went through the regular exhibits. A friend of mine commented, "You can't even fathom how old this stuff is". She was completely right. How could we, people of the 21st century, understand what it was like when a pot was made and painted in ancient Greece? How could we envision what life was like when the pyramids were first being built and tombs were being filled in Egypt? We will never be able to fully understand what it was like to live and breathe back then, to think and feel as an ancient Greek or Egyptian. At least their artwork lives to tell part of their story.

As I progressed through the rest of the exhibits and then went to a more modern museum, I saw time catching up to me in art form. From portraits of important people, to pieces of rustic furniture, to abstract sculptures and socially conscious folk art, people have been recording important parts of their lives for centuries and will probably (and hopefully) continue to do so for centuries to come.

It makes me wonder what my generation will present as our defining artifacts. Computers? Cell phones? Will someone be digging around in the dirt a thousand years from now and find an iPad? I guess that would be pretty cool. Or will people just be able to use a computer to look up all the awesome stuff we made? I guess that would be pretty cool, too. Still, I hope someone digs something of mine out of the ground and puts it in a museum someday. I hope they can touch what I touched and wonder about what I thought and felt. And I hope they still enjoy the old Greek pots and Posters of Paris.

Goodbye, Time

With school getting ready to start up again, my brain decided that there weren't enough distractions for me. So I got a Tumblr. Goodbye, productivity.

You detail-oriented people may be curious as to why this blog post is called "Goodbye, Time" instead of "Goodbye, Productivity". "G, P" would fit perfectly if this post was just about Tumblr; but it's not. My joining this extremely addictive and time-consuming website reflects what I'm going through in my non-Internet life: the realization of the passage of time, with all of its wonders and frustrations.

My Tumblr is super random. I am also an extremely annoying user, I'll admit. I reblog about a million things at a time, often about the same thing. However, when I'm not on one of my "attractive Asian man" binges, I find the time to reblog some pretty cool stuff. I like cool stuff and cool stuff comes in many different forms, whether it's old British comedy shows or plants. Everyone is not going to agree with me on what constitutes cool stuff. You may be into Steve Buscemi gifs; I certainly am not. Still, there's something really special about sharing the stuff you like and realizing that other people like it, too.

What does all of this have to do with my big realization of the passage of time? I reblog some old photos: Robert Plant, mid hair-flip; Jimmy Stewart doing something awesome; even Walty looking like a boss (that's Walt Whitman, in case you were wondering). And while I'm spending my time looking at these cool old pictures, I realize that, at some point, the people in them were probably collecting stuff that they thought was cool, too. We, as humans, just like cool stuff. Cool stuff. Cool stuff. Cool stuff.

Why do we like cool stuff? Because it lasts. Stuff lasts longer than we do and with the Internet, it will last longer than some of the longest-lasting stuff has ever lasted. We like to think that, even as time passes, other people will still like the stuff we once liked. That's what time capsules are for; and Tumblr is a virtual time capsule.

Recently, my grandma had to move out of the house that she inhabited for over 50 years for health reasons. Since then, my family has been going through all of her old stuff, taking the things they would like to keep. Part of me wants to leave it all there and have some sort of mini museum erected in honor of my grandma and all she's done for our family, but let's face it: stuff in-and-of itself really isn't that cool. It's what you do with the stuff, what you say about it, what you think about when you use it that makes it cool. My grandma's house was only full of cool stuff when she was in it because she made it cool.

So time passes. Things change. People change. And even though the stuff remains, we can't keep that cool vibe in it forever because that cool vibe is a part of us; these changing, passing creatures. So enjoy your stuff. Put all of your cool vibes into it. Breathe life into it. Make other people excited about it and get excited about other people's stuff. Use your time wisely and never forget that the stuff in our lives, whether it's on Tumblr or displayed above the fireplace, doesn't mean anything until we decide it does. Only we can create meaning. I think that's a pretty awesome power we humans have.



P.S. For those of you who are curious, I do have a box of stuff from my grandma's house. Because it's still cool to me.

Teaching the LastLearner

I don't think it's any secret that I have a slight addiction to K-pop. I have a Youtube playlist entitled "K-pop Guilty Pleasures" and my friends frequently have to listen to me rant about my latest obsession. However, besides giving me something new to listen to (and attractive men to look at!), K-pop videos have actually opened up a new world for me. They've helped me to expand my cultural knowledge and have inspired me to take the first steps to learning a new language.

Reading some of the comments on the many videos I watch gives me a very minuscule insight into Korean culture. For example, the words "oppa", "saranghae", "hwaiting", and "daebak" appear frequently (usually followed by lots of hearts or exclamation points). Out of sheer curiosity and the desire to not look like a n00b, I look up words like these on Urban Dictionary and, after sorting through some of the more *ahem* colorful definitions, learn what they mean. (In case you're wondering, "oppa" is what fangirls usually call the male band members they like, "saranghae" means "I love you", "hwaiting" is a term of support for a band or group, and "daebak" is something like "awesome").

It's amazing what knowing a few new words can do for your confidence. Learning these words lit the spark that drove me to start learning the Korean language, hangul. And since the Internet is so awesome, I don't have to spend money on textbooks, flashcards, or a professor's salary; I learn at my own pace, in my own way.

Using a couple free learning sites, music videos with on-screen lyrics, and English-subbed Korean TV shows (like Dream High), I've been able to learn the Korean alphabet and I've started expanding my vocabulary. I follow one of my favorite K-pop stars (Ok Taecyeon of 2pm) on Twitter and I've recently been able to read and understand a few words from his tweets. It's not much, but I feel pretty good about it!

I think it's cool that we've entered into an age where we don't have to go through the traditional steps to learn something new. With the Internet, we've got the whole world at our fingertips and there is nothing stopping us from picking up a new language, learning how to do a backflip, or taking on a challenging new recipe. We can begin a new adventure at any stage in life, whether we're in school or not, and I think that's pretty exciting. I guess you really can teach an old dog new tricks!

I hope to continue learning hangul and maybe someday move on to other Asian dialects as well. As long as I've got a functioning brain and an Internet connection, I'll be filling my head with new knowledge (and probably some adorable cat GIFs as well). So stay thirsty for knowledge, my friends! And don't be afraid to gain that knowledge in a creative way because, as we're always told, the journey can be just as fun as the destination. Saranghaeyo! <3