Membership Training (MT)

The First MT with lab mates in my Graduate school

Going to Ski resort is the first thing that I wanna do so bad on the first half of the year 2014, and with the help of my lab mates finally I made it. Only a day and half I went out of Seoul city with lab mates, but it seems like a week stayed away from home. It has been a while I feel that way and think it was probably because I had so much fun and enjoyed my trip with awesome individuals that I met.

So, I just got home from Konjiam Ski resort and I feel tired and happy at the same time right now. Once I turned my laptop on, the first thing came to my mind was updating my blog with what I have done yesterday till a couple minutes ago. So, here are the scenarios. 

Yesterday afternoon, after lunch, I and my lab mates went for MT (Membership Training). As we discussed earlier, we went to Konjiam Ski resort and stayed there for almost two days. 

The resort is only one hour of driving from Seoul. We left Seoul (KIST) around 2:30 pm with private car and got to the destination around 4:00 pm.

After we reached the place, we brought all of our stuffs to the room. We really liked the room that one of my lab mates (윤식) booked for. Why? Because we could see the perfect view from the living room. Hm~Perfect interior design with a reasonable price! What a nice room!!!   

The view from the living room at the 12^th floor

I could say that the place we stayed is luxury. It feels like we went overseas for trip or something like that.

Lucy is introducing the girls room

After several minutes, Lucy and I went down to the first floor to look around and take some photos. These are some photos that we took on our first arrival.

The back side of the hotel

We then went up to our room which is located on the 12^th floor. Andrew, our lab mate, already prepared dinner for us. It supposed to be me and Lucy to do that, but since we both are not that good at cooking, he took our place.  Instead of doing nothing, we helped him to put all the stuffs for late dinner into the refrigerator.

Silly time with these two

Advertising Sojus

After having (simple) dinner, every one of us prepared ourselves to go for what we have chosen to do. As I am not that good at skiing, I chose to do sledding with 3 of my seniors. We were lucky enough that there were not so many people, especially KIDS (You know what I mean? LOL). 6 times doing that weren't enough for us, but we collected some moments of that. Only 40 minutes we rode (5 times + 1 time service) and it cost us 15.000 won each person.

The boss ㅋㅋㅋㅋ

We went to the room after that, earlier than those who did other activities (skiing/slopes/snowboarding). We got to the room and set dinner while waiting those people to come back.

It was already 12:00 am, but none of them showed off. I was hungry, so did the seniors. Hence, we decided to start doing BBQ but then two of them showed off.

Nothing much we did rather than drank alcohol while ate Samgyopsal in the living room together. And, what I impressed more about was the sharing session. With numerous of Soju’s and unlimited meat we shot the breeze until 5:00 am.

I went to bed for a while and then woke up again after one hour to join the free sharing. I learned a bit of each person’s personality. It was fun as well watching drunk people talked.

Aside from enjoying the whole day with the awesome people, I felt a bit strange when the drinking time started. A couple hours later I finally noticed that it was because I noticed there are differences between colleges' MT and Graduates' MT. I could say that undergraduates' MT is mostly having fun by drinking and playing diverse games whereas Graduates' MT is mostly sharing  about  the life (perhaps because people are getting older!?!? Not sure~)

The next morning, after meals, we went back to Seoul at 1:00 pm.

On the way coming back home, we talked about random stuffs, laughed while listening to the songs. Overall, we really had a ball during the MT.

Personal Reflection

I don’t know what I should say to start this post. And yes, it's been long time since I last blogged. I feel "Sorry" for ignoring this lonely blog for almost a month. So, today I definitely need some reflections by shedding my anger upon myself .  

Today, MONDAY, which is the most hated day of the week simply because of the first day after lazy Sunday. I am such in a bad mood and don’t feel like doing anything. Again, I skipped work to stay curled myself up in bed. I feel like my life in graduate school is way more like dating my bed. My roommate isn't coming back yet so I am alone in my room with earphone in my ears, listening to my favorite February songs.

To be honest, things are not going my way since the beginning of the year 2014 right the day after I set my 2014 resolutions.

I have done none of them until now. I even don’t understand myself. I too unable to answer this simple question “What I have done so far?”. I feel guilty of killing my time by doing nothing.

Of course, I know that as a human being we fail several times to achieve goal of each one of us. As they said failure is good for success because you are not afraid of trying before giving up on things you wanna get. However, my case is a far cry from it and I don’t even wanna force myself to use this statement as a reason why I have no courage or energy to go for what I have set anymore.

I think I probably lost the real me before transforming to the new version of myself. I am screwed ㅠㅠ. What on earth is this?????????? God, please return me to the old me who is very enthusiastic and competitive with strong determination. Why I let the fear and failure get the best of me and ruin my life?

I have lost motivation to continue what I am doing. I mean writing programming language for the project that I am working on. OK, there is always a reason behind it (I don’t wanna mention it here because it is an embarrassing thing), but…

I have learned through experiences that working hard is good, but working smart is better yet more effective. The same thing, studying hard is good, but studying smart is better. Just saying!!! I am not trying to counsel you guys ^.~.

But, what I wanna say is that I need to work in a smart way which means knowing what I am doing or going to do. When I do something and try hard for that without knowing what I am actually doing is just the same as killing my time for doing nothing too. So, I recall those two statements to wake myself up from the situation that I am in now and fight for what I wanna achieve as this is not the of the world. This is a quote of Paulo Coelho “Don’t live every day as it were your last. Live every day as if it were your first”, so I wanna start everything over.

I need revenge seriously. I need to revenge for getting my true color back. I need to get my old self who was an active and productive girl that I always desire and dedicate for to be back.

Some of my lab mates said, they got everything goes smoothly at once which they said it feels great. Simply said everything happens at once. However, to get that we need to be organized, smart in managing the time, discipline and be efficient. But, I am not going the same path. Simply said nothing happens at all for me. I am in doldrums of life.

All I need to do from now is follow through the resolutions that I listed above. I don’t wanna be striving to get to the top because I will never reach the final. I wanna give myself a break and start living my life in a smart way. CHALLENGING myself from now! I know for sure that good thing takes time. Yes, perhaps we all know.

Anyway, despite all of these, I am happy enough that I got my grades back from 1st semester with straight A’s for all the courses that I took. However, there are still 3 more semesters to go to get my master degree. I do understand that grades do not judge how smart you are, however, not to mention, at least I got better grades compare to my previous grades.

Let me go back to the main point. So, how to return myself back to who I was? From now on, I think it is going to be fun to play around with some papers and programming languages. Since I am living in Seoul, life is more fun if I keep myself busy as much as I can. 

So, next two weeks I will have new schedule, regular meeting with my advisor, which means I need to change my personal schedule too and keeping myself busy then. Study plan will be the first thing that I should write down and things I have done is probably be the second one. Best of Luck!