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She speaks in hyper speed, of ones and zeroes that zig-zag out from her mouth and into beautiful creations built with hands and mind. Her tongue makes her sound like she’s announcing riddles in the middle of conversation, but any girl from Japan would know that Korean pronunciation can’t be picked up like a hat nor can her Osaka accent be dropped like one. Karen manages, however, as a third year Yonsei University student studying mechanical engineering. She hails from the land of the rising sun, but her feet tell her to move on to different places, to explore and enrich herself with culture and diversity. Karen is the product of two teachers. One being an ESL professor and the other, a mechanical engineer whose sole duty, it seemed, was to travel to and from Japan and China to design products for the world to enjoy. That is where she gets her talent, she’ll say, her need to build things in a ruckus of banged up metal and loose screws outside on the front driveway. It was encouraged, after all, even despite the protests of her older sister who believed it was completely embarrassing to have her friends play maze through Karen’s experiments just to get to the front door. By age 10, she built her first computer and by age 15, she built her first robotic dog by the name of Casper – a science project which aimed to translate Japanese sentences into English sentences for younger kids with an interest to learn English. This project granted her full scholarship to Beijing City International School, a place to study mathematics and science at a pace that suited her needs. She excels within the three years she is in China, filling her mind with everything and anything the school and the country has to offer and soon, it is time for her to decide whether she wants to return home for college (where her family waits for her) or to attend university elsewhere (she has two scholarships to Yonsei University in Korea and UC Berkeley in California). In the end, she decides Yonsei University, a school close to home (a two hour airplane ride isn’t so bad) in a country she’s ever so curious about. Whilst there, she finds herself as one of the handful of international students enrolled. Korean is a difficult language, but she does fine in the introductory courses required for students who have yet to master it. The first year at Yonsei is a rather lonely one, her friends fall in the single digits and most times, she finds herself locked up at the school’s engineering building doing research for her next assignments. It is only her second year that she mixes herself up in the life of fraternities and sororities. It’ll be fun, a friend had said while having Karen’s arm in one hand and a red cup of beer in the other. The rush party she attended did manage to loosen up some knots in her shoulders and those she’s spoken to, she’s managed to keep as friends in the long haul. Rushing for Delta Phi Epsilon was, for lack of better phrase, an impulse move. However, unlike most impulses, she doesn’t regret doing so as she found herself situating rather comfortably in a second home. After all, wine with good company is fantastic after a night of long hard studying. 💔 She dances and she dances exceptionally well. Dancing has always been an extracurricular activity for her and she's been doing it since the age of five. Her area of expertise is hip hop. 💔 She speaks three and a half languages: Japanese, English, Mandarin Chinese, and Korean. The only reason she says three and a half is because she doesn't feel up to par with her Korean yet. There is still a lot left to learn. 💔 She programs like a fanatic and when her Gunnar glasses are on, nothing in the world exists but her program and her music blasting in her earbuds. 💔 As an incoming third year, her goal for her academics is to build a functioning flying camera in order to help expand the world of creativity. She already has mockups ready for actual design, she just needs the materials to move forward. 💔 Her hobbies include fashion, video games, photography, films, dance, and sewing. 💔 To be continued... |