So today we had Christal Phillips, a University of Michigan Alumnus, come and give a presentation and lead a small discussion with us about alleviating poverty in other countries. She is currently teaching English at Yonsei Univeristy, one of the top three universities in South Korea. Another part of her job is assisting scholars from foreign, often under-developed countries come to her university to study and in research and discussing the governments role in supporting aid to alleviate poverty in other countries. Unfortunately, we started asking a lot of questions about how she ended up teaching in Korea in the first place because many of us are interested in teaching and/or studying abroad again in the future. This resulted in a long discussion about the difficulties of finding jobs, especially at the time when she graduated in 2009, which was during the economic recession that was occurring in the U.S. As a result of this recession, jobs were vary scarce for recent graduates, even for those with J.D. degrees from Columbia Law School such as Christal. So we spent almost the entire time bombarding her with questions about how we should prepare for life after college and what factors to consider when deciding if we want to go to graduate school or straight into the work force. She was able to answer all of our questions quite well and provided us with a good prospective about what to look out for as we graduate in the next year or two. So while we did not get to discuss much about her actual work, it was very nice for Christal to share some of her wisdom and life experiences and also to provide us with some ideas and ways that we can enable ourselves to go abroad after finishing our undergraduate studies, whether it be for work or studying.
One of these ways, which we have already experienced since being in Seoul, is through working or volunteering for NGO's and other programs that are dedicated to alleviating poverty in countries through education and who assist the homeless by handing out food and housing them. This past Saturday and Sunday we volunteered with an organization known as PLUR, which stands for Peace, Love, Unity, Respect. Through this organization, on Saturday we were able to assist in teaching English to young students from low-income families so that they will be on par with the wealthier children in Korea who can afford private tutors to help them with their English language skills. Then, on Sunday, we had the opportunity to package food for the homeless and then walk around downtown handing it out. It was a great feeling to see that amount of joy that these simple acts brought people this past weekend. If it were not for these experiences, I don't think that I ever would have considered going abroad to help out impoverished and underprivileged individuals. They have opened another door for me as a way to give back to the world and go abroad at the same time and because of that will be something that I seriously consider doing at some point in my future after I finish my undergraduate studies.
In the end, although we did stray very far from our original topic that was planned for today, it was very refreshing and inspiring to see how vast our alumni network is. So much so, that it reaches half-way around the world and is strong enough to enable us to experience these great opportunities! This is just one example of the multitude of reasons that it is great to be a Michigan Wolverine.
Go Blue!!
No comments:
Post a Comment