Week 3 Optional Extra Credit 2

D. Optional extra credit 2: Write about a club or church group you are involved in. What does the club do? Why did you join?

I joined Hessed.  Hessed is a great praise team that do music ministry to small churches in countryside where music is in very poor condition.  We reach out to young people with what they can sympathize and that is music.  I play electric guitar in there but not only do we have good music, we are a good, solid, spiritual group.  Every 12 o'clock, we gather together at the room to pray and share our thoughts and feelings.  I am so glad to be a part of this group and looking forward to what God's going to do in this group.

Week 12 Extra Credit - What Do You Want Most In a Friend?

3. Optional extra credit: Answer the following question with a 200-300 word essay on your blog.
What do you want most in a friend: someone who is intelligent, someone who has a sense of humor, or someone who is reliable? Which one of these characteristics is most important to you? Use reasons and specific examples to explain your choice.

There are many people in our society. They have their own characteristics. Some of them have a good sense of humor, some of them are very smart. But there are few people who are reliable. We can't easily find reliable people because it is hard to know someone’s real personality. In the case of funny friends, we can easily know them from what they said. In the case of intelligent friends, also we can know from their score or what they said as well. People usually hide their real face or real character. That is the one of the reasons we should have an eye for judgement.

First,  trust is important. Without  trust, the relationship between friends is not expected to be a long term one. I need real friends who can help me when I get in trouble. We can simply meet just instant friends so we don't need to find them.

Second, there are not much reliable people in the world. We live in a competitive society so many people hide their real characters. That's why we can hardly catch their real characters by just talking to them. Generally speaking, few are valuable in any situation. This is my point. I have many friends but the reliable friends are a few. Someone said, we can consider ourselves successful if we have three reliable friends. It means, it is very hard to have those kinds of friends. Therefore, I want to have those friends.

In conclusion, having many friends is good. But having many reliable friends is better. True friends are irreplaceable. Maybe they are the most valuable assets in our lives.

Week 11 Extra Credit - A film, TV program, song that I like

4. Optional extra credit: Write 200+ words about a book that you have read, a film or TV program that you have seen, or a song that you like. Tell why you like it.

Iron Man 3

Iron Man 3  is third sequel to the series.  Iron Man 3 has similar story line to the previous series but It contains more action scenes, catching more attention.  I love Iron Man 3 because I am fan of Marvel Comics and whatever they come out with, I am always on call for new release.  Especially Iron Man 3, it was such a success because how they built up its story was not something that we anticipated or mediocre same old thing.  It used something very intriguing and I think that was what made this movie successful.  I can't wait until the fourth movie to come out and with that, I am excited about new release of Avengers 2.  If you are fan of sci-fi fantasy movies, you came to the right place and Iron Man series will be your cup of tea.

Week 9 Extra Credit - About one of my other classes

4. Optional extra credit: On your blog, write 200+ words about one of your other classes. What is the most interesting thing you have learned in that class this semester?

Every Friday, I go to 영지훈, Spiritual Leadership Training.  Every lectures we have different speakers and they are all well-known beings that we normally wouldn't be able to meet.  With the help of Prof. Shin, we were able to hear from prestigious individuals.  I was  privileged to hear their stories and how they have fought through obstacles and valleys to get to where they are.  They taught me values that I needed to move forward.  And one more very important thing that I learned from this class is that being a leader of a group really gave me hard times and it was tough, but it really gave me opportunity to mature up and I'm thankful that God had gave me a chance to take this class.

Week 8 Optional Extra Credit - "How To" Essay

4. Optional extra credit: Write a 200+ word “how to” essay about one of the following:
  A. How to study English
  B. How to cook your favorite food
  C. How to get rid of a boyfriend/girlfriend

I believe the best way to study English is to focus on speaking.  If you think about it, when we learned our native tongue we didn't start learning it by grammars and sentence structures, as it is usually the epitome of Korea's English education.  Look how babies learn to talk.  They are exposed to such environment where they pick up what people are saying, at first just word by word.  As time goes on, they start saying sentences and that's when the language skills really improve.  Because sentences include everything: grammar, vocabulary, and structure.  Thus, if you want to fully maximize your effort, I strongly suggest that you follow these steps.

1. Let yourself be in English environment as much as possible.

2. Listen, Listen, and Listen to English.  It doesn't matter what content it is as long as it's in English.

3. Imitate what your are hearing.  This is very important for hearing and speaking is totally different and if you don't practice speaking, you won't get better.

  

Week 13 Homework

3. On the blog: Summarize the main points of your classmate’s opinion blog post and then say whether you agree or disagree and why. Link to the original blog post.

http://parkyunju.blogspot.kr/2013/05/week12-which-is-best-way-for-learning.html

I prefer the way of learning about life through listening to the advice of family or friends.

Somebody like your family or friends can give advice, in the other words, they already had similar experience. As we can attain many lessons from books, you can accept various information or lessons from their advice better than only you experience some situations, because it is different depending on perspective whose was experienced.

Then, it is possible to avoid hard time for learning about life. When people grow up, they experience many things whether it makes them happy or hard in their life. However, if you pay attention to the others experiences, you can select what is more helpful in your life.

Nevertheless, people have some characteristics: If they didn’t experience, they have difficulties in that they receive the others advice into owns of them. In addition, advices of the others can’t always right, because you are different with them. Therefore, when you accept the others’ advices, you should be careful with consideration about yourself.

Although learning about life by the others’ advices has some point be considered , if you listen the advices and attain carefully, I think there is no way which is the best way for learning about life.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's true that family or friends might have similar experience which could help a person make choices, but that doesn't mean their advice could lead someone to the road that he or she want.  I disagree to this opinion for possibility of regretting. 

There are often times when parents and friends tell their experience as advice to others, with their belief, motto, and conviction embedded inside the advice.  Nevertheless, we all have different perspective and free will.  Thus later on, if someone ,without careful consideration of whether or not his or her belief inline with the advice, just do whatever the advice is, then the future is not of his will or interest, but others, which can cause huge regret.  

That being said, learning through experience can bring way more effective influence than the advice from others.  

http://rladbssam317.blogspot.kr/2013/05/week-12-homework-writing-essay.html   

Week 12 Homework - Writing an essay

Some people believe that the best way of learning about life is by listening to the advice of family or friends. Other people believe that the best way of learning about life is through personal experience. Compare the advantages and disadvantages of these two different ways of learning about life. Which do you think is preferable? Use specific examples to support your preference.


People often contend that the most effective way to learn about life is by accepting others' advice.  It could be true in that advice of others can offer the new perspective of how to live or reflect the objective view about me.  Nonetheless, I believe there are better methods to learn about life than accepting advice, such as value of learning through personal experience. 

First of all, In the case of the advice, people are not likely to feel impressive about them because they are mostly based on the different lifestyle or way of thought. What’s more, the self-esteem makes people hard to accept other’s opinion because they try to persist their own way in life. In this sense, experience could be the best way to learn about life even though it may take long or be through the process of trial and error. The impression from experience is so strong that sometimes the lesson from a certain event changes one’s life totally in different way. For example, when I was on the verge of deciding what I was going to do in the future, my friends and family often told me to take the route that ensure stable income, namely doctor, lawyer, major company worker, basically jobs that make good money.  However, I always had a dream of working for God with all my life, and the experience I had in a one church service totally got my heart on the solid line and boosted my passion, which still is what keeps me passionate about my dream.  If I listened other’s advice and got a job that looks after the big money, I would never able to do what I really wanted to do. Thus, I believe that the experience is the best way of learning life.

In brief, I strongly believe that advice of others could be the best for somebody, but it is not always the best. Because the value of direct experience is truly effective to learn about life, people can change their way of life from just one small experience.