There were two goals I determined for myself before departing for Korea in July.

The first was open-ended and simple: Grow closer to my Korean heritage, through language study and careful cultural observation.

The second, equally open-ended but complex: Grow as a person, using this year to cultivate a deeper understanding of myself before returning to America.

In hindsight, from a purely rational perspective, this two-pronged approach was destined to be at least minimally successful. Over the course of twelve months in the country, it would be difficult to not improve in my understanding of my heritage in some way. And fresh learning would undoubtedly follow through one hundred percent immersion in a new environment, leading to a better self-conception of my character. Two birds, one stone.

At first, the two goals began to converge. Improving my Korean skills led to conversations and experiences that caused me to reflect deeply. Teaching daily in a native Korean school environment compelled me to empathize with students possessing different mentalities and assumptions than myself. Traveling to my father’s family hometown and participating in centuries-old rituals deepened the connections between the physical world, extended family, and identity.

Over time, however, the connection began to grow weary, the fraying twine binding the two objectives together slowly loosening. The negatives I saw lurking beneath the surface of Korean culture began to become more glaring, the negatives beginning to crowd out the brighter positives. Motivation began to thin, and a sports injury didn’t help.

Winter vacation provided a welcome and well-timed respite from the growing malaise. On the surface, there was nothing apparently wrong; no disagreements at work, no obvious conflict at home. Yet it was clear that it was time to refocus.

__

Reflecting deeply on the first six months of my time in Korea—which many have nodded and deemed a gap year—I know I’ve made the right decision. Applying to Fulbright Korea was intuitive: I had been searching for fellowship programs and when I heard my grandfather had been an early recipient of a Fulbright grant, I immediately knew that’s where I would be going. Never mind that I hadn’t written a single word of the application or talked with an advisor on campus; I just somehow knew.

So was it the same intuition, rather than rationality, that led me to create goals that would eventually clash?

On one hand, diligently studying Korean grammar and cultural norms has brought a greater understanding of the way this country and its people function. Paying close attention to school office dynamics reveals the inner motivations behind the actions of the people around me. Eavesdropping on office and street conversations and watching hours of Korean drama helps me imitate Korean body language, speech patterns, and inflection tones. All these serve to teach me how to function—to even think—like a typical Korean and blend in with the crowd, which I can now do so long as a conversation doesn’t last more than 30 seconds.

On the other hand, my identity as an American is much different. Having already mastered American cultural norms after 22 years in the country, the task at hand now is developing a critical and independent mindset that will become the foundation of my character for decades to come. The books I choose to read, educational background, conversations I have with friends and family, and ideas that cycle through my mind are specifically and intentionally tailored to push myself to develop as someone who does not fit in.

Thus, I have found myself in situations where I subconsciously walk on the streets with the “try to practice blending in” mentality and then have to consciously switch on my mind to reflect critically, process proactively, and develop fundamentally. This dichotomy is not without its costs; the natural ideas and mnemonic connections that come through embracing the natural complexity of life around us are lost, unintentionally severed by the mental wall put up between my two original goals: Grow closer to your heritage and Grow as a person.

As usual, the likely panacea to this subtle yet deeply rooted ailment is patience. Time to allow myself the opportunities to practice expressing opinions and independence from a Korean perspective. Yet it is still unclear whether these two originally goals will ever be as closely linked as they were in the first half of the journey.

Even less clear still is whether the first goal, Grow closer to heritage, has already been fulfilled or if there is more to discover. Rabbit holes related to my family, my self-identity, and foreign cultural norms have seemingly reached their end. Even self-evaluation of past editions of this newsletter suggests that I see those experiences as firmly in the past, rather than the present. Editing the long feature, No. 18 | Homecoming, and discussing it with magazine editors in the process of preparing it for publication in the upcoming edition of Infusion, Fulbright Korea’s biannual magazine, cemented its place in my memory as a pivotal moment in my lifetime. But even now, just a few months later, it is already exactly that: a memory, a crystalized version of a past me.

In hindsight, I was woefully underprepared for how complicated the goal of Grow as a person would become. It had seemed simple—water the tree with experiences, and it would inevitably grow. At first, this was true; with almost every experience in a new environment being equally new, all the mental stimulation created countless new neural connections. Over time, fresh experiences are fewer and further between, and the brain slowly loses its plasticity from lack of exercise, leading to less creativity and spontaneous connections being formed.

Breaking free of the inevitable onset of this cycle has become the prime goal of the start of the new semester. While guaranteeing the consistency of new experiences is nearly impossible, there are things I can control:

  • The flow of information and ideas.
  • Cultivating diligence.
  • Valuing relationships above utility.

For now, the two-part grow goal from the first semester remains important, but is much less vague now. The halfway mark of the grant year and a return of school life encourage more concrete steps towards further growth.