Kim Donghee/Assignment label/Thursday 01:00~03:00pm

One of the most pleasant experiences I had with the writing was writing a novel when I was back in middle school, which was obviously in Korean. It was a class assignment, to write a novel based on a song you choose. I don't exactly remember the name of the song but it was about a kid raising a chick and looking back on that as a grown up with some nostalgia. What I wrote based on that song was basically like this: There was a boy who wanted to raise a pet but he's father never approved of that, so it was impossible to get one. However one day he took his courage and he bought a hamster from an old lady at street vendors. He secretly raised his hamster, but not for so long because the hamster died within a week or so. He was deeply depressed, but soon his father, who had seen it all, decided to buy him a puppy. The end. It's more like a children's story, but I truly enjoyed writing this one. I think it's because I like fictions, thus I like writing one myself. That means I like imagining things. In fact I always imagine things anywhere, anytime—sometimes messing with my focus. That being said, I also enjoy freewriting. I have a big imagination I never hesitate to use. 

Another pleasant experience was actually about the ones I wrote in English. From last year, I took many English writing classes and got a lot of chances to write. The sweetest part was to choose the topics. I always chose the one I am always into, like 3D printer, the design of autonomous car, video game's history, etc. That was a huge motivation for me. I was always enthusiastic, always ready to find more about it and make a deeper research about it anytime. Before these experiences, I didn't have much interest towards writing. But I learned that it can be very fun way to improve your language skill. 

Writing in my first language, Korean, is of course much comfortable for me. But that does not mean that I don't enjoy writing English. Speaking and writing English gives me some sort of weird feeling—like wearing a mask. Some things are even easier to express in English than Korean, not because of the language themselves, but what they mean to me. I guess feeling like I'm wearing a mask oddly gives me courage to say or write something I would never do in Korean. It's kind of hard to explain, even in Korean.

And most of the time, I write for myself. As I explained above, I think choosing the topic myself is the best for me, though sometimes that's impossible. If that's the case, then I try to find something intriguing about this unwanted topic. If not, trying to write would literally be a torture to me. However when I'm writing something as an assignment, which is the case most of the time, things are a bit different. I try to satisfy the teacher/professor too by considering what I learned in that class while writing. If I write only to please myself, that means I should not expect about my grade.