[Meeting ‘Special’ Graduating People] Graduation and Best Thesis Award Winner of Natural Science, Choi Young-jun (MATH)
[Meeting ‘Special’ Graduating People] Graduation and Best Thesis Award Winner of Natural Science, Choi Young-jun (MATH)
  • Reporter Kim Sung-hwan
  • 승인 2011.02.11 23:22
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How did you start studying science?
Since I was little, I hated memorizing. It led me to study science at first and I was good at it. I first applied to Math because a university application cut-off point for Math was lower than that of Physics. But I failed and had to study for one more year. The condition of spending an extra year to prepare for college was applying to a lucrative major of electronic and electrical engineering. In the year, I was accepted to POSTECH as electronic and electrical engineering.
At the fourth semester, I decided to change my major to Math. As one reason, I always was interested in math and took math courses in each semester. The college math was terribly hard. The one course I remember is Analytics. I always thought I was good at math. But in the course, I got 49 out of 100 in an exam. But this difficulty made me pay more attention.

How were you undergrad and grad school lives?
Mainly I did three things, studying, dating and playing sports. Studying is of course important. It was especially important for me. My past action of changing my major was break of promise with my dad since studying the major my dad wanted was the condition of spending one more year preparing for college. It was a big motivation.
Besides studying, you really need to do other things. I recommend you to have hobbies. I used to play sports, basketball and baseball in varsity teams. I was an ace in the basketball team.

Plan for the future?
I will enroll the postdoctoral program in KAIST. If being a professor is reachable, I want to be a professor and keep studying. It is not the trend of today’s math culture, and senior mathematicians might laugh at it. Still, I want to solve problems that eminent mathematicians could not solve, that are meaningful and puzzling.

Last words to undergrad students
In the grad school, I once had to choose a major in between two majors in mind. In choosing, I tossed a coin. In retrospect, what is more important than a decision made is making the decision a good decision.