In the last issue, The Postech Times featured an issue about slow life style and its importance for Postechians. As a Postechian, I totally agreed with the concept of a leisurely lifestyle. Everything in POSTECH is so fast that it is easy to pressure oneself. A lot of students are overwhelmed by due dates to such an extent that they sometimes copy other students’ homework or solutions. They spend the whole night in the library studying and because they are so tired, they are sometimes late or absent. My point is not to blame our students including myself, but perhaps change our attitudes or way of thinking about our lifestyles.
We all know that we should set our assignments and classes as a priority of POSTECH life. However, there are many things that are equally important in our life. Extracurricular activities, out-of-school activities, and hobbies are just a few examples. It is very difficult for us to manage our time to do all these things so we tend to do things what we really want and like to do, which are not always the assignments given to us. After spending time, we realize that there are tons of assignments that we should manage. The pressure of homework makes us stay up all night, which is not really an effective way of studying. Like this, many students have problems with distributing tasks to each day and time to each task.
Now we realize the problem, so we plan to live a slow life. However, is it possible? Let’s take an example of a certain class. Teacher asks a question with an answer choice A and B. Everyone knows that the answer is A, but every students says that the answer is B. When the last student is asked, even though he knows that the answer is A, he says B. I think this is exactly what is happening in POSTECH. Even though individually we know something is not right, we tend to follow what the crowd is doing. If we walk slowly, we can do things at our own pace. But when we see other people running in front of you, it makes you nervous and want to run with them. In POSTECH, every student is living a fast and competitive life, which makes it hard for us to do things in our own pace.
That is why I recommend a new environment of “slow campus”. If our purpose of attending POSTECH is to get the right direction for our own life and for society, why should we all live in such a hurry? Even though it may be difficult to achieve with so many things to do and achieve in POSTECH, I hope every Postechian thinks about the “slow campus” and how it could affect our society in a positive way.