The Summer Experience in Society (SES) Program is an internship program provided to every undergraduate student in POSTECH, in which students volunteer for internships with firms, research institutes, etc. during the summer holidays. I joined the SES Program last semester and worked at a major company during the summer vacation. I learnt a very special lesson which I wasn’t intending to, but still a very important lesson that cannot be taught at a university.
It is just too early to finish learning and get a job right after graduating university. We all indeed studied hard during high school in order to enter POSTECH and maintain a high GPA. But does this whole course of our lives as students until university graduation make us  that different from others who haven’t gone through this course? What I was so frustrated about while doing the internship was that there were tons of other candidates who could easily replace me. I had no specific knowledge or skills to assert that the company could benefit from my presence. For me, who had believed that I was a unique individual, whose abilities were needed by society and difficult to be replaced by others, it was a tough lesson.
Once we get into a company and end our student lives, we can no longer enhance our values in this society, as we do while we are students and are learning something. I believe such problem comes from ‘who is the subject’. When we are students, we study to learn something, get good grades, win competitions, and complete research, etc. We are solely motivated to gain results that are entirely favorable to us and us only. We are the subject in our lives, and we enhance our value with results that we generate as students. However, work life is different. The valued subject in the lives of employees is their company. Company employees work, study, attend meetings, and make presentations in order to generate results that are only favorable to the company they work for. In return, employees get paid. Money makes their lives convenient, but it doesn’t enhance their value. It only enhances the value of their bank accounts.
The chance to raise one’s value disappears as he/she loses the subject of his/her life, which is most likely to happen for company employees. It is a waste of our effort and time that we stop improving our value as we graduate from university. Instead, we should study more and deeper, possibly by registering in graduate courses, to specialize in something that make us more valuable. I believe that everyone in POSTECH deserves such treatment from society, acknowledgment and respect from others. And I believe that in order to reach such a level of being a highly respected member of society, we must be the subject of our lives and continue enhancing our value, by studying and researching.