This semester is my last at POSTECH. Next year, I will go to graduate school in Seoul and it will be hard to visit POSTECH located in the southeast part of this land. Before I leave Pohang, I have wanted to enjoy Pohang life as much as I can. I have visited many good restaurants, places, and have met many people. Specifically, I have wanted to make full use of Postechian’s privileges, which we often tend to forget that we can use.
We, Postechians, bring a word, ‘regional limit’ to our mind sometimes. Finishing my life in university, I became aware that there are a lot of opportunities that we can receive from POSTECH because of the limit. Actually, the regional limit was made to give the most opportunities to good students, as we knew when we chose to enter this university.
This semester, I took part in great activities which POSTECH ICE (Innovation Center for Education) provided. First, I am a mentee of PPC (Proud Postechian Club) program and my mentor is Song Jong-guk, the president of The Science and Technology Policy Institute (STEPI). Thanks to this program, I could have lunch, talk about my career goals, and receive career advice with the president of a big institute, which deals with government policy issues. I think that it was a tremendously valuable experience whenever I recall that meeting. Why would a busy person like him, meet me, a normal university student if it were not a POSTECH mentoring program?
Secondly, I volunteered as a K-MOOC supporter, which also POSTECH ICE is responsible for. From that, I could make contact with many great students even in my last semester and contribute to meaningful projects at POSTECH, even receiving financial support from the school.
I have counted the face money value, which I have received from the school during my semesters here at POSTECH, including tuition scholarship, support for exchange student programs, and prize money for contests held in the school. The total sum was tens of millions of won.
Postechians are getting a huge amount of support from the government and the school. The only thing that a Postechian has to do is to make full use of these opportunities, finding other chances, and developing their potential from the support. There is a sentence that ‘One regrets what he missed more than what he failed.’ I also found many opportunities, which I could use if I went back in the past. Thus, I hope that all of Postechians keep finding lots of opportunities in our school and become a bigger person from the experiences, even more than I did.