We just called the 21st century the era of information a few years ago, but now the world is stepping into the creative economy age. Reflecting this trend, the National Economic Council of the US government announced “A Strategy for American Innovation: Securing our Economic Growth” in 2011 and insisted that investment in creativity and imagination will ensure future jobs and industries. Early this year, the newly established Korean Government also suggested ‘realization of creative economy’ as a goal of its administration to keep up with global trends. The Korean government and public institu

As a freshman student, I still do not know many things about the school, and I always try to find some useful information in The Postech Times. However, frankly speaking, it was my first time to peruse the English version. I found many differences from the Korean version. I recognized some possibilities, but on the other hand, I couldn’t overlook some limitations.Firstly, I would like to applaud the ambition of The Postech Times. POSTECH claims to be a bilingual campus, but the school doesn’t seem too focused on improving the lives of foreign students. In this situation, the role of The Postec

Although we assume that our impulsive behaviors are unpredictable, the novel, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions written by Dan Ariely, claims that there are patterns to our irrational behaviors. For example, how many times have we impulsively bought items off our shopping list? In the website of a magazine, the Economist, there are three choices for subscriptions. The one year online subscription costs US $59.00, the print subscription costs US $125.00, and the print and online subscription together costs US $125.00. Which one would you go for? Among 100 studen

You have probably heard of the “Mozart effect.” The Mozart effect is an idea that if babies listen to music composed by Mozart they will become intelligent. This idea drew big attention from media in 1993, and thousands of parents in the world bought CDs of Mozart’s music for their young children. However, if you look at the original paper published in Nature, you will find that Mozart’s effect was inflated by advertisement. The original paper only asserts participants who listened to Mozart’s sonata did better at spatial tasks than the participants who listened to silence or relaxation music.

During my year and a half at POSTECH, I have seen several big incidents and related arguments on the POVIS bulletin board. I noticed the stances of each opposite side and wished for an amicable settlement. However, some anonymous posts with rude expressions or nonsensical contents disappointed me. Not just me, but most other Postechians have been felt uncomfortable by lots of aggressive and disrespectful posts. Thus, this anonymity has been quite a big problem of POSTECH society.The Postech Times well pointed this problem out. The article explained recent three main happenings and anonymity pr

How is the globalization in universities? There have been heated discussions on the globalization issue in Korean universities. Universities cannot avoid making efforts to become international because the degree of internationalization is one of the important criteria in university rankings. Therefore, world-class universities must focus on internationalization. As you know, POSTECH also announced the “Bilingual Campus” in 2010, which emphasized “two equivalent official languages on campus.” Three and half years have passed, but it seems that POSTECH’s globalization is not a complete success.

It was a unique experience for me to have given a lecture opin World Literature to POSTECH students in the Interuniversity Summer School last July. They were not really men of letters but showed literary curiosity and sensibility through which they in fact absorbed many and diverse literary writers’ imaginations and inspirations. I was happy with them, particularly because I was able to get insightful ideas from the conversation with them; that is, my way of answering their questions led me to rethink many problems I have hither to maintained in my mind. The universality of a literary text is

It’s nice to see how much dedication students put into a special event in “The Meaning Lies Backstage, not Center Stage.” No one could ever imagine how much daily practice and planning took place for the shows. An attendee of the festival would just leisurely mill around, watching the performances and eating and drinking the food and drinks served. He or she would not think about how all of them came to be. We only really get to see the surface, the festival itself, and not the time dedication and academic sacrifices put into it. Hearing that there would normally be about 4 hours of dance prac

THE POSTECH TIMES NOW HAS A NEW MEMBER. LET US TAKE NOTE OF WHAT HE SAY AS A NEW REPORTER.After studying in Malaysia for seven years and getting accepted to POSTECH as well as other numerous prestigious universities in the UK and Singapore, deciding on which university to go to was not an easy decision to make. I chose POSTECH after much thoughtful consideration, partly to overcome my identity crisis and to develop a sense of pride as a Korean.I believe the first semester as a freshman of POSTECH was my adaptation period to the unfamiliar Korean community. I am glad to have been handed a chanc

When requested to write an essay about SF, I was glad indeed. Making SF a little more familiar to people is, in my viewpoint, a kind of effort to make our culture more affluent, and insofar as we believe that the more complex and diverse the better in the field of culture, I can’t find any reason to hesitate in accepting that request.The essence of culture lies in variety. Cultural diversity is the cause and effect of the development of culture. Of course, we shouldn’t leave out our attitude toward the differences among various cultural products; the differences themselves should be admitted a

The article “POSTECH Is Being Filled with Thankful Mind” seems to have a few problems in its focus and in its tone. To begin with, the main purpose of this article is unclear. There seems to be no particular organization of paragraphs to highlight a main theme. The focus of this article is ALPHA’s “Day of Thanks” activity, but the majority of the article is written about the statistics of POSTECHIANs’ satisfaction and dissatisfaction; only a single paragraph is dedicated in explaining the activity. Furthermore, the activity was mentioned only at the end of the article, which is not the best pl

Many freshmen may go through a hard time as soon as they enter POSTECH partly because of their heavy study load. There is a saying that the first year in POSTECH is same as the fourth year in high school, which means freshmen’s first year is as hard as their high school days. The difficulty of Basic Required Courses seems to be the main cause of freshmen’s heavy study load.Basic Required Courses are basic courses to prepare for Major Courses. They aim to help students cover various fields of science. Calculus, Applied Linear Algebra, General Physics, General Chemistry, General Life Science, Pr

Imagine that you are visiting Palm Springs, California in the U.S. for a trip. Here, you can watch hundreds of wind turbines all rotating their blades together as the sun sets. You enjoy the fascinating view and later tell your friends about your unusual, fantastic experience. But if you work at a large wind farm, you are more likely to be watching the sensor signals on the monitoring screen “24/7,” worrying about how to operate and maintain so many turbines. You also know that these days, utilities only want to build very large wind facilities due to the economies of scale. You wonder if it’s

While I have been in POSTECH, I have sometimes felt that the colorful emotions such as sensitivity I had decreased by only learning solid and stiff scientific subjects. But when I ordered a cup of coffee with my friends at Monet and looked at the various artworks, I used to feel a relief. As I like landscape paintings, especially the artworks that contain trees and rivers expressed variously made me feel like I was in a different dimension. As I have been a member of Guerbois (a visual arts clubs of POSTECH), I have looked for a place to exhibit our artworks. When we asked the director of Mone

There is a proverb by Mark Twain that “Whenever you find yourself on the side of majority, it is time to pause and reflect”, warning those who recklessly follow the majority, believing what most say right is an ultimate answer to our lives. When it comes to significant decision making in their lives, people tend to take the majority’s opinions or customs into consideration, which would help them to make a safe and swift decision. However, is it always desirable to follow the majority? Several examples demonstrate the riskiness of chasing after the major trend.In POSTECH, most of male unde- rgr

The word "Leadership" is one of the most favorite words today and is used almost excessively. Despite the prevalence, many people get mixed up between two types of leaders: one who is in charge of an organization and one who is the first or a pioneer in a field. An example of the former case would be the President of POSTECH or the editor-in-chief of The Postech Times, and examples of the latter would be the Nobel laureates whom are both pioneers and authorities in their respective fields of studies. Expanding on the former idea, there are many organizations in a university, ranging from the s

People in the modern society should think about money in every way. Especially, people in their twenties have to think about their use of money carefully in Korea because they are in a vague economic status. They spend lots of money for tuition fees, but they don’t earn enough money. So the article about how Postechians spend their money was interesting to me. But, I felt that something was missing. The first thing is about the survey. The article carried out a survey targeting Postechians. As one of the participants, I felt the survey did not have enough choices to examine the spending of par

March had been a month of greeting new students, catching up with old friends, and enjoying the relatively relaxed atmosphere. April had been a busy month with assignments and midterms. It’s time to keep track of time. Among the numerous struggles that may occur, there are three issues that I would like to give advice on.Balance it OutCompared to high school, university gives you a whole lot of freedom. Moreover, there are numerous extra-curricular activities to join, lots of people to hang out with, and dreams to fulfill. A lot of people will emphasize that this may be the highlight of your l

THE POSTECH TIMES NOW HAS NEW MEMBERS. LET US TAKE NOTE OF WHAT THEY SAY AS NEW REPORTERS. Want to Show You What I ThinkI appreciate the opportunity to be a reporter of The Postech Times. I want to tell you about my thoughts. First of all, I will tell you why I am suitable to be a The Postech Times reporter. For three years in high school I worked at English newspaper club “Magnolia”. I read English newspapers and discussed hot topics that were covered in most major newspapers. I also wrote articles. These activities allowed me to have wider view of situations. Moreover, finding additional inf

Nowadays, lots of people use Social Network Services (SNSs) such as Facebook and Twitter. Through SNSs, people often share their opinions about social issues and talk with many friends and acquaintances. So, various writings are posted on the internet and SNS. Whoever wants to read the writing can read and comment freely. But SNSs are a double-edged sword. There are some good points, including the fact that writing can be shared. However, it also has some bad effects, one of the more serious being that too many people can read the writings. So, those who post their opinions expose their own va