The stage taught me more than just showing a prepared performance.
I have been learning Korean Folk dance and a lead soprano in choir since I was young.
Both of them required performing on stage in front of people, so I had a lot of stage experience, and since they were arts that had to be performed in a group, harmony with many people was important.
My extensive stage experience gave me the ability to deal with crises, and my long-term work as a group art troupe taught me how to find flexible consensus.
And I was able to apply the flexibility and crisis response skills I learned during this time not only on the performance stage but also off stage.
The most memorable experience was an incident that occurred on the day of a paper presentation when the microphone suddenly stopped working.
I was clearly panicked at first, but I came to my senses right away and didn’t want to make a mess, so I calmed down and calmly raised my voice to continue the rest of the sequence in a small theater with over 500 people.
In addition, I was able to learn how to calmly find solutions in everyday situations with many variables, while resolving many mistakes on stage.
Another situation is when I was participating in a thesis club and couldn’t quite decide on the topic due to different opinions from my friends, so I was able to utilize my flexibility well.
At the time, my friends were worried that they could not decide on a topic because their opinions were divided over medical health, environmental issues, and education issues.
And the more we talked, the more we repeated disparaging each other’s topics, making the atmosphere a mess. In the meantime, I was able to find a point of agreement by changing the flow of the story by asking whether it would be a good idea to group the topics under a common denominator, modern issues.
I will be able to put my flexibility and crisis response skills to good use when I go to Northwestern University.
Because Northwestern University basically teaches a lot of small-unit discussion-based classes, I can put my skills to good use by expressing my opinions and listening to the other party’s opinions while sharing my thoughts with my friends.
Also, I will join the ballet club bel canto ballet, taking advantage of my dancing experience during my school days. I want to create a more perfect ballet performance by sharing the many mistakes and experiences I have had on stage so far with my friends.