What Makes Me Me - Week 8 Lim1 Jaehyun Lim Mr. Oswald Moreau 15 October 2021 What Makes me Me. As nearly 2 months have now come and gone since the start of my college experience, I feel unbelievably older, more exhausted, and yet also a lot more mature. This is the first time I have ever truly experienced this much freedom, and while I am still not quite used to it or particularly fond of it, I have managed to grow a lot from my experiences at Notre Dame. The struggles, opportunities, and relationships I’ve developed here have all helped me discover what things I believe in, and how important those root beliefs are to me. My first important root belief is I believe that I grow by recognizing my faults and taking responsibility for them. Coming into Notre Dame, I maintained a sort of condescending mentality, in which I convinced myself that I would be better than everyone else and have a 4.0 GPA while making the travel team for SIBC my first semester and still have time to be active in all my other 6 clubs as well. Needless to say, things didn’t quite go as planned. While I still hope that I can get a 4.0 GPA this semester (🙏), I ultimately didn’t get selected for the Fidelity travel team, stopped showing up to most of my teachers’ office hours after the first 2 weeks due to being sick and then being busy, and ultimately leaving 4 out of my 7 total clubs. In short, my original expectation to be perfect and not address potential hurdles/failures ultimately made me not only achieve less but also think less of myself. This connected to what we focused on in our Lim2 discussion/reading for Week 1: “And we perfect, most dangerously, our children… our job is not to say, ‘Look at her, she's perfect. My job is just to keep her perfect -- make sure she makes the tennis team by fifth grade and Yale by seventh’” (“The Power of Vulnerability” by Brené Brown - Moreau FYE Week One). When I first read this article, I didn’t really take into account the advice that was given because I feared that becoming satisfied with the current version of myself meant complacency, but I now know that there is a way to be both driven while embracing their own faults. In the future, I hope to not only understand this but also apply it more and more to my daily life to be a more optimistic and positive person. My second root belief is I believe that my purpose is to leave a positive legacy that impacts as many people as possible. My second official day at Notre Dame during Welcome Weekend, I attended my first lecture: Finance and Opportunities by Robert Batallio. It was there I realized how so many of my peers seemed to live only for their resumes and materialistic goods, and at that very point, I began to feel incredibly alone. All throughout the summer I obsessed over target schools, the prestige that came with it, and the post-grad salaries and opportunities, but yet now that I was here, I didn’t really want to be just that type of person. What struck me was how our Week 2 reading voiced my exact sentiments: “And most of us, including me, would say that the eulogy virtues are the more important of the virtues. But at least in my case, are they the ones that I think about the most? And the answer is no” (“Should you live for your résumé ... or your eulogy?” by David Brooks - Moreau FYE Week Two). I didn’t want to become only an Adam I, but I was always worried whether I could live the lavish lifestyle I dreamed of as an Adam II. I am still trying to maintain a balance to live with a great resume and a great character, and I plan to continue to live with this mentality, as wishful as it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Qm9cGRub0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlLWTeApqIM&ab_channel=TED https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlLWTeApqIM&ab_channel=TED Lim3 sounds. Leaving behind a great legacy requires sacrifice of some kind as well as a few resume-worthy accomplishments, but being remembered as a good person in your legacy requires having great character. I hope to pursue both. My third root belief is I believe that I pursue a connection with God for comfort and an understanding of my world. I talked with Father Pete following the trip to the Grotto at the end of our Welcome Weekend, and I remember telling him all about my fears and worries of being so far apart from my family and managing myself at Notre Dame. I am Catholic, but I wasn’t a full-blown Catholic, and I had trouble placing my faith in God. Just yesterday after finishing my mid-terms, however, I found myself at the dorm chapel at 4 A.M., thanking the Lord for what He has done for me, and praying for the continued health and happiness of my family. Father Pete said it the best: “Jesus focused on reminding us of the life we are called to regardless of our perceived misfires, mistakes, miscalculations. A life that requires courage, a willingness to shed the comforts of this world and above all else, to love those who are most in need” (“The Role of Faith in Our Story” by Fr. Pete McCormick - Moreau FYE Week Three). God for me is what gives me hope, and a constant motivation to not only stay alive, but to live well and help others. My fourth root belief is I believe that I forge live-giving relationships through mutual respect, love, and sacrifice for each other. The first thing that hit me at Notre Dame was how nice everyone was. From the students to the teachers to the cafeteria workers to the janitors, everyone was so welcoming and kind. While I did hear about how nice people at Notre Dame are and how willing they were to help fellow Notre Dame kids, I figured that was some typical fake college PR image, and not what the university was actually like. It made me realize how toxic the culture was at my high school, and how toxic I was personally. The video “Because I Love You” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcZMeqWWOIs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcZMeqWWOIs Lim4 managed to show ways in which people could “love” someone and still be in a toxic relationship, and made me ashamed of myself (“Because I Love You, Double Whiskey” by One Love Foundation - Moreau FYE Week Four). I realized that I had hurt my parents, friends, and peers for my own personal gain, all without realizing what I had done. Since realizing this, I have tried to change myself to not only be in healthy relationships, but reach out and repair my old relationships as well. My fifth root belief is I believe that I grow best by what I experience. One of the main reasons why I actually came to Notre Dame was because I wanted to become a better person and a better student. In high school I would frequently procrastinate on assignments and tests, and would often alienate myself from people who were long-time friends over trivial arguments, and I no longer wanted to be that type of person. Similar to what Father Grove mentioned in “Two Notre Dames”, I needed to be full in both reason and spirit in order to become successful in whatever I wanted to achieve (“Fr. Sorin Letter to Basil Moreau” by Fr. Sorin - Moreau FYE Week Five). My experiences in my journey at Notre Dame, while tiring and overwhelming, have helped shape me into a better person both socially and academically. I plan to hopefully continue growing my character while I’m here. My sixth root belief is I believe that family and home define the inner core of who I am. At the First Year Retreat for Asian Students, I was fortunate enough to find a bunch of like-minded people who I could connect to, as we all had lived in Korea before coming here, and understood the culture difference that we were adjusting to. This connects to my poem, in which I state how “Where I’m from, We’re made out of steel, rubber, aluminum, bolts; even-keeled.”, because Korean cultural norms no longer applied here, but I still seeked that same sort of https://youtu.be/MwQ5ur9OZ-g https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o56woQDq3QrRkziT8eYrvYly5CQaP2Vb/view Lim5 familiarity and rigid culture in which I grew up in (“Week 6 Poem” by Jaehyun Lim - Moreau FYE Week Six). I learned that my hometown is and will always be a part of who I am, but I also hope to make ND culture a part of me and my poem as well. My seventh and final root belief is I believe that I pursue truth by confirming the difference between fact and fiction. Notre Dame has a majority white population, and while that hasn’t bothered me nearly as much as I thought it would, I still have been faced with stereotypes regarding Korea (e.g. North or South), and my Asian heritage in general. As someone who has spent such a long time in Korea, I am worried that I may do the same thing to other groups as well. I am a naturally stubborn person and what I believe to initially be the truth is often times something I fight to maintain, even if my version of the truth is completely wrong (e.g. Vince Carter is a top 5 NBA player). My concern regarding the different versions of “truths has only grown, and has gotten worse: “The ability to tell complex stories about ourselves has atrophied” (“How to Destroy Truth” by David Brooks - Moreau FYE Week Seven). I agree withDavid Brooks and his message on how implicit bias and emotions destroy the validity of truth. In my brief time here at ND, I have tried to pursue truth by trusting professors, students, and faculty more experienced than me for all questions that I have. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qdJ-Py1iECsdtAAFmhtfMTXUpQ9gGn9CJshXnDQiz4U/edit?usp=drivesdk https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/01/opinion/patriotism-misinformation.html?referringSource=articleShare