Jeong Hae Joong/ Tuesday 11am~1pm

201003224 Jeong Hae Joong

The subject of this week's assignment is to write about my experience with writing. It made me lost in my past. I felt like I ran back in time. I went back to my service in the air force, even to the time when I was in high school. I recalled many things and would like to talk about them.

The first thing is about how I felt about writing in English and my native language. Actually, I have a very short history of writing in English. I think I started to write in English when I was a freshman of HUFS in 2010. Of course, I liked English at the time but just listening is the whole thing I had done.  At first, early in the spring semester, I was challenged even like under the gun. Fortunately I could put words together in a sentence well than I expected at that time, but many times I had a hard time to express how I was feeling and what I was thinking. In Korean, I have no problem and can explain whatever I want freely and naturally. But in English, I did not. I sometimes felt frustrated for English-writing. I even asked myself questions like "what is wrong with me?" or "there must be something wrong with me and simply I did not find it yet." It was like I was shackled in chains made out of English. So, I made efforts to somehow get over my challenge with English-writing, and it is somewhat proud that I made small progress . I saw the progress when I compared my past writings and ones I do nowadays. It is, I think, by leaps and bounds. The steps I have taken started paying off and encouraged me to go further. Even though a long way is still ahead of me to go, I would like to keep up my work.

I have also done many writings for myself like diaries. I started to write diaries after joining in the air force. At first, I just wanted to remember my military life since there were so many exciting or challenging moments taking place in the army. So I begun to make a memo, and then went further to write diaries. Even now, I still keep writing diaries. In these diaries, I usually talked about my personal life, what happened at that time, or even some bad words like swears. I need to care about no one, grammar and words. You can build your own imaginary castle to shelter. It is like being so free. When it comes to make some public writing, however, it is totally opposite. For example, I am a student. Doing a draft or some assignment to hand in, I need to revise and make a correction to make a perfect result as I can. No mistake or at least no more than a couple of mistakes in allowed in writings for study if I aim to get a high grade in class. It makes me a little bit nervous or worried. I think between writings for personal and public, there is a gigantic gap. Whether burden is on your shoulder tells everything about the gap. 

The last topic of this writing is about a pleasant experience I had with writing. One of my hobbies is gathering something meaningful. The thing is they don't look that meaningful and just look like a litter. In high school, I exchanged letters, memo and diaries. For example, I sent back and forth letters celebrating birthdays and winning prizes. Memos saying some small chats are one part of boring classes. Thankfully, I didn't throw most of them into the bin. After a long time passed from the graduation of my high school, I sometimes missed my long-unseen friends. But it was not easy for we are far apart away each other for universities. One day, my family moved out, I arranged my stuff and found the writings in a small shoulder bag I used to in school. I had just forgotten them! I unzipped the bag and take them out on the desk and read one of them slowly. They reminded me so many experiences. Big smiles revealed on my face for several times. I giggled, even laughed out loud. The forgotten memories came up back in my head. The writings brought me happy moments. I then made calls to my friends and talked about the past in school. I put the writings into the box and placed it up on the wardrobe. I can tell that they are one of my precious things.

I think writing is a kind of picture of your mind. A camera enables us to save a moment and world we are in. we can see what is going on in the world in a picture. Like a photo. Writing captures something in our mind. We can't save them in a picture, however, writing helps us to save what we think and feel. In my view, a paper of a good writing could be something more than a picture of the world. That is what makes me keep writing. To be honest, I know that writing is sometimes difficult or annoying, But there must be something keeping me from stopping writing, and that is for sure.