On My Own
I remember how happy I was when I first heard that I had been permitted to attend Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. It was one of the most pleasant and meaningful moment of my entire life. After that moment, however, my family had to concern about my housing. My hometown, Daegu, is far from Seoul where the HUFS is located. Besides, we do not have any relative living in Seoul. So, I decided to apply for the dormitory on campus. Fortunately, I came to be allowed to live in the dormitory. Since then, I have lived by myself.
Ever since I was born in 1989, I had never lived alone away from my family. My family has never lived out of Daegu, so moving and living alone in Seoul seemed a big deal to my family as well as me. I even did not have any idea of what it was like to live on my own, far away from our own home and town where I had lived since I was born. Anyway, I had to prepare to disappear from where I was used to everything. After packing all my stuff, I moved into the dormitory by my father's car. It took around four hours to get there. I had stayed one year in the dormitory before I moved out to serve in the army.
On finishing my service, I should think of where I was supposed to stay again. At that time, I did not want to live in the dormitory where I thought the atmosphere was not that free; there were some rules that we must follow while living in the dormitory. Those rules actually made me sick of living in the dormitory and find a rental room. Since then, I have moved twice and lived in such rental rooms.
I think that I have gotten a little bit more independent than before I started to live by myself. In addition to just living on my own, I began to do what I had never done before such as cooking, doing dishes and laundry, and cleaning my room. Instead of asking somebody to help me to do what I have done with others, I realized that I was supposed to figure out how to deal with those things on my own.
Now, I even came to enjoy doing things alone; last year, I have traveled around the United States almost all by myself. I learned that there is nothing I cannot cope with and that many things happen to be addressed without help from anyone; I am totally willing to do whatever I am going to face, even with pleasure!
What I like about this writing is that the independence you achieved through living alone.
ReplyDeleteYour main point seems to be that you have come to live on your own and throught this you can do anything without help from anyone.
But the thing is that the explanation of the procedure you could finally do things on your own is missing in this writing. For example, you could have mentioned the way you found out how to do the housechores since you would not be an expert from the first time right?
Seongyool Myung
What I like about this piece of writing is that your writing goes in order of time from entrance into HUFS to your travel alone. So I could understand your story smoothly.
ReplyDeleteYour main point seems to be your independence you obtained from your experience of living alone.
Particular part struck me is second paragraph. You successfully explained your circumstances that had made you even harder to live alone.
But I want your writing to be a little more specific. There might be a plenty of experiences hard to overcome by yourself. Specific difficulties in cooking, laundry, or cleaning can be helpful to catch reader's attention.
What I like about this piece of writing is that I can relate and feel your dilemma. Your writing style is very straight forward and very fun to read. My kind of reading. Your main point seems to be the independence lifestyle is having a beneficial effect on you. I like following words in the writing.
ReplyDelete1. Permitted 2. Daegu is far from~ 3. Even with pleasure.
However, the words like 'stuff' is not clear enough for me.
If I were to change one thing in your writing, you could talk about one setting instead of two or more. The setting moves here and there and it got me a bit confused. Overall, very straight forward writing which I can relate personally! It was a great pleasure reading your story.
Sorry for confusing you guys; this is not a chapter 1 but chapter 2 assignment. Anyway, here is my final draft of chapter 2.
ReplyDeleteOn My Own
You might have heard the saying, “God helps those who help themselves”. I have always tried to keep it in mind since I started to live by myself. I began to live alone as I was permitted to attend Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. Since then, I have moved from place to place, even all the way to the United States. In America, I traveled alone for the first time, which was one of the most meaningful moments of my entire life.
Even though I lived by myself before going to America, I did not think that I was a very independent person only because I was living alone away from my family. I lived in the dormitory during my first year in HUFS, which was actually far from what I thought as living all by myself. Indeed, I felt uncomfortable and pressured due to some rules that I was supposed to follow. After staying one year in the dormitory, I decided to live in a sort of rental room after finishing my military service.
I thought that I have gotten a little bit more independent than before living in the rental room. Meanwhile, I was thinking of studying abroad and finally got a chance to go to the United States as an exchange student. In 2012, I was in Albany, New York for the spring semester and traveled several times with my Korean friends. And then, I moved to Warrensburg, Missouri for the fall semester. There was nobody to travel with because all my friends just stayed in New York for the following semester or went back to Korea.
Actually, I did not like traveling that much, but I felt that I was not going to have any opportunity to be in America again. That’s why I tried to be braver and started to travel alone; traveling alone even in Korea would have been a big deal to me. The first place that I was thinking about was Chicago. At first, it was not easy even to plan the trip; I was not familiar with planning on my own. Anyway, I could make it and found my way to Chicago by train. I won’t be able to forget how I felt when I first went to the city of Chicago! I was a little bit scared of traveling alone, but Chicago was so awesome that I almost forgot I was alone there and just enjoyed roaming around the beautiful city.
After coming back from Chicago, I planned to go to other places and visited several big cities such as New Orleans, Seattle and San Francisco on my own. All the cities were so great that I walked around taking a lot of pictures, but Chicago was the best among other cities; how could I forget the first place where I traveled all by myself for the first time? As I started to live on my own and happened to stay in the United Stated for about one year, I realized that I was supposed to do what I have never done before. Besides, I learned that there was nothing I cannot cope with and that sometimes, things need to be done without any help from someone. Now, I feel like I am totally willing to do whatever I will face in the future, especially on my own and with pleasure.