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Lindsay Anderson/The Hoya

I am an international student from South Korea. I was born and raised there for 19 years and had never been to the United States before college. Like many others, I was drawn to the Hilltop because of the School of Foreign Service. I grew up reading articles about Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton, and I aspired to follow in their footsteps and change the world through foreign policies and by defying the notion that women are inferior to men. Chasing my dream to be a world-class diplomat, I left my motherland to start my college life at Georgetown.

Despite my ambitious plan, I struggled to adjust. I was not fluent enough to understand class lectures. I had to record them and listen to the recordings after class to catch up. I was also stressed out with not having any cultural and historical knowledge of the United States. When people talked about old TV shows, their high school prom (nonexistent in my high school) and the founding fathers, I smiled and nodded as if I already knew them, but later in my room, I would Google their meanings.

I feared that I would never be connected to Georgetown due to my lack of exposure to American culture. Yet, professors and my friends proved that my fear was exaggerated. My freshman seminar professor, who is now my role model, took substantial time to help me understand all of her lectures. I bothered my friends by asking them to proofread my papers all the time and was never refused. In addition, they always took me out to meals at Leo’s and other freshman events. Such little friendly gestures sent a hopeful message that the Hilltop could be an inclusive and supportive environment for a “fobbish” Korean girl.

Since then, I wanted to experience everything I could while at Georgetown, except recording lectures and living on a single-sex floor. I wanted to learn more about the American society through on- and off-campus extracurricular activities. I began devoting myself to many activities that interested me, in particular on topics of diversity, educational outreach and human rights.

I joined Residents of Color Council, an initiative that does programming and advocacy to promote diversity and inclusiveness in residential communities, as an effort to understand what it is like to live in an ethnically diverse society. I continued this experience by becoming a Patrick Healy Fellow and joining programs that addressed various issues concerning students of color at Georgetown. Through GU Prison Outreach, I volunteered as a math tutor at the Arlington Detention Center and witnessed how education empowers individuals. I also mentored a group of D.C. sixth-graders about the importance of a college education through the Kids2College program. I performed at Asiafest, Rangila and Luau, and this year, I became a co-coordinator for Asiafest. I was also involved in the Korean Student Association and Truth and Human Rights in North Korea (THiNK), a student group that educates the campus about human rights problems affecting North Koreans. For the last two years, I worked as a resident assistant with an aim to share my transitional experiences with underclassmen.

These experiences of learning about others ironically made me keenly aware of my own Korean identity. Diversity programs led me to turn my eyes to migrant workers in Korea, who are discriminated against because of their darker complexion and foreign origin. Community service projects provoked me to realize the need of urgent educational assistance to children from low-income families and children of resettled North Korean refugees and migrant workers, so that underperformance and poverty among certain minority groups could be avoided. Although I am proud of my rich culture and history, I believe being Korean should mean more than having Korean parents; given the nation’s economic success and political stability, being Korean should mean being a leader in protecting national and international human rights.

I came to Georgetown with a direct, narrow agenda, but now I am leaving with a broadened sense of self-awareness which I gained by exploring diversity. What I learned may not appear in my transcript or diploma, but I am really happy about what I am taking away from the Hilltop and bringing back to my country.

Jinsun Bae is a senior in the School of Foreign Service.