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#Not obsessing over perfection #Learning from international friends #The seriousness of litter
*As an actual participant in the gap year program, they took part in the interview to introduce the gap year to more people.
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Strongly recommended by Korean Gap Year participant Park Seohyun👏👏👏 Iceland environmental conservation project |
"The most well-preserved and vivid nature I''ve seen so far"
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Hello. My name is Park Seohyun, and I''m a second-year nursing student. Up until now I had been extremely busy juggling school and part-time work. I was so busy that I wondered why I was working so hard, and then I suddenly burned out. Around that time, I had been in a volunteer club last year and enjoyed activities like picking up trash on the coast, recycling, and planting trees. I''ve always wanted to visit Iceland at least once, and when I learned there was an environmental volunteer project, I joined with my cousin.
#The awe of the great outdoors and the reality of environmental protection
Iceland''s nature felt like the most well-preserved and vivid nature I''ve ever seen. Even the scenery viewed from the car was beautiful, and the effort to preserve nature with minimal safety measures and without artificial structures stood out, so I could fully focus on the landscape. What surprised me, though, was that beaches that looked clean from a distance actually had a huge amount of trash up close. While picking up debris like nets torn by currents and microplastics, our bags got so full that they were hard to carry. What shocked me most was finding Korean trash in Iceland. I was stunned that trash from Korea had drifted so far, and it made me realize once again how serious the trash problem is.
# Foreign friends who made me think a lot
Living with volunteer friends from various countries was full of fun and learning. The most memorable were the high school students from Austria. In our country, high school students are usually seen as still young, but those students could drive well and cook well. They said they came to Iceland to film an environmental documentary as their high school graduation project. I was amazed that high school students could have such an idea, and even though they are younger than me, I feel I learned a lot from them.
# What advice would you give your pre-gap-year self?
If I were to give advice to myself before leaving for my gap year,"Don''t obsess over perfection"That''s the advice I''d like to give. Especially when using English, trying to speak perfectly kept me from saying what I really wanted to say. This is a foreign country and I''m also a foreigner, so the other person is ready to listen to me. Even if your English sentences aren''t perfect, communication is still possible, so I''d tell myself to just say it.
*As an actual participant in the gap year program, they took part in the interview to introduce the gap year to more people.
|
Strongly recommended by Korean Gap Year participant Park Seohyun👏👏👏 Iceland environmental conservation project |
"The most well-preserved and vivid nature I''ve seen so far"
Hello. My name is Park Seohyun, and I''m a second-year nursing student. Up until now I had been extremely busy juggling school and part-time work. I was so busy that I wondered why I was working so hard, and then I suddenly burned out. Around that time, I had been in a volunteer club last year and enjoyed activities like picking up trash on the coast, recycling, and planting trees. I''ve always wanted to visit Iceland at least once, and when I learned there was an environmental volunteer project, I joined with my cousin.
#The awe of the great outdoors and the reality of environmental protection
Iceland''s nature felt like the most well-preserved and vivid nature I''ve ever seen. Even the scenery viewed from the car was beautiful, and the effort to preserve nature with minimal safety measures and without artificial structures stood out, so I could fully focus on the landscape. What surprised me, though, was that beaches that looked clean from a distance actually had a huge amount of trash up close. While picking up debris like nets torn by currents and microplastics, our bags got so full that they were hard to carry. What shocked me most was finding Korean trash in Iceland. I was stunned that trash from Korea had drifted so far, and it made me realize once again how serious the trash problem is.
# Foreign friends who made me think a lot
Living with volunteer friends from various countries was full of fun and learning. The most memorable were the high school students from Austria. In our country, high school students are usually seen as still young, but those students could drive well and cook well. They said they came to Iceland to film an environmental documentary as their high school graduation project. I was amazed that high school students could have such an idea, and even though they are younger than me, I feel I learned a lot from them.
# What advice would you give your pre-gap-year self?
If I were to give advice to myself before leaving for my gap year,"Don''t obsess over perfection"That''s the advice I''d like to give. Especially when using English, trying to speak perfectly kept me from saying what I really wanted to say. This is a foreign country and I''m also a foreigner, so the other person is ready to listen to me. Even if your English sentences aren''t perfect, communication is still possible, so I''d tell myself to just say it.
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