Meeting the Real Me Through Picture Books: A Gap Year Review of "Fairy Tale Humanities Discussion" (1st Cohort)

나답게, 단단하게, 즐겁게

Author: Jang Hyun-jeong
Country / City: Europe/Malta/Valletta
Views : 3329

''Humanities'' itself is a discipline meant to enrich human life, and its starting point is the self — this is the beginning of this lecture. So in this course we continuously search for what I truly want and how I can become happy.

Donghwa Humanities Discussion 1st Cohort / Jang Hyun-jung, Gap-Year Community Gapper

Currently, South Korea is,
Each year 60,000 middle and high school students drop out of school, 346,000 people in their 20s are just idling because they have no dreams, and the one-year turnover rate after employment has entered the 40% range,75% of university students are not satisfied with their college life, and more than 80% of office workers say they do not feel happy.Many people tell others to dream, but to solve this problem that lacks practical methods and support,At our Gap Year,we aim to introduce the ''gap year'' to South Korea.

''Gap year (Gapyear)''is a practice where one either balances study and work or temporarily pauses to engage in various activities such as volunteering, travel, internships, education, or starting a business,serving as a time to set the direction for the future — a culture recommended in the United States, Europe, Japan, and elsewhere.

# Humanities that seemed difficult and boring, but the beginning started with ''me''.

I took this course at the start of my leave of absence with the determination, ''Let''s spend this time meaningfully.'' That doesn''t mean I was particularly interested in ''humanities.'' Rather, I felt ''humanities'' was merely an academic discipline and held a prejudice that it would be difficult and boring. Still, since humanities are so trendy these days, I thought it wouldn''t hurt to take the course... and with worries like ''what if it''s too hard...'' I began this lecture.

The lecture content wasn''t as difficult as I had feared — it was actually easy. That doesn''t mean the content was light, though, because this course deals directly with ''my life.''''Humanities'' itself is a discipline to enrich human life, and its starting point is the self — this is the beginning of the lecture.So in this course we continuously search for what I truly want and how I can become happy.

# Six desire cards I wanted to keep

So the first activity was to fill out desire cards. As the name suggests, it involved writing my desires — things I want to eat, places I want to go, people I want to meet — on cards. But in my case the cards didn''t fill up easily. Looking back, it seems this was related to my personality. I''m a worrier, indecisive, timid, and I tend to prioritize what others want over what I want. Not only that, when I tried to write down what I wanted to do, I felt there had to be certain conditions to do those activities and that there had to be some grand reason.

As I kept thinking various things like this, there weren''t really things I particularly wanted to eat, places I particularly wanted to go, or people I particularly wanted to meet. I was agonizing over it, but the instructor said, ''Why are you making it so difficult? Don''t consider any conditions, just write what you want.'' Perhaps only then,I was able to comfortably write what I wanted and what I liked without attaching grand reasons. And I decided to carry those cards with me and keep them as a must-do list.

# It turned out I liked many things and had many dreams

We were often asked about our dreams. In fact, when someone asked me what my dream was, I couldn''t answer readily. I thought a dream was only a job, so I believed I had nothing I truly wanted to do. The same applied when asked what I liked — I did like things, but not as intensely as others, so I hesitated to confidently say I liked something.

However, taking this class made me realize that I actually liked many things and had many dreams. I didn''t say it because I didn''t have a guitar, but my dream is to play guitar. I didn''t describe being a singer as a dream because I thought I couldn''t be one, but I like singing and becoming someone who sings is a dream. I''m not good at drawing, but I like drawing and being someone who draws was also a dream.Even though I liked many things, I thought they weren''t connected to jobs and assumed that if I pursued what I wanted I''d fall behind others, so I neglected them.

But from this lecture I came to think: it''s hard to make a living doing things you don''t want anyway, so since making a living is difficult, why not try to make a living doing what I want — and maybe it''ll work out. This became my life motto. The guide for this motto was drafted from the desire cards I wrote on the first day.

# Through the class I gained a life perspective worth living a more interesting life

Actually, this course didn''t dramatically build up massive humanities knowledge nor drastically transform my life or worldview. It simply became an opportunity to get closer to myself, and by loosening up a bit I found a less boring, more enjoyable outlook on life — that''s the biggest gift I got from this lecture.If there''s anyone like me who has no dreams and is drifting along, living without meaning by following others, this is a lecture I''d like to take with them.

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