“Dingdong!” Every five minutes, the bell rang ominously. One by one, patients arose from their waiting room seat and disappeared into the exam room. My mother and I waited for our turn to come, and I with each passing ringing of the bell, I became more anxious, while she remained unflustered. Her deafness, it seemed, had a small benefit. She had begun going deaf during her pregnancy, when an allergic reaction to an antibiotic damaged her ears. So, every year...

During my third year working as a research assistant in the Department of Psychology in Korea University, I landed a volunteer position at Seoul’s Public Internet Addiction Recovery Center. When I arrived at the center, I was assigned to three elementary students: Kangmin, Hyunjae, and Jaehyuk. All three sat with their legs shaking and their eyes glued to their smartphones while I asked them questions about their Internet use. Their school transcripts contained poor grades, and their attendance records...

In high school I realized that I had glossophobia, fear of public speaking. My anxiety was so severe that I had to take prescribed medication before any class presentation, but the medication caused uncomfortable symptoms of its own. It numbed my body in an intense way, causing me to just spill out my words without being able to feel or engage with the audience. Wanting to rid myself of glossophobia, I had always run for various leadership positions, volunteered to...

Because of my excessive gaming in middle school, I often slept in and skipped school, yet was in denial of my addiction. My GPAs at the time were 1.25, 1.38, and 1.00 (out of 4.00). My father, a psychiatrist, tried everything to help me. The school principal, my homeroom teacher, my best friends, and Ms. Oh--the most famous pediatric psychiatrist in Korea--counseled me to help me get back to school. After completing the first semester of eighth grade, our family moved to Pittsburgh. During...

I have been serving as a Peer Mentor at my school since tenth grade. Peer Mentors supervise incoming students by helping them adjust to school life. During school orientation programs, they meet with these students daily. I wanted to be involved in peer mentoring because I knew all too well what it was like to be a new kid in school. Throughout my school years, I have moved schools about six times. Through this position, I was able to meet...

"I will make you good writers, not just hard workers." I had always struggled as a writer, and hearing that my professor values outcome over effort felt quite daunting. As a Mathematics major, I had friends who questioned why I would put myself through the torture of pursuing mastery of a skill that I lacked. But I had experienced the power of purposeful language and believed that a true education needed to be broad, not just deep. This sense of...

"Vote Ham and Go Ham!" That slogan helped get me elected as Hall Council President in my first-year. Excited to foster the community through leadership, I made a commitment to serve breakfast and host weekly social mixers. It has been a rewarding eight months, leading the hall council that I appointed. Due to the novelty of the club, there were no guidelines, and it was particularly challenging to execute this as a freshman. Realizing that we have a very limited...

Having triumphed over four years of a personal struggle with gaming addiction, I can say I’ve had a life-changing transformation I will never forget. Since then, I have explored my interests in psychology through research internships at Korea University, community service at the Seoul Public Internet Addiction Recovery Center, and school mentoring activities. To continue delving into the complexities surrounding addictions and disorders, I hope to become a part of Carnegie Mellon’s pioneering research-driven psychology department, which goes...

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson; Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World by William H. McRaven; The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins; The Kept: A Novel by James Scott; and Relativity and Quantum Physics For Beginners by Steven L. Manly. The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch contains many lessons that my father emphasized, and it also helped me overcome my glossophobia when I was campaigning for...

My past struggle and curiosity for cyberpsychology motivates me to understand people with personal struggles. At the Seoul Internet-Addiction Recovery Center, I was assigned to mentor three elementary students who had gaming addictions. I could empathize because I had struggled with the same addiction in middle school. Using my seventh grade P.E. teacher’s tactic of playing games with the students to build close relationships, I was able to find out the causes of their behavior. This led the...

After overcoming a two-year period of gaming addiction during middle school, I quickly gained interest in the relationship between psychology and technology. Notre Dame’s eMotion & eCognition lab and Programming for Video Game Development course under director Dr. Villano, a professor of both psychology majors and Computing & Digital Technologies (CDT) minors, grabbed my attention. eMotion & eCognition Lab’s current concentration on rehabilitation of mental disorders using technology interventions such as humanoid robots would teach me a great deal about the...

I often cringed inwardly as my school friends asked, “Is your mom deaf?” The answer was yes, but it was never that simple. Yes, my mother was hearing impaired and suffered depression. Despite her rather desperate situation and lack of strong social support, I was impressed by my mother’s ability to read lips and faces. Observing her behavior and paying attention to her moods led to my interest in depression and the social prejudice around it. As a survivor...

My past struggle and curiosity for cyberpsychology motivates me to understand people with personal struggles. At Seoul Internet-Addiction Recovery Center, I was assigned to mentor three elementary students with gaming-addictions. I could empathize because I struggled with the same addiction in middle-school. Using my seventh-grade P.E. teacher’s tactic of playing games with me during internet-addiction to build close relationships, I was able to find out the causes of their behavior. This led the center to implement constructive solutions...

Having triumphed over two-years of gaming-addiction, I’ve had a life-changing transformation. Since then, I have explored my interests in psychology through school mentoring activities, service at the Seoul Internet-Addiction Recovery Center, and research internships. I hope to become a part of NYU’s research-driven psychology department, where I hope to examine behavioral addiction more closely. As a research assistant at Korea University’s Psychology department, I organized fMRI bold signals. During this study, I learned the concept of habituation,...