Education: Lynbrook High School
Information: Wall Street Journal article about Lynbrook High School
Family Background: Seoul, Korea
Inspirational Quote: "Be who you are and those who mind won't matter and those who matter won't mind."
Abstract: I was born and grew up in the suburbs of San Jose, California as an American citizen. I was the first in my family to attend a 4 year college in the United States which is why I am considered a first generation student.
My parents grew up in Seoul, the capital of South Korea. My father moved to Cupertino, California when he was a junior in high school. My mother completed four years at Sung Kyun Kwan University in Seoul Korea, majoring in Industrial Art, before moving to America to marry my father. My father attended Foothill College in Los Altos Hills as a part-time student before getting a job at Hewlett Packard as an Electrical Engineer at age 19.
My family moved to a more affluent part of San Jose so that my brother and I could attend Lynbrook High School, which is one of the best public high schools in the nation. From the day I was born my parents stressed the importance of an education, as academic success is highly valued in the Korean culture. Going to college was never a question, but attending a
well-known school was a very big issue. Because my school was so competitively geared towards college, I had access to many resources. Nevertheless, the whole process was very stressful and confusing because no one in my family had any idea about what to do, therefore we were unprepared emotionally, financially, and knowledge-wise.
Once I got into college, my family and I experienced a great deal of hardships as we tried to adjust to the changing circumstances. Though I wish that I had an older sibling to be the college process “guinea pig”, I am glad that my brother, my younger cousins, and my future children will have an easier journey through such a difficult time. Even now, almost two-years into college, I am still having difficulty figuring out what I want to do and how I am going to do it, but it’s a difficulty that I am more than willing to endure
for my family’s next generation of college students.
Keywords: first generation student, Korean culture, Lynbrook High School, San Jose, college process.
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