Unexpected, yet Powerful Life Lessons - submitted by Juyeon Jeong (Vanessa)

When I decided to give up 7 years of a promising career in Korea and moved to the US to learn English for my new career goal, I didn’t expect that I would acquire life lessons in the English Institute.

Not only the priceless volunteering experiences but also Amy’s profound lectures were very inspirational and motivational. When I went to the volunteering sites or Amy’s class, I forgot that I was here for English because I was truly enjoying the moment. So I would like to share what I learned from this program.

[From the Class]

As an average Korean, I had not gotten opportunities to think and talk about homelessness, or refugees. In fact, even for underlying social issues including poverty and local imbalance were often not spoken between co-workers or friends. It was too controversial and political. However, learning about profound issues, discussing different ways of approaching the issues, and mostly writing journals about my thoughts in a short time frame made me develop my views and opinions. I believe that the critical thinking skills that this class naturally infused within me were the best.

In addition, having dealt with those different topics helped me a lot to broaden vocabulary words.

[ volunteering activities]

There are so many meaningful lessons that I learned from volunteering activities. But I would like to emphasize two points: the power of appreciation and the power of small actions.

First of all, volunteering is not easy unless you were a devoted volunteer in the past. However, once you make up your mind to go to volunteer sites and meet people, all misgivings melt away. I went to different types of volunteering sites thanks to Amy’s arrangement. Each time, I received smiles and appreciation from people. Their genuine appreciation motivated me to work harder when volunteering. I began to appreciate them accepting and sharing their moments with me, moreover I appreciated the opportunities of serving people.

Most often people including me believe that big organizations or government can make solutions for the social issues. However, I learned that everybody can make a change like a butterfly effect. The small action we started in my class impacted organizations and locals, and it would eventually reach to cities, states, countries, and the world.

Looking back on the last 8 weeks, I can feel that I have improved and developed my English, myself, and (hopefully) the community. I am thankful for our teacher, classmates, and people I met while volunteering.