kent lee's blog & ramble

Here's the transcript of my talk at the 세바시 on Freedom from English. This is an approximate transcript that I prepared for my talk, so that they could provide Korean subtitles for listeners. My delivery was kind of unnatural and sometimes not so fluid, because I had to give my speech from a memorized script. Freedom from English I remember several years ago, I was at a bus stop near 왕십리 [Wangshimni], when some high school boys came up to me, wanting to practice English. But as they opened their mouths, all they could say was, “Hi... I like kimchi... I love you” - and then walked away quickly, giggling, and embarrassed. Sadly, they studied English in school for many years, yet they could not say anything meaningful – just a few simple, awkward phrases, not knowing that it is not appropriate to say “I love you” to stranger. I often hear of how Koreans spend so much time, so much effort and so much money on studying English, but with such poor results. In fact, English has beco...

Burnout is a common problem for us graduate students. I was really burned out after quals, but fortunately I rebounded better after prelims, only taking a few weeks to get back to work. After quals I couldn't understand why I couldn't do anything, why my brain was just jello. Then I found out what was wrong from reading Ph.D. comics: post-quals syndrome. While the strip said this was incurable, I found that my prelim / post-prelim syndrome cured my post-quals syndrome - kind of like curing bronchitis by contracting pneumonia. Well, while there's no sure-fire way of recuperating from burn-out, the following is what I advise my friends to do, in addition to a long vacation: 1. mindless, relaxing activities 2. spiritual meditation & reading good Christian books 3. doing something intellectually engaging but unrelated to your research or studies. 4. thinking / dreaming about life after grad school, even sort of looking at jobs and such For #1, it can be pretty mindless like...