A Student Perspective on GSI

Graduation remarks by Daeun Heo, GSI Option 1 Student, Kyunghee University, South Korea

Hello, everyone. I’m Daeun, or Judy Heo from Kyunghee University. It is a great honor for me to stand here on behalf of my university and my fellow students. To start the graduation remarks, I have an English proverb that I want to share with you. It is “Strike while the iron is hot”. This proverb means to take an opportunity when it comes by. I think a lot you will be familiar with this idea since we have been told it many times during our summer program here at Stony Brook. During classes, we have been told to lean in. In lectures, Dr. Liu and GSI instructors encouraged us to ask questions by taking opportunity.

Picture: Daeun Heo (right) visits the Statue of Liberty during the GSI trip to New York City.

Here, at the graduation ceremony, I would like to say that all of us have taken the opportunity and have succeeded in making progress this summer by choosing this GSI program and making the effort to not only get the certificate but also to make ourselves more competent members of our society. This morning, I want to elaborate more on what that opportunity we have taken in this summer is.

As we all know from Dr. Tan’s lecture yesterday, the United States is a country of immigrants, and therefore a country with diversity of cultures. By spending our time here at Stony Brook and in the States and also by taking American culture classes, I’m sure that we experienced different kinds of cultures outside of our own cultures. Thank you Pam. And also, congratulations to all of us for taking that opportunity to step out of the comfort zone. I believe we have become more culturally tolerant through the three weeks of experience here at Stony Brook.

Also, it was definitely a great chance for us to stay near New York City, the city of dreams. I assume many of us visited the Wall Street in lower Manhattan which is the center of world’s economy. We have all learned how the United States is good if not, the best place to start a startup. Thank you, Alicia. It was a great opportunity to get an insight of business and economy at Stony Brook.

This summer, we have also learned how to become great leaders. Who would have thought that a marshmallow and some spaghetti can help us build up our leadership? Learning about stories of different kinds of leaders, and especially a female leader, Sheryl Sandberg, our female students can believe in ourselves to ‘have it all’. Thank you so much, Liz. This summer, by participating in Stony Brook’s GSI summer program, we have taken that opportunity to learn to lead our team to success.

What do you think? Do you think we have made a lot of progress during the last three weeks? I’m sure you do. To wrap up my remarks, I would also like to express my gratefulness to Dr. Jongbok Kim, all the GSI instructors, Ms. Yoonmi Noh, and GSAs who had supported us throughout the program and provided us with this honorable opportunity to study here at Stony Brook. Last but not least, congratulations everyone, and wish the best for your future. Thank you.