Let’s get science-y!

So like before Yale I had a pretty faint idea on what research was like. Unlike a good number of my peers, I did have the fortune of many resources where I went to high school to pursue any research as an extracurricular nor had the money to really go out of town to gain the experience. Well what’s great about a research university like Yale is that there are tons of labs and different research groups around that may share interests similar to yours. As an added bonus, principal invesitgators (PIs) can be eager in finding fresh young minds to help them explore different hypotheses. Luckily, I fell into that category, eagerly wanting to try out research.

The gig was good.

I ended approaching two forms of research: behavioral and wet lab. The former involved a lot of behavioral coding and recording actions of individuals to track changes over time under different controls. The latter was of a similar vein but instead of individuals, I focused heavily on recombinant DNA. What surprises a ton of the time is that when you mention these things to people or if the subject comes up, the common first reaction is just “Woah!” Guilty, I am quite guilty of that, too. Well very much so before I came to Yale. After discovering what it was like after working 5 blue collar jobs, my reaction became “Wow, this is just work.”

Now, I’m not trying to belittle research here because let’s be real, research and progress go hand-in-hand. However, when you are first starting out, there’s much ado about nothing. Lolz aside, when you do actually get to contribute and do some actual work, you realize you’re just focused on learning so much about one thing, which at first seems daunting, but then it just becomes like a constant “Ooh…” and “Ah!” fest.

Since the genomics research I’m working on right now is very foreign to me, the lab time has been more “Ooh…” than “Ah!”. The beauty of it all is that my lack of expertise in the material is totally cool because if provides the senior lab members to get plenty of teaching and methodology practice in, mutually improving everyone’s lives. The one thing about science though is you cannot fully elaborate all your work until your research has done demonstrated useful results and your analysis has come to conclusion. However, if we meet in person, feel free to ask about my work. I have tremendous admiration for the work my PI has managed to accomplish while still being so very young.

All that may sound a tad dull to uninterested ears but I got my feet really wet, again, and find myself doing research regularly, again. I feel good.

But how many people feel what is going on around them in Korean? Weird transition, but when I cut off my phone service, I thought I was going super less active with my mobile and trendy tech, in general. But things like what’s below happens. Why? Korea is so tech-driven that sometimes it feels wrong to not have my eyes glued to that screen.

Think about it.

Korea is actually a remarkable example of what I still view as the core of the American Dream: social mobility. During the Korean War era, Korea was not one of the world’s leading economies. If anything, you could say it was leading the world in dynamic socialistic reform. Let’s stray from political discussions, though, shall we? Now, Korea, specifically Samsung®, debatably pose as the biggest threat to Apple® in their on-going war for the hottest mainstream tech. Although all my tech products wear that bitten apple silhouette, let’s not be foolish and say Apple is so innovative when many of their concepts are rehashes of wrong-place, wrong-time ideas like the touch screen and parallels of software and features of their competitors (iOS’s pull-down menu followed after Android and their new big screen basically hitched on the Samsung bandwagon). Needless to say, smartphones alone do not mark global social mobility; car industry (Hyundai®), megamalls (Shinsegae®), and megacorporations (Lotte®) among other factoids such as Korea’s GDP and G-20 membership act as other tell-tale signs that things have indeed changed for the “Land of the Morning Calm”.

But technology moves so rapidly here. Being in the know is not something people strive for, it’s just something they just do. News and ads are shown everyone at multiple times, sometimes even when you’re on the throne (it might just be me but Asian countries have a marketing fetish with putting up stuff on bathroom doors). Ads run with Naver® search bars on the bottom while you’re watching television to expedite your web searching to-dos. The ability to get wi-fi pretty easily throughout Seoul makes it easy to watch live programs while you’re on the subway or riding the bus. Korean culture is also very social so you will probably be messaging someone if you have a mere second off or taking selfies for any activity you’re doing with friends. You know what group people tend not to have smartphones in Korea? Foreigners.

I’ll be right back, I just got a Kakao®.