(Source: http://tumblr.tastefullyoffensive.com/post/11825090356/inmypocket)

Music is like food for the soul that gets people through their rough, exciting, happy, mournful, depressing lives. Whether it may be walking to your local Starbucks to grab a cup of coffee or listening to your favorite hype song before the championship game, a pair of headphones to carry around is almost as necessary as your smart phone. It provides a safe place for our minds to run to when we want to block out our surroundings. When we want to become drowned in solitude we put in our headphones to create that open space for our minds to simply listen instead of speak.

Unfortunately, with all good things comes bad and that’s where these two pocket monsters come from. Waiting to be purchased at a local Macy’s or Aeropostale, they wait silently for their victims to leave behind their belongings in their safe, secure pockets. Then the highlight of their day is when they get to be worn by their victims as the patiently scheme their next attack. As students put away their headphones securely in their pockets, the pocket monsters taste for knots is nearly unbearable. After preying upon the headphones, they get to work and go left, right, over and under, around and back and finally create chaos right before their victims eyes. Class ends and students are looking forward to their few moments of solitude with just them and their music until they are defeated.

The victim gradually slips his hands in his pockets to discover a jumble of wires waiting to be pulled and stretched. Frustrating, the victim loses sight of the path in front of them as they snag at their precious keys to solitude and they trip over a crack in the side walk. The headphones fly forward before their eyes as the force of gravity plummets them into an inevitable 5 days of Neosporin and bandaids. As the victim lays on the sidewalk, cheeks buried in the gravel, his eyes fall upon his headphones in anger and he walks away leaving behind the key to solitude.

I glanced at the homework that Dr. Hunter assigned us and I had no idea what it meant at first. Personally, college homework has been a lot different than high school homework. In high school you have to complete this amount of problems on these pages or read this amount pages in this chapter and write an essay. College and Dr. Hunter, however, has presented me with the freedom to come up with my own homework assignment. For most this is a dream come true.

I didn’t know what to do at first and to be honest, the homework wasn’t the first thing on my list of things to do. One night while my friends Allen and Vishnu and I were playing NBA 2k11 on the Xbox, we started talking about how we need to improve our basketball skills at the CRC against other tech students. Suddenly, I had this epiphany that connected basketball in the virtual world with basketball in the real world, and I thought to myself, why not this be my homework assignment? I asked Allen if we could somehow learn how to formulate defensive and offensive plays based on the basketball game. We observed where to position ourselves and where to set picks and create an open shot.

(Source: Game Rumble)

The next day, we decided to test it for ourselves. As you would expect, it was a lot harder to do things in real life than in the game. We’re not as athletic first of all, and secondly we don’t have the physical traits that these NBA all stars acquired, but we still gave it a shot. As competitive as we were playing the game, we were on the courts and next thing you know, we began shouting out plays based on the ones that we learned in the game. “Pick and Roll! Pick and Roll! Back door cut!” Many times the plays we incorporated from the game actually worked and we did win a few games.

From this homework assignment, I learned that you can always learn whether it requires studying and spending the night at the library or by having fun. I learned to combine basketball in a game with basketball in real life and still have fun in both situations. Today’s games are becoming revolutionary, connecting people from across the globe and creating a whole new virtual online dimension. So why not gain beneficial information from games and incorporate them into our lives, that way we can have fun while learning.

Dr. Hunter assigned us a Daniel Pink video that covered the ideas reward and its outcomes. Pink displayed that studies across the globe showed that financial incentives can result in an overall negative impact on performance. These studies contradicted a commonly accepted idea and I realized that society has evolved into an environment that no longer demands left brain thinkers, but instead right brain thinkers. Autonomy, mastery, and purpose are three new building blocks for an entirely new operating system for businesses. Pink mentioned that Google required that their employees spend 20% of their time pursuing any type of activities they wanted in order to come up with new ideas that interested them, rather than being instructed to do this and to do that. Businesses are growing into a more open minded system rather than being strict and rigid.

Pink stated that “About half of the new products in a typical year are birthed during that 20 Percent Time, things like Gmail, Orkut, and Google News.” I’ve always wanted to work for Google for this reason. I’ve heard rumors that their employees receive bonuses during special holidays such as Christmas, and that they have a comfortable work environment that allows them to play Rock Band at work. Is this true? I have no clue, but I’ve always wanted to find out; however, after watching this video, I became even more inspired to work for Google. I believe, in according to Pink’s video, that society and businesses are demanding a much more open minded atmosphere rather than the logistic and rational numbers side of the equation. We have machines for that. The human race has developed in technology exponentially for decades and, of course, there’s no limits to our potential; however, I feel as if we have reached the point in time in which commonly accepted ideas are being refuted.

(Source: Neverwood High School)

Foundations have been laid down by historical figures such as Aristotle, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Martin Luther King Jr, and much more. Humans, naturally, learn from their mistakes and adapt and grow. This was all easy because we had people before us learn how to live on this world, how to function properly and efficiently. I feel like we’ve learned a lot about how the world operates and there’s nearly an instruction manual for every single product out there whether it may be hand written, published, or somewhere on the world wide web. But now what? Now we know that if we put A and B together we get C. Is that it? Do we just stop here? Of course not, as time changes, people do as well and as people change this calls for different things to satisfy our never ending desires and Google and other great companies are realizing that in order to satisfy our taste buds by combining our work time with leisure time and investing our skills into products that are interesting to us because that will maximize the results.

Before writing this blog, I realized that I have never thought of this question: “Who are the most influential people in your life?” Surprisingly the only person that came to my mind at first was definitely my mom because I have an unconditional love for her; however, since we were asked to think of a few more, this task was a little more difficult than I intended. Even so, I took some time to carefully think and this is what I came up with.

(Source: coolsportsplayers.blogspot.com)

Michael Jordan

Possibly the best person to play the game of basketball. Everyone knows Michael Jordan whether its for his acting career in Space Jam, popular shoe collection, or his wide range of athletic skills in golf, baseball, and basketball. However, it isn’t his accomplishments that I admire, although they are extremely respectable with 6 NBA titles and a number of Olympic USA trophies, but instead I admire where he started from. He was an average male with the capabilities of any other male; however, he never let defeat defeat him. Jordan never made the high school basketball team, and most people, including myself, would admit to just stop with their basketball career. This wasn’t an option for Jordan. He instead managed to work even harder and get accepted into UNC and played basketball for college and before you know it, he was getting paid to play basketball for the NBA. His work ethic is inspiring and is definitely a motivation to me not only for basketball, but for my life in general.

(Source: zerohedge.com)

Steve Jobs

Second, I would like to pay my respects to possibly one of the greatest, accomplished men to live on the face of this earth. Steve Jobs is the epitome of a successful entrepreneur with his hands in a variety of areas including Pixar animations and Walt Disney. His well known Apple products have sustained to be one of the top selling products in the market for nearly a decade. Steve Jobs proved that a single man can use his own ideas to create a massive empire in order to change the world and have a lasting impact. Apple has changed the course of history and technology and Job’s work is inspiring to me because my dream, like most others, is to leave this earth knowing that you made a difference. Although he isn’t present with us today, his ideas and company has touched nearly every individual in the world.

Mom

Lastly, and most importantly, my mom Hye Kim. She’s proved to me that money isn’t everything to have a heartwarming, loving family. She raised two little boys into grown men by herself without the help of a spouse. She managed to worked 12+ hours a day 7 days a week for my entire life. I owe everything to her and I thank her for not giving up on me and my brother. She’s my motivation for studying hard in school and working as hard as I can so that in the future I can give her everything she wants. Although there were many rough times for our family financially with this recent recession that the U.S. is finally recovering from, we managed to pull through with the help of my mom’s determination and diligence. She has proven to me that no matter the gender, no matter how much money, and no matter how much pain, love can conquer all. Thank you mom and I love y0u.

Contact Info:

E-Mail: pkim41@gatech.edu

Phone: 678.462.8951

Address: 54 Howell Lndg. Duluth, GA 30096

Biography:

Born on July 2, 1993 from Atlanta, GA. Attended Duluth High School but graduated from Northview High School. Actively participated in community service with Interact Club and donated blood to the Red Cross. Positioned Treasurer for Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) at Northview High School and attended multiple state conferences and participated in team competitions ranking number one in the state. Studied Latin for 3 years, traveled to state conventions, and ranked third in the overall grammar examinations. Achieved the President’s Award for outstanding academic excellence and outgoing personality. Worked as a chef at a Japanese hibachi restaurant Sarku Japan throughout senior year in high school. Freshman at Georgia Tech expecting to graduate in the May of 2016 with hopeful internships with different companies and corporations.

Qualities:

A hard working, dynamic student with proven leadership abilities in working with large groups, organization, and multi-tasking. Experience in communication and marketing with the capacity to adapt to different environments. Enthusiastic in problem solving and critical thinking. Seeking a position in Industrial Engineering committed to facilitating the economy and making society operate more efficiently. Susceptible to change and open to working with a variety of people.

Goals:

My goals while attending Georgia Tech is to seek a Co-Op with any company searching for an industrial engineer in order to gain experience in my field of study and to also earn a salary to pay for school. I’m expected to graduate within 5 and half years with a strong resume in order to get hired by Google. I hope to make society’s standards of living easier and to facilitate global communication. I wish to promote renovated ideas in order to improve the quality of society and eventually have a lasting impact on a global scale.

(Source: Youtube User SophiaGraceBrownLee)

Little girl singing along to Nicki Minaj’s Superbass. Pretty cool huh?