Hello everyone. Welcome to visit this page. I’m Muha Kim from South Korea, currently taking a physics course at City College of New York.
Now I’m still on the journey to be a Nu-clear physicist. Although it is a long and tough journey, it’s been surprising and grateful to be how colorful this journey is. I wanted to become a physicist not because of a single intense inspiration but because of my childhood and two big challenges.
When I was young, my father who was a soldier in the Korean Army introduced me to a lot about the Air Force and astronauts. But the soldier’s strict lifestyle wasn’t attractive at all to me. Instead, I was more attracted to astrophysicists who create strange spaces that no one can go to ever using mathematics. Over time, the energy crisis emerged all over the world, so my interest in the environment and my exploration of theoretical physics combined to create my wanting to study nuclear-fusion energy. And of course, I wanted to consider my country’s situation. We have several nuclear fission plants, but they had been deactivated because of world’s trend of green energy. I want to help our countries energy crisis.
After I decided to be a nuclear physicist, there were two big challenges I needed to confront. First, Korean society’s prejudice against physics. When I said I wanted to study physics in college during high school academic advising, I was told how much money I would make from ‘doing that’. And even all the teachers in my school responded, ‘Why does a woman need physics?’ Surprisingly, this happened in 2016. Our country does not respect natural sciences and women scientists that much compared to America. So, I made my decision to leave my own country to study without prejudice and poor treatment towards physics.
The second challenge was money. My house was poor, so I couldn’t afford the ridiculously high private education costs in Korea, which meant I could not afford to go to college also. Then I left for Australia which has a lot of huge and diverse industries that give high salaries. I worked in a mining ore analyzing laboratory. Although I don’t have a diploma to work there, I appealed my high school laboratory experiences. They let me work at the company. This was an essential experience for my English skills, laboratory skills, and money. I killed three birds with one stone. Plus, life in a foreign country made my confidence to study abroad.
Finally, now I go to City College of New York with the money I had earned by myself. Someone might feel that I am a wonderful person who makes anything happen when they just hear my story. However, besides the two big challenges, I’ve gone through those days when I was filled with so much frustration, anxiety, and hate for the world. I never think this is the end of my journey. I’m still in the middle of it. I hope my short story will be a medal that emphasizes my sincerity, creativity, and self-reliance.
