In this blog post, I’ll summarize the academic efforts I made during high school, my participation in school activities, examples of how I practiced consideration and cooperation, and my career preparation process.
Academic Experiences and Reflections
In my sophomore year of high school, I chose the science track and decided to major in chemical engineering or food engineering. Until then, I hadn’t been certain about my career path, but once I entered my sophomore year and set my sights on Chung-Ang University, I developed a concrete sense of purpose. In particular, a senior currently attending Chung-Ang University visited our school to give a presentation, and that meeting had a significant impact on my career decision, making my goal even more firm.
My first-year GPA averaged around a 2.5 grade level, and when I realized that this score would make it difficult to gain admission to my target university, I felt an urgent need to improve my grades. At the time, I ranked around 40th in the school, and I set a goal to enter the top 2 grade level by the end of my second year, thereby moving up about 10 spots in the school rankings. To achieve this goal, I focused on core subjects like math and science while also systematically preparing for exams in other subjects.
Specifically, I used online lectures to catch up on missed material and collected past exam questions from previous school assessments to solve them daily. Believing that those who study more ultimately perform better, I developed the habit of sitting at my desk and studying all day long. I read through my textbooks at least three times to ensure there were no gaps in my understanding, and I memorized the exact locations of key information so I could look it up immediately when needed.
I did not take memorization-based subjects in the arts and physical education tracks lightly either; I prepared meticulously to avoid making even a single careless mistake. Because I had reviewed the textbooks multiple times, I was able to focus on each question individually during exams and minimize mistakes. As a result of these consistent efforts, by the end of my sophomore year, my school-wide ranking had risen significantly, and I achieved the milestone of ranking within the top 10 for the first time.
Description of Major School Activities and Reflections
My school was located in a relatively rural area of Chungcheong, so club activities linked to the region’s specialized industries were very active. I participated in the “Regional Product Research” club, which directly processes and commercializes local agricultural products, and engaged in activities researching and investigating seasonal foods and eco-friendly food options.
The club carried out promotional activities to boost sales of regional specialty products. In particular, we focused our research on organic brown rice harvested during the fall harvest and collaborated with a large-scale farm near the school to explore ways to boost product sales. During a meeting, the suggestion to use an online blog to attract and engage external customers was adopted, and we focused on widely promoting products from the Chungcheong region.
The product we were in charge of was made by fermenting organic brown rice from Hongseong in the Chungcheong region. After receiving prototypes from the factory, the students tested them firsthand and created promotional materials, explaining the taste and health benefits through printed materials, posters, and photographs. In particular, friendly, diary-style reviews based on personal experiences received a positive response from customers. We promoted a variety of products, including brown rice enzyme, brown rice kimchi, fermented rice bran, and rice bran face packs, as well as juices such as purslane juice, napa cabbage juice, and motherwort juice.
Building on the success of these promotional efforts, we moved on to the next stage: the startup process. Believing that even teenagers can start a business with their own ideas, we began developing Korean cuisine menus and experimented with improving familiar ingredients and cooking methods. For example, we reduced the fat content by steaming pork belly instead of grilling it to make “suyuk,” and used onions and ginger to mask the meat’s odor while adding umami with a soy sauce-based seasoning.
We also modified the hoeddeok (Korean pancakes) we often ate by mixing carrot powder into the batter to reduce sugar usage and bring out a natural sweetness; we added dried persimmons to the filling to enhance both the sweetness and the chewy texture. The light and refreshing suyuk and the carrot-and-dried-persimmon hoeddeok we developed in this way led to awards at a Korean cuisine research competition, and through this hands-on experience with the food startup process, we were able to understand the flow of commercialization.
Writing About Examples of Consideration, Sharing, and Cooperation, and My Reflections
Through my activities in the food research club, I also learned the importance of hygiene education, and I frequently observed students at school failing to follow basic hygiene rules in their daily lives. It was common to see students not washing their hands properly or food service volunteers serving food with bare hands, and I concluded that these situations stemmed from a lack of awareness regarding food hygiene. Together with my clubmates, I planned a campaign to raise students’ awareness of hygiene.
First, we worked together to compile a set of guidelines that could be practiced in daily life. We documented the rules clearly so that anyone could understand them at a glance, and we compiled the items by gathering opinions during our meetings. Key rules included washing hands at least three times a day, always washing hands before meals, and requiring students on serving duty to use hand sanitizer. We recommended using antibacterial soap or hand sanitizer rather than just water, and proposed that hand sanitizer be provided in every classroom.
To launch the campaign in earnest, we set up a booth in the school hallway, promoted the rules to passing students, and distributed small bottles of hand sanitizer. We also circulated a survey in each classroom requesting the replacement of soap and hand sanitizer and submitted it to the school; as a result, within a month, the soap and hand sanitizer in every classroom were replaced with antibacterial products. Seeing the improvement in classroom hygiene levels through these changes gave me a great sense of fulfillment.
Efforts and Preparation Related to Motivation for Application and Career Plans
Through club activities, I gained experience in all aspects of food research, commercialization, and promotion, which deepened my interest in majoring in food engineering. Our club was well-known on campus and had even received grants from outside companies, giving us many opportunities to try our hand at the actual processes of starting a business and commercializing products. Some of my friends in the club were also planning to major in food engineering, and at the end of our sophomore year, we decided to undertake more creative and meaningful research.
We thought the school festival would be the perfect stage to showcase our research results. Our school festival was a major event that attracted many local residents and corporate representatives, and since it lasted three days, we believed showcasing our products there would have a significant promotional impact. Therefore, we decided to develop menus and products that would resonate not only with students but also with the local elderly community, and we held several meetings to discuss this.
During these meetings, we selected a seafood item that was somewhat unfamiliar but had room for improvement, and ultimately chose oysters as our main ingredient. Since oysters are sometimes avoided due to concerns about norovirus and other issues, we needed to improve public perception of them; moreover, since many club members enjoyed oysters, they were a suitable research topic. We set the overall theme as “New Discoveries in Oysters” and decided that each team would develop products such as oyster soap, oyster rice crackers, spaghetti with oyster sauce, oyster fish cakes, oyster pork cutlets, and grilled oyster skewers.
I served as the team leader for the oyster soap production team and worked hard to create a product that would appeal to a wider audience. To find a way to retain the oyster’s beneficial components while reducing any aversion to the product, I requested cooperation from a company near our school. We carried out a process where we extracted oyster hydrolysate using machinery and mixed it with a soap base. We eliminated the oyster’s distinctive odor by adding essential oils to enhance the fragrance and included descriptions focusing on skin vitality and the prevention of skin diseases.
On the day of the festival, the oyster soap proved extremely popular. Older adults showed interest in the product’s benefits—such as promoting vibrant, radiant skin and preventing skin conditions—and some even purchased multiple bars to try it out for themselves. Through this experience, I demonstrated my interest, passion, and self-direction in planning and executing a research project in my field of interest. The hands-on experience gained through practical collaboration and the product development process further solidified my career path.
