About the Author and This Book of Essays

The author will be a rising senior in the fall of 2020 at Seoul International School in South Korea.Recognizing that she is about to embark on a new phase of her academic and personal life, she hastaken the summer of 2020 to gather many of her academic and other essays to revisit her thoughts as recounted in the essays - in other words, to take stock of where she has been so far and what the future may hold for her. Some of these essays were written in response to academic assignments, while others were written for publication in the author’s school newspaper. Still others were written for the college-level courses and writing academies that the author attended in the United States. Several essays were self-assigned on topics the author chose to write about because of her personal interest in the subjects. Finally, several of these essays were driven by current events, such as the essays concerning the Covid-19 pandemic and racism.

Taken together, these essays are a roadmap of the author’s intellectual growth. In as much as the author’s interests and thought processes are revealed by the way she treats each subject she writes about. She is a budding essayist who is increasingly engaged by - and engaging with - the world around her. For this young author, the act of memorializing her thoughts on paper is not merely a clerical act but an integral part of the formulation of
her ideas.

These essays are like pins on a map used to mark the stops made by the author as she travels the proverbial road to find out where her destiny is leading her and more importantly, who she is becoming.