"According to a book written by Heerak Christian Kim, Korean-American Experience in the United States: Initial Thoughts (The Hermit Kingdom Press, 2004), a typical university gathering of Korean students will have 100 percent of the group members having attended a Christian church in their youth." - Wikipedia

Aside from the fact that this quote doesn't account for the "non-typical" gathering, there's truth to this statement ... almost all K/A I know have grown up in the church. I haven't attended church regularly in many years, but I'm still greatly influenced by the moral "guidelines" of a church. Over the last few years, I feel that the absence of a rigorous church has led me to become more of a humanist.

For me, there are two goals in my life: bettering the lives of people around me, and growing as an individual.

Naturally, since I'm moving on Saturday, I've been getting asked how I feel.

A huge part of me is incredibly excited. But there's this fear that's just lurking there.

The hardest thing about living at home for me was not being able to grow as a person. It's incredibly difficult to have any worthwhile challenges when I have this huge safety net at home - I didn't do any laundry while I was at home, and my mom would always cook dinner. This is great, cause it opened up my concentration on other things, but it's also equally bad, because doing those mundane tasks (as tedious and time consuming as they may be) is a part of building character. I believe that not doing tasks like these led me (to a certain extent) to be pretty spoiled. I think growth comes from doing things you don't like (learning to be less selfish), and I really had some stunted growth on that front these past two years.

Another drawback of living at home was I started making excuses for myself for not growing as a person. I stopped putting myself out there. I stopped pursuing relationships (which could actually be a good thing, but whatever). One of my biggest personal flaws is the utter fear I have of girls in a relationship context. It could be a result of being burned in the past (maybe), but I'm simply unable to cope with girls as love interests, crushes, or relationship partners. Living at home gives the perfect cop-out answer to avoiding relationships or getting too close with girls. In fact, I doubt girls even date guys who live at home (fine by me!)

But what happens when I move to SD? I'll have my own home, my own time, and *COMPLETE* freedom (my parents are the most relaxed parents out there, but there are certain things I just cannot do sometimes...) ... what if I find a (single) girl interesting? Will I be able to take that first step? What if a girl throws herself at me for a one-night stand? How weird would it be that a 23-year old male would run away in that situation? (Since conventional wisdom states that males of my age hump anything with a hole). I've never considered myself a prude, but I guess I really am.

More generally though, I have all these hopes for personal growth and self-discovery. It's the biggest reason why I'm incredibly excited about this move - the opportunity for personal AND professional growth in a great new setting ...

It's funny that we use New Years as an arbitrary excuse for self-improvement, when we should be striving for it every day of our lives. It just proves that we need a catalyst to spark that inner fire for growth. I feel like this SD could be a catalyst in a big way for that.

But what happens when that fire dies down four months from now and I don't feel like I've grown, but simply changed? The fear is that the potential letdown from all these expectations could be too much ... and what happens when I'm all alone in a new city, burned out, and depressed?