2017 is my junior year of University. In Korea, this third year is called “Samangnyeon,” which means “Death Year.” Samangnyeon refers to the fact that sophomore university students stand on the border between being a student and unemployment. So my third year in university is the time to think about what I am going to do after graduation, which is not very far from now. Figuring out my future job will be a long and difficult task. Right now, I have to do what others tell me to do, such as earn a high GPA in school, do an internship, or study for a license that doesn’t interest me. For students like me, following our dreams is considered a waste of time because there the possibilities to make our “dreams come true” are so low.

However, dreams can come true. It sounds unrealistic, but after my experiences of interviewing lots of people as a journalist, I have found the saying makes sense to them. In our society, chasing dreams without thinking about the financial consequences is considered reckless, since most universities students are drowning in student loans. However, many people have found their calling in life even though it took a long time to achieve recognition and become a professional. Therefore, in this 142nd issue, we have interviewed Kang Mi-sun, a perfumer, which is an unique field of work, for the topic of our People section, and Choi Jin-hee, a professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Seoul (UOS) who was selected as “one of the most influential scientists in the world,” for our Focus on UOS section.

Furthermore, in our Cover Story, we tackled student activism by asking whether it has stagnated or not. In addition, we discussed the recently exposed intimate relationships between private companies and the government in our Society section. There are also other fun and informative articles that we have prepared for this 142nd issue, so please enjoy our magazine! 

Choi Young-eun
Editor-in-Chief
emilyc95@uos.ac.kr