Tag Archives: korean graduate student

GSWN was a blast!

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For those of you who missed our Graduate Student Welcome Night, I wanted to fill you in on what happened.  The night was a lot of fun, and we got to meet many new friends who were graduate students and visiting scholars.  In fact, there were 130+ people there that night!  Which makes this event our biggest GSWN ever.

dsc 0086 GSWN was a blast!Jisup introduced a brand new icebreaker game to ISM as well: table boxing.  Its not the same as table tennis.  But you do get to wear gloves…  oven mitts to be exact.  In this hilarious game, each table is trying to open a gift wrapped box.  But only 1 person at a time is allowed to do so, and that person has to wear oven mitts.  It was a lot of laughs!  And for the lucky winners (which happened to be my table), the prize was DVDs from Gracepoint Fellowship Church’s “Gracepoint Live” production.  We also played a game called “That’s Not Funny”…  but I won’t spoil it because we may be playing this one again some time soon!

dsc 0132 GSWN was a blast!We also had an interesting skit about 4 graduate students at an airport.  Josiah played the guy who was just going to graduate school, but didn’t know what he wanted to do.  We had Mr. Boogle show up again…  Changcheng reprised his role from last year.  Mr. Boogle is the guy who wants to network and build a global empire: but needs grad school training.  Frederik did an amazing job as the environmentalist, with a stern face that we normally don’t see on him.  And finally, Yiguang played the cool guy looking for romance, and the girl of his dreams in graduate school.  And the ending says it all for everyone in graduate school: “I’ll find it…  when I get there.”  Well, we at ISM hope that you can find what you’re looking for right here.

dsc 0144 GSWN was a blast!We then had a 30 minute Bible study from Chul about the call of Abraham in Genesis 12, where we got to learn that success in God’s eyes is to become a blessing to others.  The final piece of the program was a special song from our newly minted ISM band.  But for now, it’s only a 1 time performance…  we hope to see them back soon.  In case you can’t tell, that’s Howard on keyboard, Tony on guitar, Jon on bass, and Eliah on drums.

If you missed it this year, we have another Graduate Student Welcome Night coming up…  but not until next year.

Graduate Student Welcome Night 08 Message

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We kicked off our semester series on Abraham’s Journey at our Graduate Student Welcome Night. In the call of Abraham by God, we see something counterintuitive: God blesses Abraham so that he can be a source of blessing to the nations. We often think that our personal happiness is the most important thing in life. But from the Bible, we see that blessing really isn’t about our own self-centered agendas—it’s all about being a source of blessing to others around us. That’s how God made us to be.

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Graduate Student Welcome Night 2008

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Graduate Student Welcome Night was the biggest event of the year! We started with a delicious BBQ dinner, followed by some great music, a fun video, and a thought-provoking message. Did we forget to mention that we had a LOT of fun in the process?

And in case you were wondering what ice breakers we played, the funniest one was called “table boxing”. Imagine trying to open a gift wrapped box while wearing oven mitts. If you can’t, then you can see why this game was hilarious. Many people fumbled with their boxes for a long time.

If you missed GSWN, don’t worry. You can check out the pictures… and if you still want to know more about ISM, feel free to check out our weekly Bible studies! We still have great food, music, and a thought provoking message there too.

English Class: 4th Year Anniversary

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On the way to English class, I was trying to remember how many years that International Student Ministry has been holding our English Class: Effective Communication for Success. Maybe it’s age or  the fact that every year is so filled with great memories but I had to check my pictures to count the number of years we have been conducting the English class. This year we have many firsts: dsc 0159 thumb English Class: 4th Year AnniversarySharon is not the only certified TESOL teacher, but also Carolyn. Thanks to her, the material has been refined and expanded. Sara is a PhD student in English- how fitting! We also have two teachers, Alex and Eebeen, from our visiting scholars ministry, part of the Praxis group of Gracepoint Fellowship Church. This year, in addition to our session at Barrows Hall, we are holding another session at the UC Village Community Center.dsc 0143 thumb English Class: 4th Year Anniversary

The first Sunday at Barrows Hall, we had 47 new students from all over the world: Turkey, Israel, Chile, France, Japan, Korea, China, and more. In my group, in addition to me teaching English and word stress, I learned about English courses in other countries, how prevalent British English is, and the popular culture in other countries. In Israel, they start learning English in third grade. I am learning as well.

Pizza Ice Cream Games (PIG) Night 2008

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At ISM we like to throw in some pizza, ice cream, fun games and great company to create our very own tradition. So what happens when we mix all these things together? We get PIG (Pizza, Ice Cream, Games) NIGHT!

Here are some photos of our second annual PIG Night. It was a great time to get to know fellow graduate students, especially for those who were new to UC Berkeley AND are an international graduate student.

We played a group game where we broke into random groupings of people as an icebreaker. Then we had teams come up with a name, cheer, flag, and mascot. And to top it all off, we made teams build towers out of some random materials. Just check out the photos!

They passed!!!

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celebratequal thumb1 They passed!!! It was a joyous day for all of us because Wesley and Jisup passed their qualifying exams! As a UC Berkeley graduate student group, ISM now has two more Ph.D. candidates who can share their experience about preparing for qualifying exams with future graduate students in our group.

It has been a roller-coaster journey for both Wesley and Jisup as they struggled to prepare for their exams. Wesley had the pressure of knowing that he had only one shot at this because the Chemistry department is very strict in passing their students. And Jisup had to prepare for his qualifying exam while assuming the responsibilities of a father (of course, with the help of his wonderful wife, Sara). Just two weeks before Jisup’s qualifying exam, he had a severe case of diarrhea that he had to go to the emergency room. We all prayed for him, and, thank God, he had a speedy recovery so that he could study.

However, they were definitely not alone. We all shared their worries and pain in prayer. Today, while they were thankful and relieved that they had passed what might be the last exam in their UC Berkeley graduate student career, we all breathed a deep sigh of relief and gave thanks to God.

Congratulations, Wesley and Jisup!

One Who Makes Things Possible by Dr. Inkang Kim

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Inkang Kim graduated from Seoul National University in 1990, and received his PhD from UC Berkeley in 1996. He was an assistant professor at KAIST from 1997 to 2000. Currently, he is a full professor of the department of mathematics at Seoul National University. In 2007, he received a prestigious award of The Best Young Scientist of the Year in the field of mathematics from the Korean government.

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Graduate Student Welcome Night 2007

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We had a memorable night welcoming students to the fall semester at UC Berkeley. In the Barrows Hall courtyard, we filled it with students sitting in small circles and enjoying a Korean BBQ dinner. The program of the welcome night was packed with an amateur movie, a slideshow introduction to our group, a funny and thought-provoking skit, a insightful message by Chul Kim, and ending with a beautifully sung special song.

Below are pictures from that night.