Challenger (after watching "Big Hero 6")

“If you like easy, my program isn’t for you. Nothing great comes from easy.”

A quote from the movie “Big Hero 6”. The quote itself: not bad and quite touching, but to common. As a 13 year old boy, the movie was just one of the Disney movies that I enjoyed; the quote just went into one of my ears and came out through the other. No big thoughts about it. But when I saw this movie again a 3 weeks ago (I don’t know what drove me to watch it; maybe I just wanted to go back to being a little kid), things were totally different.

Life as a high school student, especially in KMLA, is definitely CHALLENGING. Even when you live in a dormitory for about 600 days, you don’t get used to getting up at 6:00am to go to exercise through the freezing air that pierces your skin. You don’t get used to the overwhelming schoolwork, club activity, and contests that overwhelm you and shred your schedule. But here in KMLA, in a life like this you can do something great. I know, in fact, that only in my life that is full of hardships, I can do something great.

Now you’ll have a question. What is the thing that is so great that makes me endure all the hardships? Well, to answer that question, a modification must be made to the question. I am not ‘enduring’ the hardships; I am ‘enjoying’ them. And now, to answer the question, the things that makes me enjoy are the projects: the innovation that I try to make by new ideas and a touch (actually a whole bunch) of technology.

Let’s go back to the quote. The quote is from the scene where the professor of a fascinating science lab encourages the main character, Hiro, to challenge himself and create something cool. Watching the scene and hearing the dialogue again after 5 years, I saw myself reflected Hiro’s eyes. Don’t mistake my words; I’m not a genius like Hiro nor have an awesome support from a scientist brother. But I am a dreamer, just like Hiro. Changing the world? Sure. But for me, what is important is completing the seemly impossible projects that originated from my geek-like ideas.

Babytalk, that was one big project that I am now seeking to improve. Have you ever struggled for ten full minutes because of a crying cousin? That kind of experience really piss one off, but instead of swearing to never look after my cousin again, I brought up this idea of making an application to translate the baby’s cry. I’ll talk more about this project specifically in another post. Another idea was directly from the movie “Big Hero 6”. There is this invention called microbot that comes out in the movie. It’s basically a headgear and millions of robots that allow you to reassemble the robots in any shape or structure. The scene gave me a jolt. The next day, I started designing the microbots and studying the brainwave field. It’s not science fiction technology like the movie, but still, it’s a project challenging enough (perhaps too much) for me to work on excitedly.

There’s more I’m working on, but you would’ve probably got the idea. Easy or predictable things are not for me. Nothing enough to fully motivate me comes from solving the problem plus from my calculus book or memorizing what a random Korean king did at the 1400s. Yes, sometimes this personality makes me slip: leading to low grades or forgetting important things. But, this is me. I am a challenger and a dreamer. As Hiro of KMLA I won’t stop until I create my own Baymax (Hiro’s robot friend from the movie). Even then, I will challenge for more.