Hey! It’s Byeongjun :)
I hope you're doing well — in fact, the purpose of this email is to check in on you and make sure that everything is going well while sharing some interesting things I did in January; if we haven't talked for a while, please feel free to book a 30 minutes call and we'll catch up!
Participating in hackathons!
As I love building products for social good, I've discovered these events called "hackathons" and have been signing up for these nearly every month since the January of my grade 10 year. This month, I've built Xalta, a lecture audio-to-text condenser app to assist students losing motivation for school due to the added responsibilities caused by the pandemic; as well as OMi, a web-based telehealth app to recommend non-prescription drugs to patients based on their inputted symptoms, through machine learning and big data.
Creating a web-app like this is a very long process; starting from the UI/UX design and developer handoff, to the backend configuration and web scraping, collecting the data points for the diseases as well as the drugs needed was a big task to finish in 2 days. Regardless, our team has done an amazing job of building this project, and we've won an award at XdHacks Mini SF!
Staffing at Vancouver's largest Model UN conference
While the issues of the military-industrial complex and prison reform aren't as highlighted currently in American politics due to all other overarching issues, they are some of the most important issues that America is currently facing.
With military firms impacting U.S. foreign policy and the privatization of prisons, my dais team and I took the lead to discuss these significant issues that will potentially impact all of us. Throughout the day, I’ve realized the transparent perspective gap between the democrat and republican delegates firsthand, while also strengthening my aspirations of closing the political gap through active advocacy. Opportunities like this allow me to be exposed to various delegates’ backgrounds; in this process, I’ve realized how much effort is needed to make our society more just.
Practicing Stoicism
As a part of TKS' Velocity program, in the first weeks of January, I have practiced the mindset of Stoicism (voluntary discomfort) to reduce my hedonic adaptation. For a better perspective, here's a YouTube video on Stoicism.
I've had the opportunity to develop emotional awareness, and eventually, emotional mastery. Being intentional about things that happen to me and the things that are out of my control, while preparing myself for the worst-case scenario.
Throughout the week, I've done three things to practice discomfort: 1) Shower with cold water, 2) waking up at 5 AM and 3) sleeping on a floor bed.
As nasty as this sounds, this was probably one of the hardest Velocity topics I've been through so far. Showing with cold water eventually got me a mild cold and a headache, waking up at 5 AM not only forced me to go to sleep early, but also punished me harshly on the days that I wasn't able to sleep early, and sleeping on a floor bed really tortured my back, which allowed me to be appreciative of my circumstance and my situation, and be thankful that I'm able to live in a house with a roof, clean water, active heaters and electricity.
On an ending note
As mentioned above, last year I was accepted into The Knowledge Society, and it's the reason you're seeing my newsletter today. I'm super grateful to be surrounded by a community of "big brain" high school students working on technologies and solving global issues. If you know students aged 13-17 that are ambitious and curious, please help me spread the word.
Applications for next year are already open; the deadline to apply is April 5th. While TKS is a need-blind program that offers A LOT of scholarships, you can also share this link or my code "BYMO0522" to give them $200 off their tuition. This program has been life-changing so far and I'd love to see more people in the program next year!
Over the next month, you can find me at:
The Grade 8 Leadership Conference — February 12, 2021 (school only)
HackSC — February 19-21, 2021
The Education Policython — February 20-21, 2021 → I'm organizing this event!
2021 is now officially 8.33% over. Be intentional about the things you do, time flies!
Thanks for joining me on my journey, and if you've made it until the bottom of this newsletter, feel free to shoot me an email as a reply with feedback on my newsletters or anything else.
If you enjoyed this newsletter, please share this with a few friends if you feel like it. They can subscribe to this newsletter here.
Until then, stay safe!
Byeongjun
p.s. Check out my Twitter — @bjmoonn! I usually post random thoughts that I get at any point in a day.