Author Archives: Jon Park

About Jon Park

My name is Jon Park and I come from a diverse background. I am Korean, but I was born in Thailand, grew up in Taiwan, lived in Kansas for a year and have been living in New York for 7 years. This is one of the reasons I love traveling and exploring new cultures. My favorite part about experiencing new cultures is trying out new food. I enjoy doing what most guys like to do. I play sports and I am the founder and President of Baruch Soccer Club that won rookie club of the year last year. I enjoy meeting new people, trying new things, and am looking forward to a good year at Baruch.

Posts by Jon Park

Seminar 2: Peopling of New York City

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Jon Park

I came in to this class not really knowing what to expect. The class format and structure differed greatly in comparison to Seminar 1. The first seminar focused on bringing out our artistic and creative abilities, while this semester, we were encouraged to deal with facts, figures, graphs, and history. I felt more comfortable with dealing with art, but this change in class environment was a great challenge and was intellectually stimulating.

My personal immigration essay helped me solidify my own thoughts along with my family’s thoughts on how we dealt with our immigration process. When I moved to America, I was still fairly young and I didn’t put much thought into it until now.

The statistical profile assignment was by far the most challenging and tedious assignment. However, I learned a lot from it, especially dealing with facts, graphs, figures, and excel. I’ve attained some valuable skills and it put me outside of my comfort zone.

The interview project was a great experience. I have known my interviewee for a long time, but I did not know much of his background. After the interview, we became a lot closer and I’ve gained much more respect for him. This was my favorite project, by a long shot. Some parts of the assignments, such as the transcription, was tedious, but it wasn’t anything that was overwhelming.

The class setting was also good. Many times, the class was engaged in intellectual debates and it was good to see many different viewpoints being brought up. Although the readings were hard at times, they provided deeper insight into what we were learning.

To iterate, this class was challenging and taught me valuable skills and also pushed me past my comfort zone.

 

 

Accepted

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Jon Park

During his time of assimilation, he has been treated like an equal.

…I will say I think I have ever feel discriminated but I have seen that on other people. At work, on tv, people that I know. But I will say to me, not really. I don’t really remember that I hear anything racial or I got any problem like that. But I hear it. You know, when I go to work, on the train, I see some people shouting to the other people either from my country or other Latin people. And yeah, probably one time. Probably one time. I was listening to Christian music and there was this guy. He was not a Christian and he was like oh why don’t you take off that music. He was saying bad words. I just calmed down and I didn’t want to get into problems. So I said if it bothers you I’ll just turn it off. But I’d say that is a religion problem, not racial.

If We Win the Families, We Win the World

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Jon Park

Ralph, a 29-year-old Mexican immigrant, came to the United States nearly 12 years ago. Now, as an appointed and certified minister, Ralph seeks to help bring about social change in America through his ministries:

And as a church or as a minister, as a member of the church, one of the goals, one of the dreams that I had is helping the families to grow together. If we win the families, we win the world. If we rescue the families, we rescue the country, our world. As an immigrant, it was a challenge to learn all these things because my only goal when I came here was to work. Just to get money. But it all has changed. It all has changed. So I will say my contribution as an immigrant, even though it is a big challenge, I am learning and even though it is in English language, I want to become a teacher. Teaching the Bible and helping these families to stay together and keeping families together. At this time, it is very easy when families start and they just broke up. All the kids are without parents. Many kids. We don’t want that in our church. We want families to keep to continue together and grow together. I think it’s a big contribution to society

Learning English Can Be Fun Too

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Jon Park

Ralph, a 29-year-old entrepreneurial immigrant, came to the United States from Mexico nearly 12 years ago. His undocumented status did not hinder his attempts to learn English:

Yeah because I tried school. First thing I want to do was try school. I went to the English school and I start learning, but I thought it was too slow. Like what is your name. all these things. A lot of these students, this will take a while. I just went two times. Because I love listening to music. I went to the record store, and I bought music. I read the songs as I was listening. So I was listening so I learned the pronunciation . I was reading at the same time. Then I got the dictionary to translate all the words. All the songs. So translate it, I listen to it, and I repeat it. And I was doing that for almost every day. And I listen to the songs going to my work, coming back. Translating the songs. I learned a lot in a single year. I was already speaking English. Then I just stopped doing it. That was my problem. I shouldn’t stop doing that. I thought okay I can defend myself. But it was that way. It really worked, I just learned real quick.

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Jon Park

IDC graph 2

 

The comparison between foreign born Mexicans and foreign born Dominicans was made due to the numerous cultural ties that these nations share. The correlation is further shown in the graph above, where foreign born Mexicans and foreign born Dominicans have close educational attainment statistics. A high percentage of the population did not even graduate high school and a very small percentage pursued a higher education. To add, there is a large disparity in population. There are 287,592 Dominicans over 25 and 75,295 Mexicans over the age of 25. These statistics suggests that both these immigrant groups face difficulties in assimilating and pursuing education. Ultimately, the lack of education also means a lack of high skilled labor, causing a barrier for socio-economic mobility.

Jon Achieves His American Dream

Posted on April 13, 2013 by Jon Park

Nomad without a Home Town

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Jon Park
me

Jon in Long Island

My name is Jonathan Jung Min Park.  Coming from a diverse background, I can say that I love opening up to new cultures.  I am Korean, was born in Thailand, grew up in Taiwan, lived in Korea for a few months, lived in Kansas for a year, then moved to Long Island in 2007.  The reason being that my parents were missionaries all across the world and I just happened to tag along.  This gave me the ability to speak Korean, Mandarin, and English although English is my best language by far.

As for my hobbies, I am passionate for soccer and Manchester United is my favorite team.  Besides playing video games, playing sports, and watching TV, my hobbies include playing the drums, beatboxing.  I’m a facebook addict, and I LOVE to eat. Thai, Indian, Korean, Chinese, Italian, Brazilian.  The list can go on forever.

Nonetheless, I’m enjoying my experience here in Baruch as a Macaulay student.  I began volunteering at a homeless shelter, I am the President of the Soccer Club, and also starting a project called Baruch TV.  My experience here has already changed who I am and I’m looking forward to meeting new people and trying new things.

Comments by Jon Park

"Hey Alessandra, thanks! I would like to travel to Spain or Italy. It'd be pretty cool!"
--( posted on Feb 23, 2013, commenting on the post Nomad without a Home Town )