Jai-Ryung (Jenny) Lee

Many people have asked me how I transitioned to life in the United States. They say that traveling halfway around the world for four years of college would be impossible for them.

“Welcome Home.” Starting with the banner stretched above the main entrance to the speeches that used the phrase as a tagline during convocation, there seemed to be a silent force, warping and slowly transforming my preconceived notion of home — where it was, what it was, how I related to it.

Gold, silver, bronze. Different colors, different types of metal awarded to winners of a competition. Yet in the context of the Olympics, one of the world’s most significant international sporting events, these slight changes in the color of those medals can inspire an entire country’s happiness, or as in the case of South Korea, an entire country’s ire.

By now you may have watched Coca-Cola’s Super Bowl commercial, a 60 second ad of girls of multiple ethnicities singing “America the Beautiful” in their native tongues. If so, you may also know that many people have tweeted negative comments about the advertisement, accusing it of being unpatriotic and disrespectful, demanding that the song be sung only in English.

Choosing which college to attend should not be a simple and straightforward decision. There is so much information to process in determining the worth of a college that no one can reduce that value to a single number or percentage. Median SAT/ACT scores, founding year, professor to student ratio, percentage of freshman who return — these numbers are all subject to interpretation.