Deciding my job became a turning point in my life. I didn’t think about choosing my current job before that but unexpectedly chose to become a public officer.
Entering university, I chose history as a major although my parents dissuaded me not to choose history because they thought getting a job would be difficult after graduation. At that time, due to lack of sense of reality, I only thought my interest. I was dreaming to become a professor of history in university.
However, as soon as I entered university, I realized my vague dream was difficult to come true. I knew that I should study for a long time and have enough money to become a professor. Therefore, I adjusted my dream to become a history teacher. I studied subjects which are necessary to become a teacher.
After finishing military service, I again worried about my future. To become a teacher, I had to pass a test to be selected as a potential teacher. However, the government didn’t give the test in history subject for over 3 years. I thought that it could become a waste of precious time to prepare becoming a teacher. In addition, for my university life, I always in need and disliked concerning money. At that time, my girl friend who graduated from university was preparing public officer exam. She said that studying for one year was enough to pass the exam, so I decided to prepare a public officer exam. I wanted to go to university comfortably without worrying about money after passing exam. In fact, I didn’t think about being a public officer before that because I thought the job was very boring.
Anyway, after I passed the public officer test in the 4th year, I have already worked for 13 years. Although this job was not my first dream, I am satisfied with my job.
Monday, December 15, 2008
The turning point in my life
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
The change of hairstyles
Hairstyles are one of the important personal aesthetics, and hairstyles have been changed according to the times.
In Chosun Dynasty, people raised their hair all their life. At that time, men as well as women should raise their hair. Because they were influenced by Confucianism, people thought they should not hurt their body, hair and skins which are received by parents. People braided their hair until getting married. When they got married, men tied up a topknot and women tied up and raised hair. In the Royal palace, women placed fake hair on their hair to show authority.
In 1895, there was an announcement about cutting hair. At first, people resisted against the new policy because their personal beliefs wasn’t changed. However, as time went on, people’s consciousness gradually changed. Going through the Japanese colonial era and the Korean War, short hairstyles perfectly got settled.
In 1970s, long hairstyles prevailed among young generation. At that time, blue jeans, guitar, beer and long hairstyle were symbols of youth and resistance due to the influence of foreign hippie culture. Sometimes, young men with too long hair were forced to cut their hair by policeman on the street.
Today, hairstyles are free to every people. Hairstyles became one of the most important methods to express personality. Some men raise their hair like women, and some women cut their hair shortly like men. Some people dye their hair in various colors to show personality.
As we can see from the above cases, hairstyles reflect on the phases of the times and became the most important personal aesthetics.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
The difference of behavior between men and women
Men and women show lots of differences in behavior according to their gender. Although aspects of individual behavior come from personal characteristics, generally we can see common things in same gender. I’d like to explain several behaviors from my experience as follows.
Firstly, we can find differences when people use purse. Generally, men’s purse is very simple, so men have identification card, at most 3 cards and some cash. However, if we open women’s purse, we can see lots of different kinds of cards such as credit cards, cash back cards and each shops discount cards. I sometimes wonder whether women can remember every card in case they lose purse.
Secondly, shopping and calling show distinct differences between men and women. Men usually think what they buy and what they tell before go shopping and calling. Men only do planned things, so men finish their shopping and calling in a short time. On the other hand, women’s shopping and calling become longer than their planning. Sometimes, women spend lots of time in shopping and talking, but, after all, they know it is not what they wanted. Therefore, women create another shopping and calling demand.
Finally, when people receive a receipt at a shop or restaurant, men and women’s behavior are different. Men, after checking only the total amount or sometimes without checking amount, go out. In contrast, women check every item and total amount before going out.
From above several cases, we can infer fun characteristics. While men dislike complexity and try to avoid it, women seem to enjoy complexity.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Mandatory retirement
Today, I’d like to say why mandatory retirement is necessary. In modern society, mandatory retirement is essential to enhance social and economical efficiencies. Even if there are some differences according to company regulations, nearly every company runs mandatory retirement system. Mandatory retirement is useful from the viewpoint of individual, society and organization.
First, in individual side, as people get older, their physical and mental ability weaken. It is difficult to expect that older workers conduct their job efficiently without any problems.
Second, in society side, mandatory retirement provides younger people with opportunity of employment, so mandatory retirement reduce unemployment rate of the youth.
Finally, in organization side, mandatory retirement makes organization active by providing promotion opportunity to younger workers. Organization is like a blood vessel in our body, so organization needs smooth circulation of human resources.
Therefore, I’d like to say that mandatory retirement is very desirable and recommendable system.
Mandatory retirement provides younger people with opportunity of employment. As you know, nowadays youth unemployment becomes serious social problems in our society. There is statistics that 20% young people are unemployed. That is to day, one out of 5 young people have not their job. This rate is two times of total unemployment rate. Youth unemployment is caused by various reasons, but lack of job is the most fundamental reasons.
Mandatory retirement creates job opportunities for younger people. Therefore, mandatory retirement can contribute to reduce unemployment rate of younger people. In addition, older workers receive lots of wages, so if one older worker retired, at least two younger people could get their jobs.
Please think! Your capable son and daughter graduated university 2 years ago, and they are studying from dawn to midnight to get a job. However, 60 or 70 old people have already occupied every job. This situation makes your son and daughter jobless people. Do you want this situation?
- Economic burden of pensioners should be settled by arranging pension system.
- We have limited jobs, but job demand much larger than supply. Therefore we have to make a choice whether we provide jobs to younger people or to weaken older people.
- Older people should give young people the job, and they should prepare secondary life such as self employed job and volunteer.
- Of course, development of medical technology improved older people’s health and abilities. Sometimes we can see that experienced and capable people’s mandatory retirement is very regretful. However, we should maintain mandatory retirement system as principle of society and organization. This principle maintains our society healthy. If we really need aged experienced people, exceptionally, we could employ as special employment.
- Generally, most outstanding characteristic of organization is hierarchy. Every techniques and know-how can be transferred to subordinates by working together. If mandatory retirement abolished, every people don’t try to transfer their know-how to their co-workers and subordinates to keep on working. Probably people hide their personal know-how. This could hurt development of organization.