CHAPTER 4
Science in Recognition
On Achievements and What They Truly Meant to Me
I used to think that winning would feel like in the movies — bright lights, loud applause, and pride rushing in like a wave. But it turns out, the most important moments don’t happen on stage — they happen before it.
When my team won Gold at the Korea International Youth Olympiad, what I remember most wasn’t the moment we received the medal — it was the night before the presentation, when we sat in our hotel room arguing over whether to remove the slide that said “Thank you to my grandmother for giving me the leaves used in this experiment.”In the end, we kept it — and that one line made the judges laugh before the Q&A even started.
When I received Silver at the Global Youth Summit, I didn’t feel like I was “in second place.” What stayed with me was the moment another contestant stood up and asked: “When do you think your technology will actually be used in real life?” — that was the first time I felt my research no longer lived inside a spreadsheet or a document.
At the ASEEDER Business Simulation, winning Gold wasn’t the best part — it was when our team realized we didn’t win because we had the strongest financial model, but because we were the only team that explained “the psychological risk of the customer.”That day, I learned that science and business are separated by only one word: trust.
And as for becoming Valedictorian of the HUS Entrance Exam, I never saw it as the peak of my academic journey — I saw it as a ticket, allowing me to enter a community where everyone is just as endlessly curious as I am.
From that day on, I understood: