After Two years of working as a researcher at Korea Electronics Technolog Institute, I entered the University of Texas at Austin(UT Austin) as a master’s student. During four months, since I have got an admission offer from UT Austin, people showed different reactions. Some celebrated about entering UT Austin, and others were worried about studying abroad. Former voices, which were louder til I left my home town, become smaller and I got nervous.

Everything was going as I planned. The UT Cockrell School of Engineering was one of my dream school, and my registration was also well on it’s well. I had a great time during International Student OT and Department wise OT. Also, I added all the courses I wanted for my first semester. I thought there was no reason for getting nervous or anxious. However, I cannot ignore my anxiety, and it was getting worse as time went by. So I changed my strategy. I started to find out what made me nervous. After a week of figuring out, I found the most plausible reason. It was because of me being impatient with success. It was just a starting point of two years journey. The worst part was that I left the issue after I realized the problem since I did not know how to deal with it. While I was getting tired of this feeling, I read confession of one man which changed my mind. He was a man who just got discharged from the army and trying to settle in where he came from. He said, “I was nervous because I was doing nothing at that time.” At that moment, the words penetrated my heart and made me think, “I should do something, even if it looks not meaningful.” And my answer was to start recording my experience in writing. I believe it allows me to look back at myself and gives me an opportunity to do better next time.

This writing is my first step to get rid of my anxiety and improve my school life. Although my first post in UT Austin starts with unfavorable story, I will end up my writing with good news about myself.