Jae-Min Hong, an economics student with an eclectic, independent approach to learning, describes how she used MIT OpenCourseWare to supplement her formal studies.
Jae-Min Hong, our guest for this episode, is a hungry learner with wide-ranging curiosity and a distrust of groupthink. A native of South Korea, she has been fluent in English from childhood, which has opened up many educational possibilities for her. Aiming to widen her cultural horizons, she opted to attend high school in New Zealand; a few years later, she transferred from a Korean university to an American one so she could attend in-person classes during the Covid pandemic. With the help of lecture videos from MIT OpenCourseWare, Jae-Min was able to supplement her formal studies and pursue all the subjects that interest her, from chemistry and thermodynamics through data science and financial technology. She’s now back in South Korea, where she’s finishing a degree in economics at Yonsei University. She feels it’s time for her to really focus her attention on a single field and a single goal, a career in investment banking. But if that doesn’t work out, she says, she can always come back to MIT OpenCourseWare and dip once more into the wealth of resources it has to offer.
The Open Learners podcast is produced by Alexis Haut.
Relevant Resources:
5.60 Thermodynamics & Kinetics on MIT OpenCourseWare
15.401 Finance Theory I on MIT OpenCourseWare
18.06 Linear Algebra on MIT OpenCourseWare
Prof. Gilbert Strang (MIT faculty page)
RES.18-005 Highlights of Calculus (including “The Big Picture of Calculus”) on MIT OpenCourseWare
Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions
Share Your Open Learning Story
To share your own open learning story with Michael and Emmanuel, send them an email at open_learners_pod@mit.edu.
JAE-MIN HONG: OCW is definitely something which I would identify as an extra work which I had taken for myself, because I want to think differently. I always had this repulsion against group think. Repulsion is a very quite strong word. So I will just say very, very cautious, probably because I follow the market every day. And I try to be very, very cautious about group think. How can I think different? How can I think logically?
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EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: Welcome to Open Learners.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: A podcast that tells the stories of learners all over the world who use MIT's OpenCourseWare.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: I'm Emmanuel Agassi, an open learner myself from Kampala, Uganda, in East Africa.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: And I'm Michael Jordan Pilgreen, an open learner from Memphis, Tennessee.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: We're back. Episode two, Michael.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: Hey, Emmanuel.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: Do you want to introduce today's open learner?
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: Today we will hear from Jae-Min Hong, an open learner currently living in Seoul, South Korea. I met Jae-Min about two years ago after my MIT news article came out. She reached out to me via LinkedIn and I got on a Zoom call with her for about an hour while she was studying at the University of Wisconsin.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: Well, for me, this interview was the first time I met Jae-Min face to face. But we're actually in the same AI study group on LinkedIn, which is interesting. So it was really cool for both of us to put faces to our names.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: That's awesome, Emmanuel. I know you started the AI learning group on LinkedIn and you were really excited to start building a community of AI learners all over the world.
One reason we really wanted to interview Jae-Min for Open Learners was because her educational path is so unique. One, she started her OpenCourseWare journey as an undergrad student with a course in thermodynamics to supplement her dual degree program in chemistry and finance.
And two, Jae-Min has lived and learned all over the world. She left Korea at 14 to attend high school in New Zealand, and she attended the University of Wisconsin for a year in the middle of the pandemic before returning to Korea to finish her economic degree.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: That's really cool. Jae-Min is a really driven person, because most people don't usually start these paths during their undergrad. But she did. And she shared with us her perspective on how education differs around the world, how OCW gave her new ways of thinking about herself and her career path, which is really interesting. And I'm excited to hear all about that.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: So let's get to it. Here's our conversation with Jae-Min Hong of Seoul, South Korea.
[SPEAKING KOREAN]
JAE-MIN HONG: Hi, my name is Jae-Min Hong, and I'm a final year economics student studying at Yonsei University. And I was born and raised in Korea for the most part of my life. But I also had some very exciting journeys in America and New Zealand.
Late 2022, so I finished the first semester of my sophomore year, but then that was still when COVID was still around. And all the campus lectures, they were all shut down. So all the classes were done online. But then I was a very social and active human interaction driven person. I want to go out there, but there was no chance of having any campus lectures. So I went to America. [LAUGHS] I went to America where in person lectures were permitted, and I went to UW Madison.
And then this was the time when I was trying to explore more subjects and, yeah, really establish my perspective of the world. And how I would like to apply the knowledge that I really wanted to learn while I was at university. I was studying chemistry when I was at UW Madison, which is up north, very, very cold. But I studied chemistry, finance, data science, and computer science, all sorts of subjects there. But chemistry was very, very exciting but challenging.
So I was trying to seek out and gather around more information so that I can improve my understanding. And then I came across MIT OCW videos. And then the first course that I took was called thermodynamics and kinetics. And this was the most difficult subject within chemistry, but I loved it.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: How was it like, first of all, meeting all these online resources compared to your former education experiences from New Zealand, from South Korea? How was the difference when you finally met OCW and MIT, and how was it for you personally?
JAE-MIN HONG: I think the major difference was about flexibility. Because when you're taking a lecture and you're in a lecture hall filled with 300 different students, you cannot just actively try to find out information or areas of interest. You can't directly ask the professor.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: Or rewind the lecture.
JAE-MIN HONG: It's a bit difficult to do that. And so because I'm quite a proactive learner and so I want to find out more information for myself, but with a more structured learning program that is more conventionally offered at universities, it was quite difficult to do. And so with MIT OCW, I was able to sometimes pick out topics that drew me the most. And that was entropy for me, thermodynamics.
And then I wanted to learn more about that instead of just trying to rely on very structured course learning at conventional traditional university systems. Mark Twain once famously said that I never let my school institutional learning interfere with my education. And that is the phrase that swept me away at that time. And this is education. This is what learning actually means.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: I was going to ask a quick question here. When you have this breakthrough moment, when you start actually learning from open educational materials and not waiting for a teacher to prod you, what did it change in your life?
JAE-MIN HONG: The first change is that, OK, I'm actually learning this. So in terms of the finance theory, which I know you also took as part of your MIT OCW journey, when I was taking the finance theory course taught by Professor Andrew Lo, I was taking a more or less equivalent course at UW Madison. It was called money and markets. We were learning about the impact of monetary policies conducted by Federal Reserve.
But then what was really interesting was that in this course, finance theory, the MIT OCW course, this was actually filmed when GFC, the Global Financial Crisis was happening. And so it was more like I'm actually learning about these theories, but I'm actually also seeing how these theories were happening in real life and how they actually apply to real scenarios. Like fixed income security products went a bit too complex and the leverage ratio went a bit crazy.
These were the knowledge that I was learning theoretically at university. I'm sure I was watching videos and learning theoretically, but then actually I was able to see the real impact of it through the video that was actually recorded at the time of GFC. And so it was more like a reward for my proactive learning, because it was genuinely quite interesting. And yeah, I was able to draw parallels in many different angles and it was, yeah, it made my life more fun.
[LAUGHS]
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: I like when you mentioned it was like in real time. I experienced that, because I took the computer science courses [INAUDIBLE]. And also what stood out for me was the time they recorded those was the time I was in university. So it was like I was in university learning some other things, and these people were learning these things around the same timeline.
If I'm ever to meet those who are in the class in the real world, we're like, we're in university at the same time. But it felt like we're learning two different things. Yes, you're both learning computer science related things, but it's different. So I understand you on that.
You mentioned something about the need to find people, moving to the US, and finding OCW. Was the impact more in you and your self and identity as a person when you started taking OCW? You've mentioned you've taken finance theory, thermodynamics. How was the impact in your evolving identity? How did you start to see yourself as a person who now has all this knowledge? Did it have any real life applications or any real life effects or impact when you're studying these things? Maybe you could shed some light on that.
JAE-MIN HONG: Yeah, that's such an excellent question, because I genuinely feel that I'm more like an explorer. I'm never satisfied with just one path. I have to just look around and OK, this is something else which I can integrate with this path or this might be some other branch from this pathway, which I'm trotting upon.
What I was listening to your question, I actually had something that I wanted to ask you, Emmanuel, if that's all right. You said that you were taking the OCW courses while you were at university. Am I correct?
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: No, I took them. I took them in 2020, 2021. But the courses were recorded in 2020. Is it 2013, 2011, 2013? And that was the time I was in university. So they recorded their courses while I was also in university. I watched them like way later.
JAE-MIN HONG: Right. That's so cool. So I was wondering what your major was and what your favorite course of OCW was and how you came across OCW, basically your story too.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: I was actually about to ask you the same question about how you came across OCW. So I like this. My major was also actually in computer science, but information systems. It was a new course in the country. I think they only did three years of it, then they absorbed it back into the information technology course. So I've been in this computer science world for a while, started out front and didn't like it. I went to more graphics design.
So I discovered OCW in lockdown when I wanted now to learn backend. I went to Dubai and saw they had a World Expo. So most of the pavilions, most of the countries were showcasing things to do with AI. So I realized this is the future. It's coming. This was in 2020.
So when I came back home, I wanted to look up to learn more about AI, get into the backend. And that's how I came across OCW actually. How did you come across OCW? I was on YouTube actually, because I've been doing a lot of YouTube learning for 10 years now.
JAE-MIN HONG: Yeah, so my first convergence with OCW was through that course that I talked about, the thermodynamics and kinetics course. I was just trying to search up what video lectures. I was seeking for lectures, not like 10 minute explanation video. I did not want that. Although condensed explanation and summary videos, they help.
But when you're actually trying to really understand and absorb the material on topical studies which you're interested in, 10 minutes can never satisfy you. And it never answers your question. You often have to do additional searching and then you actually have to, OK, which textbook or materials are they basing their argument upon?
I'm sort of like this fact checker. So if I watch a video, I first of all, check the profile of that person who is explaining it. OK, is this person qualified to teach me this? And so you never ask those questions when it comes to MIT course materials. And so yeah, so it ticked off every box on my checklist.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: I'm kind of interested and the impact it had in your life outside of your academic studies. What did your friends think? Do you share with your friends this OpenCourseWare journey? What did your family think? And did it ripple into your community as well?
JAE-MIN HONG: Yeah, I think I would have actively shared these materials, MIT OCW materials, with my friends, if they spoke English. But yeah, I think, yeah, I do have friends who are living in America and they are Americans.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: Because you've lived in several countries. How was that?
JAE-MIN HONG: Yeah, definitely. My lifestyle has been quite peripatetic. I've basically been like a nomad. My mom is an English teacher. Half of my mom's family, so my aunties and my uncles, they all live in America. And yeah, we've got quite mixed family backgrounds happening on my mom's side. My dad's side very much rooted in Korea. So it's quite an interesting family and cultural dynamic.
So then this epiphany did not really click through until I entered middle school. So when I became a school junior. I realized that I just did not want to stick with this very regimented school system that is very much prominent in Korea. So my parents also shared the same view.
They wanted me to explore the wider pool overseas. So I moved to New Zealand when I was 14. And I had no one there. I had no family relations. So I spent my junior and senior years there. So middle school, high school.
And then I was going to take my tertiary education in London. There's a University called University College London. I was going to study economics there. But then that was also the year when COVID broke out and I couldn't pay $1 million for this education which I had no real access to. And so I quickly changed my plan, came back to Korea. But I always had this yearning for broader learning, something else that I can do. Like I'm working on this, but what else can I do more?
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: Amazing. You moved to New Zealand at 14 when you knew no one. That's courageous.
[LAUGHS]
On the same point, we can highlight how was the difference in traditional learnings? I won't call them several, 'cause you've taken classes from different countries. How was the difference in those place's traditional learnings versus open learning?
JAE-MIN HONG: I'd say that there are both strengths and sometimes a bit weaknesses. So strengths when it comes to conventional education, the main strengths I would say is that you're able to directly interact with professors and ask questions to TAs if you have them.
When it comes to open learning, although you're able to really search out for information and dig out those extra learning materials that you wanted for yourself, let's say you've got your answer sheet and then the quiz materials, the quiz question sheet. You're able to check that you've got this question wrong.
But sometimes when you trip over this question and you're not able to really figure out why I have gotten this question wrong, I needed some external help.
And so I would be asking my friends, whose major is chemistry, and then they would help me in that. But then this cross translation of what I'm learning here and then they're trying to figure out, put their fingers on what is this context, why are you doing this. And then I often find myself having to explain, oh, I'm actually an economics student, just interested in chemistry and learning about this.
And then they are trying to diagnose my prior knowledge in chemistry and then they realize that, OK, you should probably start with this and this and this. And so it's sort of like that structured guidance. It might become a impediment in some way when it comes to conventional traditional education system, but it also works enormously well for students who aren't quite sure where they are lost in.
But also at the same time, as I've mentioned, the flexibility comes in just very, very encouraging. And it's highly invigorating. If you derive satisfaction from taking on the initiative and then actually executing those initiatives, if you're very action taker like me, so I just did not want to form a plan.
OK, I want to learn more about chemistry, but then I'll just put that aside for a week or so. But then if you actually want to get down to it immediately and then seek out all available resource which you can learn more about, then OCW is definitely a cut out prototype.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: You talk about self learning. A lot of people think of self learning as running a marathon. They think it's the same thing. That's just this impossible task. But oddly enough, you talk about it and you're like, I'm invigorated. I'm inspired to do more. I think bigger. What are some ways maybe even now, entering your last year of university, what are you thinking about? What does your more look like now?
JAE-MIN HONG: I think this goes back to the cultural background. So the mantra that I grew up with. So you mentioned that I try to think bigger and expand what I have right now. And I think that comes from my background where I was constantly shuffling between America and Korea and then New Zealand.
And because I know that your degree was poetry, and my favorite poet was Emily Dickinson, she wrote this really famous verse called I'm like a flower that cannot take its roots anywhere. And that was the thing that I was feeling for myself. But I tried to translate that into my own advantage. I attend Yonsei University, but I don't always follow the crowd. I always think about what can I do differently.
So actually, I'm trying to enter investment banking right now. And then there is a group of university clubs and societies where they are working investment banking entry roles by doing case studies together and then getting feedback with the ultimate goal being trying to get a place at an investment bank in Korea.
But then when I look at them, they are all qualified to apply for a role in basically Wall Street. They're so talented. But then they never think outside their institution and then think, OK, if I leverage this resource, let's say this external resource, communities like women in finance, I'll be able to probably reach out to different people and then put my paws on that opportunity as well.
And so this reaching out for different opportunities and seeing what I can do differently is basically something that shapes me and has been this identifier of me. And OCW is definitely something which I would identify as an extra work which I had taken for myself, because I want to think differently.
I always had this repulsion against group think. Repulsion is a very, quite strong word, so I will just say very, very cautious. Probably because I follow the market every day and I try to be very, very cautious about this group think. How can I think logically? It's very, very long response. Sorry.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: It was a big question. You could go anywhere with it. The director of MIT OpenCourseWare, Curt Newton, this is a question from him. When you think about the impact of open educational resources that they've had on your life and people that you know, when you look into the future with all the newly acquired knowledge you have, is there anything that if you had a magic wand that you would want for a free open educational resource available for the world?
JAE-MIN HONG: Can I be very, very specific? Because I'm in preparation for certain-- as I said, I'm preparing to become an investment banker and as like my entry role in my career and my very early career stage. And then I was trying to seek out for MIT OCW courses that are related to this subject, but I had somewhat difficulty finding it. And the subject is accounting.
I realized that MIT OCW actually has phenomenal finance based courses, but then when it comes to accounting, I had some difficulties trying to find related resources. And so that is very, very specific answer.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: But Jae-Min, what happens when you finish all those accounting courses?
[LAUGHS]
What's next? What's next?
[LAUGHS]
Every open learner we've talked to so far has said the same exact answer, which is more courses. Yeah, it's kind of weird, actually.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: More courses. Maybe I'll ask you something extra, because I'm seeing you've taken mainly accounting and economics and finance related courses. Have you taken anything outside those fields, anything outside accounting and economics on OCW?
JAE-MIN HONG: Yeah, that's another great question. So the courses, I dabbled in many different courses, as in there were some courses which I did not watch to their full length. But then there were some courses where I just like watched one or two videos on the playlist.
And the reason being I was often finding myself in a quite difficult time management situation. And so I was trying to maximize the efficiency of learning by watching the videos that were most relevant to the questions that I have inside my head or the difficulties that I'm facing at my actual university.
The courses that I've taken. So chemistry, the thermodynamics and kinetics one. And I've also taken, of course, Professor Gilbert Strang's linear algebra course, which has come in very, very handy when I was studying convolutional neural networks,
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: I was going to say we need to come back to Gilbert Strang. Good answer.
JAE-MIN HONG: Yeah, a whole separate conversation. What a legend.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: What brings you back to your career? I know you're in university now. Has this always been a drive for you, or is it just in university you're feeling the pressure now that I've got to figure out what I'm going to do to make money after this? Or what are you thinking?
JAE-MIN HONG: Very, very realistically, half and half of each. So half being I generally enjoy learning. And so there was absolutely no reason, just no modicum of reason for me to take chemistry courses. But I took it because I really enjoyed it. Learning chemistry really pushed forwards my drive to learn more and then expand my horizon.
Like you have rightly pointed out, I'm also a final year student, and I think I have dabbled in all the areas which drew me in. So chemistry, finance, data science, and then economics. I tried them all. And now I think it's probably the time where I have to, yes, basically root myself in specific grounds. And then even if they don't work out, they say it doesn't matter in five years, probably I can change my career plan after five years.
But as of the moment, I'm trying to solidify and consolidate one specific goal. I'm really geared towards that goal. So using all the resources and the learnings that I've had to achieve a specific goal.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: You know me and my journey too. When you get a specific goal, you can always line up another one. You can always make another one. You can always change. That's your right as a human being.
JAE-MIN HONG: Yeah, I completely agree with you. Yeah.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: This has been amazing. I just have one more thing maybe to ask. You are an amazing character. You've gone from finance to social sciences to fintech. You're now in investment banking. Amazing, amazing journey. Any advice for anyone listening who may want to take your path or maybe learn a few things from you?
JAE-MIN HONG: For future OCW learners or listeners to this podcast, I would say that my path up to this point has been incredibly unpredictable. But I always tried to follow what I'm interested in. And being able to search the resources and wanting to learn more for your advantage, these are very, very important qualities that will eventually lead you up to a certain point. And for me, that is investment banking at this point. I'm not sure if what I will say after five years, but that is my current career goal, the five year plan.
And up to this point, there's been so many different explorations where I went from economics, chemistry, finance, fintech, data science. But then at every point, what I can say for sure is I did not just rely on my conventional education. I tried to do more. And then I tried to actively seek out what I'm truly passionate about. And in order to have that gauge for yourself, being a very, very active learner will come into great advantage.
And then having this all available, accessible resource like OCW would be something that will meet all your expectations and then meet the requirements that you have for yourself. But then I feel like OCW is a great pool of resources where people can dream about one career pathway. But if that doesn't work out, there's always different courses that they can come back to and then explore further.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: That was such a cool conversation. Cool, cool conversation. I haven't stopped thinking about it. What's your biggest takeaway from Jae-Min's conversation, Michael?
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: I love the conversation with Jae-Min, because I think it shows the ability to be curious and to still explore as an undergrad. When I first met Jae-Min, she was primarily focused on just getting her chemistry degree. And through the conversation I had with her, but also with her leveraging open educational resources, she was able to expand her view, expand her consciousness, and ultimately change what she was studying in her undergraduate program.
So I thought that was very fascinating how she went from just being focused on chemistry to start looking at the whole world and then studying economics as well.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: I personally loved how she has experienced learning from all across the world. We've heard from her story she was in New Zealand at some point. She's been to Korea. And she found Open Learning with this whole background from all these different places and all these different types of education and still OCW was something and Open Learning was something that could still add to that.
And to such a person with such experience and such diverse range from and still she comes to Open Learning still has something to add to her value. I like that aspect of it, in that this is something that can touch anyone from whatever background, from whatever experience you have. It can still add value to you.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: Thanks to everyone for tuning in to our conversation with Jae-Min Hong of Seoul, South Korea. We will be back in two weeks with another story from a different learner in the global OCW community.
EMMANUEL KASIGAZI: See you then. Open Learner as produced by Alexis Haut. Special thanks to the supporters and donors who make OCW possible.
MICHAEL JORDAN PILGREEN: To learn more about MIT's OpenCourseWare and to check out the courses mentioned in this episode, visit the OpenCourseWare website at ocw.mit.edu.
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