Korean native Inseong Kim is finally ready to graduate from Cal State Long Beach — after seven years of working two jobs and battling a language disorder in a new country.
Kim, 32, a senior childhood development and family studies major, credits her success to her mother, whom died about four months ago due to heart complications.
“My mother is my biggest role model,” Kim said. “She always works hard and never lets people down. She is a leader, taking care of others first.”
As a child, Kim’s mother, Heenyo Kim, was forced to wake up at 2 a.m., six days a week, to go to school because her family had no car. She would walk for four hours from her family’s farm to make it to the city.
Heenyo Kim raised Inseong Kim in Seoul, South Korea alongside her younger brother.
Inseong Kim explained that, in Korea, there was not much of a future for her or her mother.
“In Korea, everyone finishes on the same level,” Kim said. “If you try hard here in America, there is always more opportunity.”
As a young girl growing up poor, Kim had always associated America with that of upper-class citizenship, knowing only what she had seen through store windows: Beautiful people and extravagant items from vendors like The Gap or Banana Republic.
Her friends’ mothers spoke of sending their children to prestigious American institutions like Harvard or Yale.
Kim began learning English at the age of 10. She later worked at the Torrance English Academy.
Kim quickly learned, however, that she suffers from a language deficiency, which she described as a sort of stutter or misplacement of words.
Although her English as a Second Language (ESL) coordinator Jessica Mathers and tutoring coordinator Vanessa Najpauer confirmed she has more difficulties than other ESL students with learning and perfecting her English, they cannot pinpoint exactly what her condition is.
Kim explained that, from infancy to childhood, she did not speak often.
When Kim graduated from high school, she came to America to receive a higher education and live the life that her mother had not been given the chance to pursue.
But it wasn’t going to be easy. Kim worked at her mother’s market in Korea earning $2 an hour for several years and still could not afford to pay for tuition at CSULB, so her mother helped her make the first step.
As Heenyo Kim gave her daughter the check, she told her, “This is the first and the last one.”
Inseong Kim confessed that, when she came to the U.S., her writing was “horrible” and she couldn’t comprehend or speak English very well. In fall of 2003, Kim moved in with her aunt and uncle who lived in Lomita, Calif.
She spent her first semester taking the bus from Lomita to CSULB. She took 15 units, worked for her aunt as a teaching assistant at her predominantly Korean church on the weekends and at the campus bookstore on weekdays.
At the end of her first semester, she had barely saved enough to pay for her second semester. Her GPA was about 2.8 and she dropped one of her classes.
Her dream wasn’t all that she had hoped for.
“[My mother] told me all of her life that, if I have a problem, there is a way,” Kim said. “She always has the patience to find an open door.”
So she turned to help and began to go to the Learning Assistance Center (LAC) on campus where she met tutoring coordinator Vanessa Najpauer and ESL coordinator Jessica Mathers.
“I really had a big support from them, much like sisters,” Kim said. “[They] kept me organized — every time I had a difficult situation, Vanessa would keep me focused on school … Vanessa was like mother No. 2.”
Kim continued, “I’m very lucky because I get help from all around. When I come to school now, I don’t feel so alone.”
After seven years at CSULB, Kim’s writing has improved and she will graduate in the spring.
Despite her language deficiency and her mother’s recent passing, she is pushing forward without skipping a beat. After she graduates, she’ll be the first person in her family to get a college degree.
Kim wants to keep saving and eventually open her own day care center to teach orphans or underprivileged kids.
“I never thought this would happen to me, I just thought I’d be stuck in Korea, or just stuck in college,” she said. “But if you’re dealing with some frustration in your life, you need to be strong and keep thinking. You need endurance to succeed.”
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