Participant

Emma M.

Arts + Sciences

Hometown: Chicago-ish

Emma's Program

Arts + Sciences

Emma Potts belongs to Columbia University’s class of 2023, completing her undergraduate degree later this year in December. A QuestBridge scholar at Columbia, She is double majoring in political science and East Asian languages & cultures (EALAC) with an emphasis on Korea. As recently as last April, Emma completed a senior thesis entitled “Militarized Modernity’s Enduring Scar: the Process of Remasculinization in the Anti-Feminist Movement of Contemporary South Korea,” under the tutelage of Professor Jungwon Kim and Professor Theodore Hughes.

Believing herself as a part of an emerging cadre of young Americans preparing to make differences in cross-cultural understanding and eventually foreign policy making, she hopes to pursue a future career in international education, non-profit work or diplomacy. She credits her fostered passion for an interconnected global community in part to her participation in a U.S. Department of State scholarship program: The National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y). After spending a summer in Seoul, South Korea and later a year attending a Korean high school for complete language immersion, Emma returned stateside with a revitalized passion for diplomacy at all levels, including citizen diplomacy’s people-to-people exchanges.

Posts

Taking the Topik (Korean Proficiency Exam) in Korea

By Emma M.

Today I want to speak on the Topik Test--(the only official) Korean language proficiency exam administered by the Korean government. Taking the Topik exam is a great way to gain a formal gauge of one’s Korean language abilities since it is standardized, although the score is only valid for two years after taking the exam.