Welcome!

About ME

Hi. I am Yelim Kim, and am currerntly in 8th grade. It has been four years since I moved to the Champaign from South Korea. When I first came to the US at the end of fourth grade, I attended Barkstall Elementary School, and a year later attended Franklin Middle School, until in eighth grade I began attending the University Laboratory High School. The past couple of years, I have been trying my best to preserve the culture of my country of origin by speaking Korean with my parents, watching Korean dramas and television shows, and volunteering at a Korean language school as an assistent teacher for two years.
One of my favorite hobbies is playing with Julie, a Welsh Corgi who I call my sister. One of the most special features of Julie is that the color of her whisters differ by each side. As shown in the image, she has black whiskers on her left side and white whiskers on the right.

Another way I kill time is by playing cello. I have four years experience of playing cello, and have been participating in multiple music extracurricular activities. I am currently invovled in multiple orchestral groups, such as the East Central Illinois Youth Orchestra (ECIYO), where I have played in since seventh grade, and the Illinois Chamber Music Academy. I have also participated in the Illinois Music Education Association the past two years and the Illinois Summer Youth Music camp last year.
Lastly, I like to challenge myself in multiple ways. For example, my interest in math has led me to compete in several local math competitions, all of which tested multiple questions that required excessive brainstorming and creativity. The books I have read also demonstrarte my attempts to step out of my boundary: since the beginning of last year, I have began reading classical books, which I have never set my foot near in the years prior due to the unfamiliar sentence structure and vocabularies. To those of you who might be newly trying classical books, I want to give a few reccomendations:

• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: this is the first classical book I have explored. When reading, I did not experience much difficulty in terms of comprehension despite my inexperience, so I believe this novel could be a best fit as your first classic book as well. To give a quick summary, Pride and Prejudice, written in 1813, presents the interaction a middle-class family-- influenced by the mother who strives to send all of her four daughters to marry a rich person-- and two upper class families-- each family with a handsome, unmarried gentleman, one of the two who possesses warmth and benevolence and the other with haughty and arrogant manner. By establishing the acquaintences between the charcaters of different economic backgrounds, Austen indicates the progression in which each chracter breaks their own prejudice against the member of a different class, hence the title Pride and Prejuce.
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: written in a similar period as Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre depicts a story of Jane, an orphan who spends most of her life in a orphan school, and at the age of twenty and is hired as a housekeeper at a mansion owned by Mr. Rochester, an unwedded middle-aged man. The novel paints the impression that this man has on Jane as the first person in her life to provide her with true home and warmth. Throughout the story, the author inserts the themes of break up and reconciliation, injustice and forgiveness, and hesitation and decision to loosen the boundary between age groups and emphasize that anyone-- young or old, poor or rich-- have something to learn from each other.
• Animal Farm by George Orwell: compared to the two previous novels, this book draws the readers to a relatively late classic period. Published in 1945, Animal Farm creates satire of the Soviet Union and its failure to preserve its original goal and purpose. Summary: lead by two bores, the animals of the farm, in response to the unjust treatment they have been receiving from their human owners, create a plot to oust the humans from the farm and rule it themselves, creating a more fair and happy society for the animals. Following the success of this conspiracy, the leaders decide to set up a commandment for the whole farm. However, the inevitability of corruption in the leadership soon presents itself, and the farm seems to be running backwards to the period before the establishment of the new farm, and perhaps to a situation far worse...
• Fahrenheit 451 by Rad Bradbury: published in 1953, Fahrenheit 451 shares a similar historical background as the preceding novel, however a diverting theme. This novel follows the firefighter Guy Montag and reveals the internal conflicts and dilemmas he faces through multiple incidents in his daily life of living in a dystopian world dominated by robots and a harsh prohibition of books. Commencing with his encounter with a enigmatic, eccentric girl in his neighborhood, Guy opens his eyes towards the truth and a flame of defiance against the confining control of the society dances in his heart. Aside from the breathtaking narration, Bradbury brings an interesting concept of a world where the firefighters set fire on houses instead of extinguishing them. The role of these firefighters is to burn the books in all places, and the title of the book, Fahrenheit 451, is the temperature in which books burn.
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: the last novel I want to talk about is the book that became the inspiration of numerous movies, myths, and Halloween costume designs. Unlike the other pieces I have listed, the author of Fankenstein uses flashback to tell the story, with the novel beginning with a slight exposition of present. Then, the story rewinds in time to the creation of our beloved monster, created by Dr. Victor Frankenstein. Rather than simply emphasizing the monstrosity of the creation, Shelley partly raises sympathy to the monster, an orphan abandoned by its creator. While depicting the revenge of this monster towards Dr. Frankenstein, the book slowly lets out the apalling consequences of one's denial of his or her responsibility through the suffering inflicted not on the creator himself, but the surrounding people around him, creating a complex but direct tension between the book and the reader.