![\"Kenny_Kim2\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/files\/2015\/06\/Kenny_Kim2.jpg\")
<\/a>opportunity came up, I jumped on it,\u201d Kim says. \u201cI had so many roles \u2014 rowing, the Honors College, studying abroad, working \u2014 I felt like I got to live many different lives. I had the space, the opportunity, and the encouragement to be completely different versions of myself and have a lot of different perspectives help shape me.\u201d<\/p>\nKim\u2019s passion for learning, exploring and traveling began when she was 13 on a trip to China with her grandfather. It was her first exposure to an unfamiliar country, and after three weeks traveling through China, she was hooked on the experience of exposing herself to new cultures and challenges.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to feel uncomfortable, and I wanted to challenge myself to figure out what\u2019s going on around me,\u201d Kim says. After high school, Kim decided to take a gap year, which she spent traveling around the Caribbean and backpacking through Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the gap year, I knew I needed to travel more; I loved this,\u201d Kim says. \u201cI wanted to find whatever way I could to travel in college. It\u2019s a really cool thing that you can travel and learn and have the structure of accomplishing something for your degree.\u201d Kim studied abroad in Antarctica, Australia, Thailand, and China while at Oregon State. After choosing Chinese as her focus language for the International Studies program, she returned to China for a fifth global experience as an undergraduate. She received the prestigious Critical Language Scholarship from the United States Department of State, which fully funded an eight week cultural and language immersion program in Suzhou, China.<\/p>\n \u201cYou take classes in Chinese for half of the day and the other half you work with a language partner they assign you,\u201d Kim says. \u201cWe also had the opportunity to travel around, but most of the time we were in Suzhou doing that really intensive language program.\u201d<\/p>\n Throughout her myriad travels, OSU and the Honors College remained a home base to return to, and whenever she was back on campus, Kim applied the same thirst for experience in seeking out any opportunities she felt might inspire her.<\/p>\n \u201cThe encouragement from the Honors College advisors was incredible,\u201d Kim says. \u201cThey helped me decide what credits to take, and they let me take any opportunity I wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n She received the Honors College DeLoach Work Scholarship in 2014 to work in George Waldbusser\u2019s oyster lab in the College of Earth Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, and she wrote for The Daily Barometer<\/em> (the OSU student newspaper), Terra<\/em> (the university\u2019s research publication),<\/em> and Ca<\/em>talyst<\/em> (an undergraduate research journal).<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n