The Auto Biography of Eun Bin Park up 2007

My name is Eun Bin Park and I am a second year art history major. I just changed my major from Biology because more I think about why I was put on this world; I realize that my purpose is to play music. I loved biology in high school and my father being a third generation medical doctor, biology came natural to me. When I came to college and started to take Biology courses I felt like I wasn’t learning anything and college seemed like a complete waste of time. I only learned new material from my art history classes because I never knew what art history was. It was so refreshing to learn new things that I ended up taking all the lower division art history classes my freshmen year and I lost all my interest in biology. I love art history because it helped me to see the world with open mind and it allowed me to involve critical thinking more.

I was always associated with music ever since I was little. I started to play the Piano when I was four years old. I was born and raised in Korea and it was very common for Koreans to take up musical instruments at a young age because it was the trend back then (Koreans believe that all their children are prodigies and picking up musical instruments will help them to achieve their full potential). Many Koreans learn how to play musical instruments until they reach high school and they just quit afterwards because they need to focus on school. When I first played the piano I remembered my friends in the kindergarten telling me piano isn’t cool and I would definitely hate it. At first I didn’t mind playing the piano but they were right. I didn’t enjoy playing the Piano very much. There were too many rules in the classical music and they require players to articulate within a boundary. I didn’t like my piano teachers telling me that I can’t play music pieces the way I wanted.

In 1998 my family moved to the United States because my father’s work wasn’t possible to be successful in Korea back then. My father’s PhD thesis was on slice tissue culture system and he derived his patented knowledge to invent a bio Artificial Liver System. His work required massive amount of money to develop and Koreans back in 1998 thought my father was crazy or he was a scam artist and nobody supported him. Even though this seemed like a major set back at the time, my father took a risk and moved to America and set up a company. To make long story short, my father went through many hardships and relied on faith (yeah we’re Christians) and his company is the only functioning artificial liver company in the world today. It took my father 20 years to develop and he is close to be in production.

I don’t come from an ordinary background not because our family is so awesome. Some may call it coincidence or lucky but as a person who witnessed my parent’s unusualness for their whole life; I can’t call it anything but God’s plan. I am very fortunate to grow up in this environment and I don’t think it is an accident that I was put there. I didn’t grow up rich but I am put in a situation today that I don’t have to worry about financial hardships ever again. The American dreams as people call it, my family is the golden example of that. We came here with nothing, and now we live in an affluent neighborhood driving our fancy cars. My father left Korea called con artist by his colleagues and now he is one of the most respected scientists amongst his colleagues. As much as I would like to glorify my parents for their achievements, I can’t do that because they really didn’t do all that. Only thing they did was to be obedient to God’s calling and things worked themselves out. My friends and people around me call me crazy, for coming into a conclusion like that but if they were put in my shoes they couldn’t agree more.

Going back to music, coming to America was a life changing experience for me. I continued to play the piano until I was 12 years old until I decided I had enough. American piano lessons were a little better than the Korean lessons because I was introduced to more contemporary music like Jazz and Blues but it wasn’t that much better. Playing Jazz and Blues in a classical music environment just plainly sucked. I thought I was done with music but I realized eight years of learning music is a waste and I gave guitar a try. I didn’t take classical guitar lessons. I picked up electrical guitar and learned contemporary music. Thanks to my classical piano background, transition was very smooth. I learned how to improvise and I loved the freedom I had. Playing my guitar was my favorite thing to do but I didn’t really look at it as my future.

When I entered college I naturally chose biology as my major because that was what I liked in school and I was very good at it. But as I mentioned before, I didn’t learn anything new and it got me to seriously consider not coming back to college. I made a lot of friends and got to see little beyond my comfortable life in college, but it just seemed like it was waste of time to be going to school for three more years doing the same thing. When I took art history and the role of art and artists in society, I began to see life with more open mind. I believe that is what you take from college education and I am once again motivated to attend school again.

With much more open mind I took from my art history class, I realized I don’t belong in a lab or anything that my father’s been doing. I finally realized that my purpose in this world is to play music and take up responsibility as an artist with talent given to me. I was always afraid to even think about being a musician because it’s a hard life to be a musician, but when I look at my parents, their walk in life is even rougher and unusual compared to musicians. With my faith in God, I can comfortably say that as long as I remain faithful to God’s calling, things will work themselves out just as my parents did. It seems reckless to many but to me, that is the only way I know how to go.

Rest to be continued.