“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
My mother worried I would never get married because my knees were too ugly. My left knee is scarred from a running accident. My right knee is marked by a scar when I fell off a train in Morocco. They're not pretty, but they remind me of a younger self that was not afraid to leap off into unknown. I didn't necessarily know where I was going or where I would land, but I always landed in a place I couldn't have imagined.
HBS will soon become one of those memories for me. It wasn't a comfortable place when I first arrived yet it forced me speak my mind and see things differently. Now that this place feels like home, I know it's time to go. With all that I have been given, I will not be afraid to fall or to take foolish chances. And if I ever get scared, I have my scars to remind me that somehow the body always manages to heal itself.
I hope I never stop putting myself out there, because in those situations where I fear the judgment, the scars, the red faces and the sleepless nights, I know I'm most likely to find true laughter, little epiphanies, deep love and a greater sense of self. I hope these scars never fade.
— Jean Jinsun Kim