Stereotype - Joyce Ha

Stereotype is defined as the widely held conception or tradition towards certain type of culture or group of people. I am 18 years old Korean girl who attends international school in Korea. By looking at this simple description of myself a typical Korean society judges me with traditional stereotypes.

Most of the Korean adults have a strict mindset that “Korean high school students must wear uniforms and have short and neat hair cut.” If high school students or general teenagers are not wearing appropriate attire, adults think that they are either college students or naughty and misbehaving students in their school. Whenever I take a taxi in Daejeon to go to KTX station or to come back to the dormitory, taxi drivers most likely to ask me, “are you Hannam University student?” They all judge me by my appearance without thinking about other features. Because TCIS does not require students to wear uniforms, we all wear normal casual clothes which make us look like college students. I understand those biased views, but it is not right to just judge others by appearance and attires. Oftentimes misjudgment made by others towards me is annoying and even intimidating.

Another stereotype towards me is that I am a student who always excels in every class with excessively talented math skills. Because I am Korean, or Asian in wider view, a lot of people have a tendency to judge me as a nerd. Moreover, many people think that female students usually perform better than the male students do at school. Since I fit into both ethnicity and gender categories, I am considered as one of the smartest students at school. However, the reality is extremely different. Neither do I perform the best at school nor do I fail the courses. Moreover, I take IB Mathematics Studies SL which is the lowest math course provided by TCIS among IB classes. This proves that I am not the one who excels at math like majority of Korean students.

Interestingly, even though I don’t enjoy being judged by other people mainly based on their stereotype, I tend to judge and analyze others by my extremely biased and narrow mindset. Since such stereotypes are the fundamental knowledge when I meet somebody new, it can be useful in some sense. However, it is better to reduce those stereotypes towards others unless we truly understand and know others.