HTKD Alumni

Greetings from St. Louis! A quick update on my life since walking in 2002/graduating in 2003: spent the past two years in Washington, DC, first at Georgetown, then on Capitol Hill, and finally at the Red Cross. Alas, the midwest now beckons, and I find myself in law school at Washington University in Saint Louis. I admit there are times when I feel like Elle Woods, or wonder if I got the King James version of my textbooks, but for the most part, I'm making more eye contact and furrowing my brow less and less as the days go by. Here is the evil castle where the sun teases me through Venetian blinds: http://law.wustl.edu/

Along the way to law school I spent ten weeks in a little place called hell on earth, namely Officer Candidate School, Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia. I graduated and accepted my commission as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Marine Corps; after law school I will serve for four years in the JAG Corps, hopefully in some kind of humanitarian relief capacity (a la Katrina, Kabul or Karbala). Here is what I did (I was class189): http:www.marinecorpstimes.com/class186/

It's so great to see how much the club has grown under Master Lee and the new leadership. I haven't had much of an opportunity to keep up with TKD since I left, but I managed to study some Krav Maga in the meantime, which is really fun, but it's not the same as going through the Harvard TKD practices. I've followed the club's successes through the great website and I have managed to see some fellow alums over the years, and I'm still amazed that it’s been six years it all began.

Since I graduated in 2001, I spent four years in New York working in finance before moving to Washington D.C. to begin a master's degree program in international relations at Johns Hopkins University. I'm still unsure about what the next step in life will be, but I've been told that I'm not alone in my worries, so I'll take comfort in that. Best of luck to you guys in the rest of this season's tournaments and keep up the hard work!

Since graduating Harvard Taekwondo in 2002, I have been swamped by my medical school studies at Columbia College of Physicians & Surgeons. I recently decided to be a doctor in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and am applying to residencies in the Boston area. As for taekwondo news, after undergoing knee surgery in December of 2003 (and getting through third year of medical school), I obtained my 3rd dan blackbelt in May 2005. I hope to be competing again this coming spring. Lastly, Master Dan Chuang (coach of the MIT team) proposed to me in June 2005. The wedding was this May.

I'm collecting an MD from the University of Vermont. If all goes well, I should be outta here in four years with a stethescope around my neck, a dream in my heart...and a Magners in my hand. I'm training with UVM's TKD club.

P.S. This picture is a foreshadowing of what's to come...namely me, along with my darker counterpart, to a couple of TKD parties.

yeah, '05! I am in San Francisco working at Fibrogen. I am a Research Associateat least that's what it says on my business card, but then again, they asked me what I'd like the title to be, so that doesn't mean much. I'm at this biotech for two years rotating through various departments- right now in research, then clinical development, business development, intellectual property, etc. Then I'm off to Caltech, presumably for a phD in chemistry.

Hey yall, JJ's pic is cool. Ewha is cool. And Korea is very cool. So cool in fact that I might just stay a bit longer than expected. (pic is of me eating the spiciest chicken...ever)

My apartment's in Porter, so yeah, I'm still around. I ended up not going to computer school after all, because my premed advisor threatened to disown me if I did. (Yes, really, and no, I don't think she REALLY meant it- -I hope.) I'm in graduate school now, taking a MA in Medical Science at BU. Still trying for med school and hoping, I guess!

Lily says hello to all you beautiful TKD peoples from pre-lawyer land. Since graduating in 2003, her nomadic spirit has taken her from the under the grips of a tyrannical French pastry chef to chocolate-filled Belgian travels to a short stint as an educational "consultant" (aka. Glorified SAT teacher/babysitter) at a Seoul start-up company. She would have been content leading this rootless, meandering existence for an indefinite period of time until one morning, the cold stark reality hit that she needed to make money to buy life's necessities, like little sweaters and manicures for her toy chihuahua and iPod accessories. Thus, her life realizations have led her to the path of joining society's legions of groomed lawyers. She likens her past year as a first-year law student at USC to "an unending gauntlet for the brain." Due to this extreme mental activity, all martial arts endeavors have sadly come to a grinding halt, but on adventurous days, she sometimes logs onto the HTKD website and fondly remembers the days when she could still touch her toes.

In the meantime, Lily will happily be spending the summer working in energy and telecommunications regulation in the beautiful city of San Francisco, hopefully to be applying some of the starry-eyed idealism she developed with such proficiency as an ESPP graduate. She will be returning to the throes of South Central LA in August to brave another year of law school, and encourages everyone to come visit her where it never really drops below 60 all year. She's not kidding.

On a sentimental note, Lily would like to thank HTKD for the lasting bonds of friendship it has given her and for spare dobok bottoms, which handily double as pajamas pants when she runs out of clean laundry. She would like to thank her former teammates for giving her a handle on reality during her strange journey through 2005.

(Contact: lily.kang (at) post.harvard.edu)

After some summer traveling, Dre will be headed off to sample all that Duke and North Caccalacca have to offer. People should definitely visit her, and she will make sure you have a blast if you do. As always, email andrea.tsai (at) post.harvard.edu if you want to reach her!

I am in Los Angeles and plan to be there for at least the next two years working as a healthcare consultant with big, and surprisingly not-so-evil, managed care companies. I abandoned plans for biology graduate school after the experience of labwork lost all of its appeal and now plan on going to school for a degree in public policy.

I have also restarted training in Hwa Rang Do, which is what I originally did when he was in LA. Last summer, in August, I went to Korea with my school. I still cannot tell if the kimchi and soju makes Koreans so energetic or if the energy of Koreans produced kimchi and soju just as an outlet for all their fire. I also met up with Patricia Hernandez while in Seoul and bumbled through the experience of finding a restaurant that served cold noodles after having learned how to read Korean a few days before.

As a member of the original team, I'm so glad to see how it has grown over the years. After leaving Cambridge and moving back to my hometown of Berkeley, I resumed practice at the school at which I first learned to kick: UC Berkeley. With numerous national titles and national champions in its ranks, working out here has always been a humbling as well as inspiring experience, but I decided it was time at the ripe old age of 25 to put TKD aside for activities in which one can't very well engage when one is constantly getting injured: tango and yoga.

Though I can't say I miss the injuries, I do miss the sport as well as the camaraderie. Meanwhile, I just finished my first year of a PhD in clinical psychology at UC Berkeley. I hope all of you former teammates are doing well, wherever you are, and I look forward to seeing some of you at reunion next year. Go Harvard!