To be or not to be: The Messenger

In 2016, Haley Park as a Korean single lady left to China to be the translator at an international school.

As a young lady in my mid-twenties, I thought this adventure was going to be another exciting working abroad experience. If you love traveling, working abroad could be one of the bucket list items you have.

Well, four years in China as a translator turned out to be a great learning experience; yet some parts were my personal failure.

I knew how to speak Korean and okay English. It’s the skill in which I was most confident. Also, the school I was hired needed someone who could translate between Korean-speaking parents (who were 50% of the school community) and the school staff.

After a long visa process, I landed in China, and started doing un-done work due to my late arrival — from translating documents to interpreting conferences.

“Haley, remember. You are just the messenger.”

One day, I was in a meeting with the principal and a parent whose child was bullied. As the parent started tearing up, I couldn’t control my emotions, and my voice started shaking and my eyes got watery. At that moment, I felt something inside that told me “I am so thankful for my job.” After the meeting, the principal called my office and asked me to see her. She said, “Haley, remember. You are just the messenger. I saw you get emotional, but remember. You are the messenger.” From that moment, I decided to harden my heart to do my job. Who knew that was the beginning of making a wrong hypothesis in my mind.

I thought to myself. “I am not a robot, but how can I be okay when seeing someone suffer?” However, with no experience beforehand, I thought that was my job. The statement was given from the principal — “you are just the messenger.” Every time I was faced with emotional facts, I would think “if I add my thought on cultural differences, then they are going to think that I am arrogant” or “if I show empathy through my facial expression, I will be corrected again.” I was making hundreds of inner assumptions and enacting them by not expressing my opinions.

With my false mind, I saw tough meetings. One big complaint from parents was “the school is not listening to us.” That was not true because the school was listening: through conferences, emails, and phone calls. Yet, in another sense, it was true, because of the cultural differences between Korean parents and the international school.

When there are hypotheses that you assume are right without proper research, it leads you to isolate yourself. At the end of the day, people won’t understand why you made such conclusions. I should have asked other people for an advice who were there to help me. I was wrongly ashamed of empathizing with someone’s feelings of hurt; however, that could be a good chance for me to speak up for what I think as well.

I saw problems happening, but I wasn’t confident enough to speak out loud when staff were asking from where these conflicts were coming.

I learned an important lesson while in China. I grew emotionally as I faced a lot of people with different personalities, backgrounds, and beliefs. I was lucky to be loved by many parents just by listening to them and crying with them while walking down the stairs after harsh meetings.

I wish I could have overcome my assumption that “I am just the messenger” which created false hypothesis, and stood up for those whom I cared for and loved.

I want to be a brave UX Designer who is willing to understand users’ problems by trying different ways of researching information, figuring out meaningful solutions by interacting with team members, and seeking for better experience by constantly testing products and getting feedback from users.