Scholarship / "Move Forward' My Letter of Self-Introduction for KGSP [8]

Hello, My name is Nics from Thailand. Obviously, English is not my first language and I need some help on my essay for KGSP 2017.

Here is the requirement for the task
- course of life, your view of life, study background, your hopes & wishes, etc
- education and work experience, etc., in relation to the KGSP program
- motivations for applying for this program
- reason for study in that country

Thank you all in Advance.

Ps. This essay is exactly 1 page long with the font Times New Roman size 10 in the application form. I do think it is still too long but not sure where to cut.

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"Move Forward"

Day after day, I traveled back and forth between Bangkok and Southern Thailand. As an irrigation project planner, my job is to study the area, talk to local people, and purpose a project to help local communities. There are couple things that I proud of this career and it was all about my journey to achieve my future goal and my passion for helping society.

I was born in Bangkok, the capital city of Thailand. Over the course of my life, I was always a person with a natural inclination to learn new knowledge. During primary school, I was always the second person to enter the library after the librarian herself. I love most books about sciences, especially the one that was about the relationship between different things. This is why topics such as ecosystem, urbanism, psychology, economics, and engineering are always my favorite.

Putting things into practice is also what I love to do as well. At the secondary school, I cultivated earthworm to sell the worm and its byproduct using the technique that I had learned from English website, 5 years before this technique become popular. From time to time, I always have little projects that arise from what I have read such as writing technology blog, cross-breeding fern from spore, video editing, and programming.

I studied at Mahidol Wittayanusorn School which was a young research-oriented high school inspired by Korea Science Academy of KAIST. This is the first time I began to read about the success story of South Korea and 'The Miracle on the Han River'. Couple this with the fact that I was originally growing up in a drug infested community before moving out later. These built up my personal motivation toward social issues and led me to engage in the off-campus clubs such as Ma-dee and ALA which focuses on activism and social entrepreneur during the university years.

At Chulalongkorn University, I studied Civil Engineering which includes broad range of subjects relating to understand the nature such as hydrology or geology as well as the application of science and technology to deal with or get the best result out of surrounding condition. My favorite subjects during the time were on logistics and transportation engineering where I fell in love with the elements of system analysis and planning within them. During my junior year, I took a step toward my passion by securing the position in a program by the Thai government which allow me to work as project planner at Royal Irrigation Department (RID) right after my graduation.

At RID, I learned first-hand how one of the biggest government organization plan, study, and initiate the infrastructure projects while also got an insight on government's perspective and the limitation on the structure and practitioner level. During my career, I work with mapping, spatial analysis, and hydrological modeling software as well as interacting with local communities. Despite a lack of experience, I worked hard to contribute to the team by reorganizing GIS databases for practicality while also teaching English to my coworkers on a daily basis.

I became the youngest member in RID's Young Professional (YP) on irrigation after a competition and the interview with top level officers. I then join YPs for International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID) and attend the 2nd World Irrigation Forum. In this event I work in an international environment while also broaden my view on development situation in different countries from the perspective of both senior professionals and the younger generation.

Now, I aimed to move forward to the research path on planning, infrastructure, and economic development. This will allow me to utilize the experience I learned throughout my career, while also address both my passion in addressing social issues and explore the unknown. Master's degree with extensive research environment will be a significant stepping stone toward my research career. Thailand was not there yet especially in this specific area while South Korea is always among the top on my list. One example apart from Korean success story and academic reputation is Korea Development Institute (KDI) which, in the recent decade, risen to become one of the top think tanks globally in the area of development policy.

Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Seoul National University, founded with a principle to utilize multiple disciplinary to solve the issues involve planning and development. The program in Urban and Regional Planning comes with a number of elective courses and professor from various background, from urban theories to geography, economics, engineering, etc. which is unique compared to the same program from other places. I am truly confident that by getting Korean Government Scholarship Program, I will receive an invaluable experience that will help attain my ambitions and reach my true potential in the future.

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Essays / Current research of your interest and a professor-mentor. [2]

First off, I'm sorry for my mistake about the rule of this forum. I did post unrelated thing in other thread (essayforum.com/scholarship/great-impact-dna-human-sop-stuck-study-plan-75521)

Now, I have no idea how to delete or edit that reply, the option did not visible anymore, is there anything I can do at this point? Just hope for the best (or goodbye and thank you)...

To my essay question.

According to @Holt suggesting on study Plan in other thread below (essayforum.com/scholarship/sop-goal-study-title-subject-research-detailed-75457/)

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5. What is the current research that the university is doing in your line of interest? Does it align with the problem that you hope to resolve with your own research?

and

6. Is there a specific professor you want to mentor you as you write your thesis? What makes you think that he / she would be able to help you further advance your research?

In my case, one professor has track records of involvement in the area that I interest, but he did not mention much about utilizing computational methodology and I am only able to find two papers that were in Korean with his name in english. Then, the school has other 2 professors with research that utilized those and other interesting computational methods but they normally apply it for different things.

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What should I talk about in this part of my study plan? Thank you

Scholarship / 'A step toward future' <<< My study plan for KGSP (Uni Track) [6]

o Goal of study, title or subject of research, and detailed study plan

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project planner like myself

My goal in pursuing Master's Degree in City and Regional Planning is to equip myself with a comprehensive understanding of how infrastructure and spatial system works together and have an impact on the standard of living. My experience during both undergraduate and professional career covered two of the most significant infrastructure types which are transportation and water management. In my Bachelor's research, I explored the bottle-neck in airport's ground support equipment by created a simulation model based on specification and actual operations in the airport. Still, it was an idealistic model for the semi-controlled system, however, it did give an idea to the manager of how certain equipment might be the main cause of the delay in the operation.

On the other hand, during my career in irrigation planning, the work was not only about an understanding of the function of infrastructure and water management theory, but the major concern also involves social, economics, policy, and political aspect of the location. Due to its complexity, GIS becomes helpful in analyze, visualize, and model different spatial dataset together. This helps project planner like myself to understand the situation in the area before having field job in the area.

In 2015, United Nations adopted Sustainable Development Goals for the next 15 years, many of which emphasize the importance of comprehensive infrastructure planning to promote both sustainability and well-being of the society. Nowadays, there are many innovations and trends that will have an impact on future of planning. The main player was a technological advancement in Data Analysis/Mining, Geographic Information Science, and Artificial Neural Network which led to a more advanced technique in spatial-temporal modeling, planning, and research.

Graduate School of Environmental Study is the heart of the development of South Korea with most faculties have positions in many planning and research committee both in the country and on the international stage. This advantage of being a professional school in the research university make GSES the best of both world with promin ent alumni as both professional planner, policy maker, and researcher. As a person who has my future plan in research, I am interested in the work by [*Prof Name 1*] which focuses on spatial analysis and model for studying regional economy. Also, I aimed to join [*LabName*] where [*Prof Name 2*] is the director to immerse myself in an integrated research environment with others who have passion in research from the different major of study. Moreover, varieties of courses provided by the program are also something that captured my interest.

My plan to study in the program is that, during the 1st semester, I planned to learn my way around the campus, people, resources, and opportunities while also enroll in theory and fundamental courses to grasp most of the necessary concepts in my area of interest. This will help me begin to draft my research proposal for my topics.

The 2nd semester will be where I take applied courses to gain practical skills in utilizing tools and methodology in research. I will finish my research proposal under the instruction of my research advisor and start to carry out my research before the beginning of the next semester.

I aimed to do my research on applying modern study in spatial modeling to study infrastructure system and regional development focusing on the vulnerability of infrastructure system and the impact of it considering the current state of habitation and economic activity in the area. This is a crucial topic for all especially in poorer countries where life is at stake. This research will also be an important step for me to specialize and contribute to the research and practice in this area.

The 3rd semester is for specialize courses such as economics or other courses that will benefit my research. At the end of this semester, I will get at least 30 credits out of 33 required by the program and 21 required to take the test for thesis submission. My research is expected to be finished in final semester and got published in the international academic journal. In this last semester, I will also seek for an opportunity to advance my research experience even further, hopefully at the research center in Korea after graduation.