“Recently, students seem to avoid hardship. If they really want to become a designer, hardship is essential. Overcoming the hardships, people can raise their value more than before.” The designer Kang sung-do, whom I met in the Seoul Fashion Work building, emphasized the word ‘hardships’, while swinging both arms and knitting his brows. I think it doesn’t only apply to becoming a designer but also to having any job or doing any work.  
  I’m a student majoring public administration. Most of my department students want to become public servants. One day, in the class, a major professor asked us, “How many of you want to become a public servant?” Then, 56 out of 60 students raised their hands. The professor asked one more question, “Why do you guys want to do it?” They said that the job guarantees safety and stability, so they don’t have to be worried about hardships. After these students replied, I looked around the class and saw my friends’ faces. They all seemed to agree. I felt weird. Do they think safety and stability are the  main reasons to choose their occupations? Did they consider their own aptitudes and interests before deciding to be a public servant? Those two questions came up in my mind. Surely, I don’t want to conclude that all people who are dreaming of becoming public servants are cowards avoiding hardship. My point is we have to think about their reasoning.
  I am pretty sure that we make stability as an important standard when we think about our own jobs. In addition, if people choose a job which has a possibility of hardships, like unstable money or hard competition, we say to them, “Wake up friend! You don’t know the world. Every job has hardships, so you should choose a relatively safe job.”
  A more surprising thing is this; one article, which was in the Han Kook Il Bo on May 7th, showed the results of some job research. The Korean Teachers & Educational Workers’ Union in Gyeongsangnam-do surveyed 921 elementary students, who are in 5th to 6th grade, about their future jobs. The result was that ‘public servant & teacher’ was chosen as the most favorable occupations, with 29.3%(270 students) in total. Even the elementary students who are mostly focused on their own interests and aptitudes now consider stability as the first thing when choosing a job. How terrible it is!
  After society developed and the Industrial Revolution started to divide the work, there had been many jobs and they are still being created. Lots of books and sites like ‘Career Net’ are being created to inform people about a lot of job information. However, we are just ignoring these things and think that stability and safety are the most important standards when we choose our jobs. What is that showing the world? Maybe we are so afraid of hardships that we are trying to avoid difficult situations.