No. 14 Free Loader Feature: Joon Park

Joon Park is featured in No. 14 Free Loader with his piece, Do We Deserve the American Dream? Joon was born in South Korea, but grew up in New York. He is a software engineer, music composer and a writer. We chatted with him about how he became all of these things and what inspired him to write his piece for Beacon Quarterly.

Tell me a little bit about yourself, where did you grow up etc?

I was born in South Korea and grew up in upstate NY (in a little town called Ithaca). I went to school at Northwestern University for my bachelors' in music composition and physics, and since graduation have been living in downtown Chicago - my favorite city. I feel like I'm always trying new things in every aspect of life, but lately I've been focusing on finishing the Wheel of Time series, juggling a few web development side projects, and keeping in touch with faraway friends by playing computer games with them. Before the pandemic I also spent a lot of time trying various Chicago area restaurants or going on hiking or ski trips, depending on the season.

I saw that your day job is software engineer, can you tell us a little bit about your career?

I originally went to school for physics, thinking I'd finish undergrad and follow the typical academic route of being a researcher. The experiences I had with physics research in college were quite rewarding and intellectually fulfilling, but as a side effect of doing research, I learned to code. That skill took on a life of its own when I realized I could use it to build web applications that can instantly make an impact on real people. When compared to the years it takes for physics research to be published, building software seemed to be a more rewarding career option. To my surprise, the course scheduling web app that I had built as a learning tool became popular among Northwestern students, and the experiences from this side project gave me the courage I needed to make the daunting decision of pivoting away from physics late in college. Thankfully I was able to get a job as a frontend software engineer at Grubhub right out of college, and I loved being able to learn so much each day from my amazing teammates and mentors there. This past July I took a new position as a software engineer at Google, working on some of the Google Workspaces products. I feel unbelievably fortunate to be able to make a positive impact on the lives of so many users through the Google products I work on, and even to this day it's sometimes hard to believe I was able to land this opportunity without all of the computer science preparation my peers had in college.

I also saw that you are a music composer, how did you start doing that?

I was a pretty big band geek in high school (I suppose I still am), and my middle school band director was a composer. One day he assigned everyone homework, which was to go home and write a snippet of original music. While all my friends complained about getting homework from band (I know, what a tragedy...) the nerd that I am went home and had a blast noodling around on music notation software. My assignment itself didn't turn out very good, but he encouraged me to continue composing. I think the pivotal moment was the first time I heard something I wrote played by real musicians - there's no feeling in the world quite like it, and even after all these years it's an incredible feeling. Thankfully in high school I had another band director who was immensely encouraging in my musical growth. She spent precious classroom hours letting the band play music that I wrote, so I could learn from the experience - multiple times! I think she was a big reason why I only applied to universities that had a strong music program. Even though I wasn't sure if I'd make a career out of it, composing had become important enough to me that I wanted to study it seriously in college. Fortunately Northwestern, my dream school, had a dual degree program which allowed me to pursue composition to the fullest extent alongside my physics degree. I had some out-of-this-world musical opportunities there and I'm grateful for all the connections I was able to make at the school of music.

What is your favorite type of music to compose?

I have the hardest time answering this question because I still don't quite know what words best describe my music. I think the most clinical definition of it would be contemporary classical, but when I say that to people, each person envisions something completely different. In college I explored a very wide variety of composition mediums, anything from film composition to electronic music. The more music I wrote, the more I found that I gravitated towards my roots as an ensemble musician. So I would probably have to say my favorite type of music to write is for bands and choirs.

What do you think of when you hear the phrase Free Loader?

My first reaction to this phrase is entirely towards its negative connotation, and I find that pretty interesting. I imagine this isn't necessarily true for everyone, though I suppose it's a cultural stamp to consider "getting something for no work" a bad thing. I doubt it would have the strength of connotation it does to me if I didn't so closely align myself with the (flawed) American capitalist ideals. If you've read my piece, you can kind of see where I'm going with this. As an immigrant who now is fortunate enough to find himself in a comfortable situation in life, I sometimes struggle with the emotions associated with my upwards journey. I think those emotions closely aligned with that reaction I got from the phrase Free Loader.

What inspired your piece Do We Deserve the American Dream?

I wrote this piece right as 2020 was changing from "this year might not be so great" to "this might just be one of the worst years of our lives". A lot was on my mind, as I'm sure was true for everyone, but I specifically found myself ruminating often on the idea of how I'm perceived by my peers, especially when everyone was dealing with difficulties. I've always struggled about that perception, and as I often do with thoughts that I need to unspool, I wanted to write about it. Free Loader seemed like the right connection - this idea of "do I deserve this?" I think it's really difficult as someone who has been fortunate in many ways to come out and talk about the complex mix of guilt, impostor syndrome, entitlement, and other emotions that accompany an immigrant's upward journey. If you don't do it in a nuanced way, it can all too often come off as pretentious or ignorant. So as important as this topic was to me, it was also just that much harder to do it justice.

Any upcoming projects?

My writing tends to be sporadic and reactionary so no plans on that front. On the music side, I recently virtually participated in the next Google Orchestra project and I'm excited to be assisting in a more involved role for their next project. I also composed a piece for the Windy City Winds that unfortunately had to be tabled due to the cancellations of their rehearsals, but I'm hoping there will still be a premiere for it after everything has settled down. I've also been floating around an idea or two on how I can still write the music I enjoy writing (which often involves ensembles of people performing together) during this "all-remote" time, so I'm itching to make progress on those!

You can check out more of Joon’s work on his website and twitter, @JoonParkMusic