Artist and Entrepreneur Michael “MK” Kim ‘15 Shares Unpredictable Life Story at Assembly
By ELLEN JIN, ALLEGRA LAI and LAUREN LEE
On Friday, April 5, alumnus and acclaimed artist Michael “MK” Kim ‘16 visited the Academy to share his story and give life advice to students. MK sat in a wooden chair, alone in the center of the Assembly Hall stage. After a brief narration of his unpredictable personal and professional journey, he opened the floor to student questions.
MK was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and grew up in Orange County, CA. In middle school, his mother fell sick and his family fell short on money, so they moved to another town, moving between hotels. MK attended one year of public high school before being admitted to the Academy as a repeat prep, but after a year, he decided to leave Exeter because of his family’s situation. During the rest of his high school years, Kim’s family was homeless, living out of their car, but eventually was able to get the support they needed for housing.
MK received the opportunity to return to Exeter as a post-graduate to pursue his dream of playing golf at a Division 1 school. He attended Davidson College, but decided after a few months that being a golfer was not truly his dream. He began studying investment banking and finance in order to help support his family financially, but after his sophomore year of college, he left and decided to explore his creative side with clothing and art interests instead.
Art by Bella Jin / The Exonian
Students were impressed by Kim’s vulnerability throughout the talk. “I think the highlight of this assembly was learning about how he juggled his own personal life back home with his Exeter life,” said upper Miyu Nakamura.
“I really appreciated MK’s willingness to be vulnerable about the full breadth of his journey, both the highs and the lows,” added upper Rishi Gurudevan. “We often hear solely about the successes and accomplishments of many speakers. It was a breath of fresh air to hear from someone who chose a path unconventional for an Exeter student and the honest range of risks and rewards associated with such a choice.”
MK intended to convey not only technical knowledge but how he learned to best understand himself and communicate his thoughts. “The main point is you need to experience things to figure out what your style is, then you need to experience more things and learn to express it yourself,” said MK.
Though MK is a well-established professional, he wanted to emphasize the fact that he himself is still on a journey of self discovery. He added, “I’m still trying to navigate growing up as a human being. I’m trying to navigate my relationship with my family. I’m trying to navigate my relationships with my friends. In my speech, I really tried to make it clear that these people play key roles in me being able to get to where I am.”
In contrast to other speakers, MK allocated the majority of his speech time to an interactive question-and-answer portion. “I don’t know how often you guys get to have conversations with people who are in their early to mid 20s or even late 20s, so I wanted to come and kind of provide that perspective and say, ‘Okay, here’s somebody who on paper has done a lot, but I think developmentally still has more to accomplish,’ and bring that conversation to you guys. Hopefully you guys can have the same conversation with yourselves,” MK explained. “You guys are all different, both personally as well as where you guys are within Exeter, how you guys view Exeter, where you’re going to college, etc. So there’s no way for me to be able to give one speech that I think applies to everybody. Instead I said, ‘Okay, let me just have a much more personal, human conversation about topics that I feel like Exeter doesn’t do a very good job talking about.’”
Upper Sophia Jia touched on the Q&A format of the assembly and the opportunity it presented for students to connect better with the speaker. “I think someone asked a question about if he believes that traditional education will well equip you for a creative job, and his answer was really good. He talked about how there are obviously aspects of traditional education, a four-year high school, a four-year college education that are really valuable. But also for the creative field, what really matters is human interaction and life experience.”
MK also spoke to the importance of his life experiences, and how those aspects of himself contributed to the uniqueness of his art. “I am the product of my experiences, right? I think the more experience that you have, the more comprehensive idea you have of who you are as a person. The more comprehensive idea that you have of who you are as a person, the more likely you are to be able to communicate that through your creative outlet. I think you need to take that time to explore, figure out who you are, what you like, how you like to communicate it, and what that looks like in real life to other people.”
As an artist, MK emphasized the importance of giving himself breaks and the space to creatively explore. This led him back to his original tenor, where he openly embraced his still-developing artistic journey and career. To him, these breaks not only prevented burnout, but provided him with the time to spend with his loved ones, while also creating the space and mentality to make the best products possible. “It sets more realistic expectations. No matter how good I thought I was, or how talented, or how many things I had experienced, the reality is I’ve been meeting people and doing this for 20+ years. They’re sharing their perspectives with me, which makes me understand the journey’s a lot longer than I thought. If anything, I should enjoy the fact that I was in a situation where things were going well and go from there,” MK said.
“So I think once I realized that and I gave myself that room to say ‘You know what? I don’t have to have everything figured out. I can figure some stuff out now, I can figure some stuff out later. And I’ve already figured some stuff out that other people are working on,’ it just took the weight off,” MK continued.
“The second thing is I think it helped develop space creatively. Before that, I think I was still in the mindset where I needed to make it seem like I had everything figured out all the time. I think that translated into my work. I felt like everything I made had to be perfect. That’s not realistic. It’s also not good for my mental health or my creative process. I just don’t think it led to the best product.” MK said.
The breaks were also a healthy way to reconnect with the people in his life. “It is also important because it helps you understand how to prioritize your time. For two years, I wasn’t really connecting with my family, or my friends and it was just all work all the time because I wanted to figure it out. Now that I’m a little further along in my journey, I understand that I have to accept I’m not going to be able to control everything. Instead, I give myself the room to go and do things unrelated to work. Eventually the imbalance catches up to you and you’ll pay the cost for that. These realizations have given me more comfort in intentionally creating a work-life balance and understanding I can still accomplish all the things I want, and get to where I want to, but in a more sustainable way,” MK added.
On his breaks, MK allows himself the space for creative reinvention and perfecting his craft. The journey is a continuous line that reflects MK as a person and his growth. “That’s where there is a difference between a project versus what your style is. Your style should be consistent through all of your work, but if you keep trying to do the same thing over and over again, that’s where you’re gonna run into a block,” MK said.
“Say, I’m a music artist, I just dropped the album. The likelihood of me wanting to make the same exact album again, just better, is pretty low. As a creative person, I probably want to make something new, right? The break process allows me to start something new, but also figure out how my style translates. The goal is to figure out how to make it one continuous body of work. This allows the fan that’s following to understand it’s still me. It’s still the artist that they fell in love with, just expressed in a new way.” MK expanded.
With his inspiring story, MK was able to captivate the audience, and his providing of an open Q&A format was well received by students. “I know that definitely when he was doing the Q&A, there were a good amount of people participating. If we have more speakers that kind of do that for the next couple of assemblies, there will be more comfort and confidence from the students to participate even more,” added Nakamura.
Students also reflected on the need for diversity amongst assembly speakers. “I think it was really nice because he was in his late 20s. I feel like a lot of the assembly speakers we have are 50 to 60 years old and it’s significantly harder to relate to them when they say something to the effect of, ‘Oh, I made my first million by the time I was 30.’ It was a bit more relatable to have someone who was closer to our age. He talked about an unconventional path to success, which was very inspirational,” said lower Asha Masoudi.
Jia agreed: “My general takeaway is that you can be successful even if you take the non-traditional way of education.”