For many UNIS Hanoi alumni, the path after graduation is a straight line toward a predictable destination. For Raena Park (Class of 2011), the journey was a jagged and beautiful detour that stretched from the lecture halls of Seoul’s law schools to the gritty, creative energy of New York City’s art scene.
Today, Raena is a sculptor and an illustration major at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in NYC. But before she was shaping clay and context, she was memorising statutes. Her story is a powerful reminder to our community, both current students and fellow alumni, that it is never too late to trade “the most responsible answer” for the most authentic one.
The “Logical” Choice
Like many young adults, Raena’s initial career choice was driven by a universal human emotion: fear.
“My sense of what I could become was constrained by fear: fear of financial instability, fear of choosing a path the world might not validate,” Raena shares. In 2012, she enrolled at Hongik University to study law. On paper, it was a perfect plan, offering a stable income and a respectable career.
However, the reality of the legal world began to stifle the creative spark that had been flickering since her childhood at UNIS Hanoi. While her peers found clarity in legal briefs, Raena found solace only in the physical act of writing, specifically the sensation of a ballpoint pen moving across a page. She now recognises that what sustained her was not the law itself, but the act of making.
The Turning Point
After earning her degree and interning at a law firm, Raena reached a crossroads. Despite checking every box for a fulfilled life, her interior world felt uncertain. She found that she lacked the emotional detachment the work required, finding it impossible to separate herself from the weight of each person’s case.
The decision to pivot to the arts was an act of personal accountability. “I kept returning to one question: do I want to wake up one day and ask myself why I never pursued what truly made me happy? The answer was simply no.”
With the courageous support of her family, who recognised that happiness cannot be prescribed, Raena moved to New York to begin again.
The UNIS Hanoi Foundation
Though her path was non-linear, Raena traces her resilience back to the classrooms of UNIS Hanoi, where she studied from Grade 4 to Grade 11. She credits a pivotal moment in the fourth grade for changing her worldview forever. After she pointed out a classmate's “error”, a teacher gently explained that a different approach wasn't wrong, just different.
“In Korean, the words for wrong (틀리다) and different (다르다) are often confused,” she explains. “Learning to distinguish between them was, in its own small way, a profound act of unlearning.”
This lesson in intellectual courage and kindness became the operating system for her life. It gave her the strength to see her years in law not as a mistake, but as a vital context. Today, she uses the analytical skills she honed in law school to build the ideologies behind her sculptures.
Finding Joy In The Process
Now thriving in New York, Raena finds liberation in the democratic nature of the art world. Unlike the legal field, there is no singular correct answer or universal criterion for what is right.
For those in the UNIS community who may be unsure about following their own passions, Raena offers this perspective: "Accountability is the foundation of a life well-lived. Whatever decision you make, the consequences belong to you. And that is not a burden; it is a form of dignity."
“Be brave,” she says. “The path that is most authentically yours will rarely be the most obvious one, but it will always be the most worth taking.”
Raena Park is currently based in New York City. Find out more about her work here.
- Alumni News