Once training is completed, monks chose from different ways of life. Some monks go to university; some are called upon (especially as they get older) to do administrative jobs. Sometimes a group will decide to do a three-year long meditation retreat; sometimes monks will go abroad to teach. Often, they will change, too. A teaching monk, for example, may return to meditation for a time.

Many monks and nuns specialize in a particular activity. There are famous artists, there are professors, doctors, a dentist and so on. One of the most popular "professions" to chose is calligraphy. Because of the heavy reliance on Chinese characters and the traditional respect given to the learned and artistic, a calligrapher is a special person in Korean society. Below we have used the Confucian gentleman as our subject. Today, although there are a lot of monks who do calligraphy, there are still many laypeople as well. (In fact, if you should visit a class, you'd be surprised at the number of people who plan their life around calligraphy!) Let us take a look at: