On Dropping Out of High School (Written in 2024)

Looking back on my life, there are a few mysteries.

One mystery is the time when I was 17 and 18.

When I think about it now, how did I — so young — endure those things? It baffles me.

I have no memory at all of the year I was 18.

Whether it was because it was too painful, or because of the effects of treating my mind, I don't know.

Age 16, around the time my third year of middle school was drawing to a close.

As I moved on to high school, I was determined to live in the school dormitory, no matter what.

The first reason was that I wanted to devote myself entirely to studying for the college entrance exam,

and the second was that I wanted to escape the somewhat turbulent atmosphere at home back then.

At 17, I enrolled at a private high school in a provincial town.

Anyway, for a year I did nothing but study. Nothing but study.

My one duty was to study. And I wanted to get into medical school, earn a lot of money, and live a happy life.

I was weak at math.

So math was what I studied hardest.

In the end, my math grade rose from a tier-3 in the first semester of first year,

to a tier-1 — the top tier — in the second semester, and I finished the year ranked in the single digits across the entire school.

But the problem lay elsewhere.

Still, back when I was in high school, the student record — the haksaengbu — was what mattered. Being good at studying alone wasn't enough to get into the university you wanted. Back then I truly knew nothing. I thought that if I just studied, I could get into the medical school I wanted. But what I came to realize while attending the school was — thinking about it now — that what you really needed was an impressive student record: one in which fabricated, dressed-up logs of in-school and out-of-school activities had been unscrupulously funneled onto a handful of select students. At that small provincial school, because I did well academically, I ended up shouldering quite a few responsibilities. One time, the school held a science competition. I had planned to enter as a team with a friend who was genuinely kind-hearted and quite close to me. The head teacher of our grade quietly called me aside. “Why don't you team up with students who study a bit better?” That was, without a doubt, meant for my benefit — because teaming up with more capable students was how you'd win an award.

Honestly, looking back now — at most ordinary schools, the model students quietly study and the kids who cause trouble are a separate bunch. But at my school the atmosphere was strangely one where the kids who studied well and came from fairly well-off families were the ringleaders of school violence, bullying, vicious insults about people's parents, and profanity. The school was called Salesio High School, and apparently its reputation in the area is still bad to this day.

One of those high-achieving students the head teacher had suggested I team up with had serious character problems and always had a tendency to take the lead in ostracizing or tormenting the weaker kids. I hadn't been harmed directly, but I had once nearly been ostracized myself, and I had also grown more distant from that student than I'd been at the start of the semester — so I found it hard to accept the suggestion to be on the same team. But back then I think I was just far too timid. I couldn't get a single word of it out to the teacher, and I simply burst into tears. I just came to hate everyone, and to hate that school. I think I cried in the teachers' office for a really long time that day.

And from around then, I stopped going to school. I came to hate everything. Honestly, everything became frightening. And something like a mild persecution complex set in. It felt as if all the students and teachers were speaking negatively about me, and indeed, once I started showing a weakened, changed version of myself, the friends around me grew worried too. At the same time, the thought kept overwhelming me that the kids who had felt a strange jealousy toward me — a model student who got plenty of support from the school — were out to attack me. Those things may have been my own private delusions, but the school itself really was a place where harsh profanity and family-insults were everyday occurrences. I was struggling so much mentally that I asked my parents to arrange psychiatric counseling, and in the spring of my second year I dropped out of high school.

For me, the year I was 18 — 2016 — is gone. I have almost no memory of it at all.

For nearly a year I slept a great deal at home,

while keeping up with various rounds of counseling and treatment.

It must have been truly hard not only for me but for my parents as well.

Because their son — a model student who had done well — had suddenly become like that.

In 2017, I had to get back on my feet. Surely I still had to sit the Suneung, the college entrance exam.

I took the high-school equivalency exam and enrolled at a nearby cram school.

Of course, back in my first year I had done a fair amount of advance study on my own, up through roughly the second-year curriculum,

but the thread of my studies had been completely severed.

In 2017, much like Korea's turbulent political situation at the time, my own mind was far from settled.

In the end I sat the Suneung in the “Olympic spirit” — it's the taking part that counts — and came away with a disappointing score.

In 2018, I had to prepare properly. I resolved to study on my own, through online lectures.

That whole year, studying was a joy in itself.

I could gain new knowledge, train myself, and picture a hopeful future.

That November, the Korean-language section was brutally hard. Buoyed by my mock-exam scores, I had been confident, and my goal was Seoul National University. To get in, I had to get nearly every question right.

In the end, a study method and a goal consumed by perfectionism turned into poison for me.

In the end, the composure that cracked in the very first period brought down my entire exam.

For about a month I was swallowed by frustration, but I had to shake it off and get back up.

In the end, being realistic, I entered a national university in the provinces and got a small taste of college life.

But a sense of regret always lingered in my heart.

And in July 2019, I resolved to try once more.

For about five months, I cleared my mind and studied.

A friend from middle school whom I met at the study hall back then is still a good friend today — one I root for, and who roots for me in return.

What I gained during this time includes the university I now attend,

but in a way — given my age — that friend who toiled alongside me through what amounted to my third run at the exam,

I feel grateful that I was able to meet him as well.

I earned a fairly excellent Suneung score, and an essay-based admission exam I had taken just in case came through, so I enrolled at the university I now attend.

Anyway, looking back, my teens through my early twenties were a genuine struggle.

My college years afterward had their disappointing sides because of COVID,

but for about two years after that, I spent my time so sociably, so spontaneously, so smoothly — so genuinely happily — that I have no regrets.

The countless friends I met in college probably have no idea that I once went through a somewhat difficult time.

Going to the university I'm at now, I gained so much confidence. I took up exercise, and I learned how to take care of myself.

And now, in 2024, I'm striving toward yet another leap.

The reason I wrote this is that, while studying for the certified accountant exam right now,

I was trying, in my own way, to find a reason to work hard — and this came to mind.

Now, let me steady my mind and study.

Daniel

Sept 1, 2024, 3:29 a.m. · Private

2014,

2015,

2016,

2017,

2018,

2019,

2020,

2021,

2022,

2024.