In this blog post, I’ll summarize my academic efforts, extracurricular activities, acts of kindness, and personal growth during my high school years.

Let’s Make Ourselves—Not Others—Our Competitors

Whenever I’m struggling, I still turn to a video of ballerina Kang Soo-jin that aired on the show “Kneepack Dosa.” Kang Soo-jin is South Korea’s first internationally recognized ballerina and is regarded as a world-class cultural treasure—unique not only in Korea but across the globe. In that program, she calmly recounted how she, having been born and raised in Korea, was able to rise to such heights. As I listened to her story, one part stood out most to me: “I had no time to worry about others; competing with myself was all that mattered.” When she entered a world-renowned ballet school—a place where she couldn’t communicate or even understand the local food—what drove Kang Soo-jin, who was feeling overwhelmed by the pressure, was not comparison with others, but the strength she drew from keeping her promise to herself and practicing endlessly. Witnessing that, I found myself reflecting deeply.
Up until then, while studying, I had been overly preoccupied with questions like, “Is someone studying harder than me?” or “Is someone spending more time studying than I am?” I would feel jealous if someone suddenly started doing well in school, and I’d fret constantly about my grades dropping. As a result, I naturally ended up feeling a lot of stress from things unrelated to my studies. Studying while constantly worrying about others even gave me stomachaches.
But after hearing ballerina Kang Su-jin’s words, I realized something: I needed to keep my promise to myself and stop worrying about others. So from that point on, I stopped worrying about how others were studying or where I stood in the rankings; I focused solely on my own study situation. I planned for today—not tomorrow—and concentrated on what I needed to study that day. As a result, I felt at ease and was able to study with a much lighter heart and mind. It was then that I think I realized the importance of focusing on my own studies and maintaining a calm mindset no matter the situation. Thanks to that, I was able to enjoy my time preparing for the college entrance exams, and I’m still doing so today.

My Encounter with the Teacher Who Inspired Me to Read and Think for the First Time

I liked reading, but I always read books just to write book reports; I had almost never read a book simply for the pleasure of it. However, after meeting a college student mentor, my life changed.
At the time, I had signed up for a mentoring program at my school. The mentoring program connected college students with high school students, helping them with study methods and facilitating communication, so that the college students, as seniors leading the way, could guide the high school students. Through that program, I met a wonderful mentor. He majored in Social Education and was extremely knowledgeable about history and literature. And above all, his “perspective” was different.
Up until then, I had been in the habit of summarizing the plot whenever I read a book, thinking I had to write a book report. But my mentor advised me not to read that way—instead, she encouraged me to literally immerse myself in the book. At first, I didn’t quite understand what she meant. I didn’t realize there was anything else to reading besides grasping the content. But after I felt a strong connection with a character in a book for the first time, I realized, “Ah, this is what reading a book is really about.” From that moment on, I began striving to understand the characters. As I encountered countless characters in books, I developed my understanding by discussing those encounters with my teacher. As a result, I began to grasp more and more, and I found a wide variety of things to be fascinating. I came to understand people I had previously struggled to comprehend, and I gained a deeper understanding of the world. As a result, reading became even more enjoyable, and beyond that, meeting people and studying also became more fun.
I feel that this was the most meaningful time of my life because I seized the opportunity to meet a great teacher, which allowed me to study with enjoyment and spend time thinking deeply.

Attending lectures to learn more and connect with more people

Another enjoyable experience was something that happened while participating in the “Lecture Club.”
Our school has a lecture club, which was created with the aim of seeking out and acquiring knowledge that cannot be obtained through the school curriculum. I found the process of absorbing new knowledge to be enjoyable, and by joining the lecture club, I was able to attend a wide variety of lectures. These days, there are many lectures and related websites aimed not only at teenagers but also at the general public. We made good use of those websites, which allowed us to gain new knowledge.
Through this experience, I realized that seeking out knowledge is incredibly enjoyable. Rather than just sitting passively and listening, actively going out, engaging with the content, and asking questions proved to be a truly excellent way to gain knowledge. It was also a joyful experience to be able to interact with so many people. The lecture hall was a gathering place for people like us who were eager to explore, and there, people of all ages and genders communicated freely with one another.

Starting Voluntary Work to Organize and Clean Books

As I began to love books, I started visiting the library frequently. Going there to look at and read books gave me a lot to think about and brought me great joy. Then, one day, I suddenly noticed that the books were getting dirty. The popular books, in particular, were dirty, and some were even torn. I brought them to my teacher, but there were far too many for her to handle alone. I used to bring the torn books to the teacher whenever I found them, but then I thought, “Instead of just doing that, why don’t I help out myself?”
So, I carved out time during lunch and after school to work with the teacher on book repair. At first, I didn’t have enough time, but as I got more accustomed to the process, I became more skilled at wrapping and taping the books, allowing me to repair a large number of them in a short time. We started from Book 1, and now we’ve almost finished going through the entire collection and are starting over from the beginning.
There were two things I realized while handling and repairing the books. First, “there really are a lot of books.” People have a very strong desire to acquire knowledge and to share the knowledge they already possess. That’s why novels and books on various subjects keep coming out endlessly. While organizing the books, I was able to handle such a wide variety of them—books I would never have seen if I hadn’t been doing this work. From books on education to those on science and theories I knew little about, the selection was truly diverse. It was a time when I realized just how many books there are in the world. The second thing was the “sense of fulfillment” I felt while volunteering. Occasionally, while organizing books, I’d see friends delighted to find a book they’d previously had torn pages in now neatly organized, or I’d hear them whisper how good it felt to touch a book wrapped in a beautiful cover. Every time that happened, I felt a sense of pride. I realized that even if no one explicitly thanked me, seeing others enjoy the results of my work brought me happiness.

My parents, who showed me how to live a calm life

The people who influenced me the most during my childhood were my parents. My parents faced a major crisis when I was in kindergarten. The lingerie shop they ran had to close. The economy suddenly took a turn for the worse, and as neighboring merchants shut down their shops, foot traffic dried up. The business, which had been struggling to stay afloat, eventually went under. As a result, my parents naturally began to struggle more and more. My mother, who had run her own shop, had to go work for other households, and my father had to move to the countryside to work on construction sites. We moved to a smaller house, and even though we were too young to fully understand what was happening, my younger siblings and I made a pact not to cry because our family was struggling.
But even in the midst of all that, my parents quietly endured and carried on. My father, in particular, showed great resilience. He went about his work calmly day after day and sent every penny of his daily wages home without keeping a single won for himself. Every night, he would call us to remind us to take good care of our mother, to make sure we ate, cleaned up, and studied on our own, and to start the next day with a cheerful attitude. For us, receiving my father’s call every night was part of our routine. If my father had ever shown signs of hardship or fatigue back then and simply left us to our own devices, we—and my siblings—would not be here today. And my mother always put on a smile, no matter how hard things were. Thanks to the influence of both of them, I was able to grow up upright and healthy.

A childhood that exposed me to diverse ways of living

As a child living in the market district, I saw many different kinds of people. All sorts of things happen there—it’s a place where people live amidst thefts and fights. And I really loved that these experiences were woven into literature. Books contained those glimpses of life, and they allowed me to reflect on my childhood, which was difficult yet joyful. That is why I decided to apply to the Department of Korean Language and Literature—because I want to study literature that embodies real life.

The desire to study literature infused with life

I have just one plan for after I’m admitted: I want to study literature thoroughly. First, I’ll invest a lot of time in reading books. I think that’s the very first thing I need to do. Second, through my classes, I want to learn various ways of reading literature and hone the skills to express it in diverse ways. That’s why I aspire to become someone who can think and feel in a variety of ways. Third, I want to study while experiencing a variety of lifestyles. I don’t want to limit myself to just reading books; I want to gain diverse experiences by volunteering, interacting with people who love or dislike books, and working part-time jobs. I believe these diverse experiences will serve as a foundation for appreciating literature—just as reading books brought me joy when I recalled my childhood in the beginning.