The painful reality of High school students life in South Korea
If you want to continue living and provide food, you have to get a college degree, but do you really take it for granted? High school students in South Korea live their lives saying “I want to drop out of school, I want to kill myself”, instead of “I need help, save me”.
Don’t we all strive to earn money to live, provide a house, food and drink, pay bills, get married and then have children, so we can support ourselves and our new family that we have formed?… But to be able to provide all that everyone goes through a similar and difficult stage, which is the last year of high school…
In the morning, the students come to school completely demoralized and before they even attend the first 3 classes they ask, “What will be served for lunch today?” -> If the food is good, then this will give them a morale boost to endure the morning classes. But if the food is bad, they will feel bad from the start. Then they would eat lunch and go back to class and attend the rest of the afternoon classes. Students fall asleep if they have any free time here and there.
After school they head to the academy. And then they eat dinner. Then they go to the library (study room) or home to study more or do homework until late at night and then go to sleep. And in the morning they repeat everything…
As the school year goes on, they will notice that they have never been able to wear anything other than sportswear besides their school clothes. Even if they bought nice clothes, they wouldn’t have a chance to wear them.
Nosebleeds are their only friend. Nervousness, fear, and anxiety accompany them every night while doing their studies in their room alone. They cannot express their feelings about the academic pressure to their parents. Because their parents went through the same stage and survived, they are not less than them. “I shouldn’t eat a lot.” Why? If I feel full, all the blood will go to my stomach for digestion instead of my brain, and then I will not be able to focus on studying.
Children will gather together to talk about universities and grades, and a hidden competition will begin, especially among those who take the exams. And the most comptative about the who studying process are always the parents. Whenever there is an exam nearby, there will be a strange atmosphere of competition and the children will be more aware of each other and their energy will be drained by this atmosphere.
Kids who are obsessed with their exams will lead a miserable life in high school by kowtowing to teachers for three straight years, attending all school events, writing all their records (everything they did in school including grades, how well they did, etc.) and busy taking care of their grades.
Ordinary children will have mood swings whenever there is a surprise test or whenever the exam period is approaching. If they were lagging behind in their studies, it would be very difficult for them to succeed. They will be under a lot of stress and anxiety since the entrance exam only gives you one chance to enter.
And if you make it to your last year of high school, ordinary kids will feel so bad about everything they’ve done so far, and they wish they had studied hard from the start. But it’s already too late. They will want to improve their grades in their last year and even kids who do badly at school will start studying harder. And it would be a relief if no one fell.
When it comes time to send out resumes, all the kids will pick up their notebooks and walk around anxiously. Kids will start crowding into the corridors to study and avoid the places that have bad auras, which are the places where kids who are obsessed with entrance exams or kids with the lowest scores congregate.
To get a decent salary, you have to go to university, those who go to reputable (TOP) universities have more chances to get a job, but even if there is only a university with a low reputation, or if it is in a rural area, attend it and get a university degree, don’t Forget why you started this in the first place, you forgot how to live a quiet life since the first year of high school, do not forget that you did this to get an income so that you could live, instead of committing suicide like other young people, and for this reason South Korea is the country that has the highest suicide rates among young people “ because they only know how to scream kill me instead of save me”
This is the life of high school students in Korea.
