Korean Style

As the new school year approaches, I have realized something. My parents have slowly, but surely, been changing things in my life so that it is very similar to that of a normal, studying child in South Korea. You may be wondering, what is this life? Well, to be honest, I have only heard about this life from either my parents or other people, so I haven't really experienced it myself, but from what I've heard it's a tough life. Basically, what happens is, as they enter into either middle school or high school, their parents start to lose a bunch of money sending the kids into a bunch of different things. These range from academies, where the kids learn things that they should be learning in school, but the teachers don't teach because they assume the kids have already learned from the academies, to music, and some taekwondo in between. The parents have to make a whole ton of money so that the kid at least be at the same level as the other students in the same grade. Now, I haven't been sent to academies, but my parents don't make the amount that those people in Korea have to in order to get their kids into the academy.

I probably am just thinking this, while it's not true at all, but it just feels like it might end up with a similar lifestyle, with a bunch more sleep, of course. The kids in Korea... they usually get around 3-4 hours of sleep a night, if they're lucky. This is due to the many hours that they are in academies and things. Usually the latest of academies is over around 2am, so they have to head home, do all their homework and they can finally go to sleep, only to wake up in a few hours to start the process over again. My parents, luckily for me, have allowed me to stay at home and study at my own pace. Nothings horrible, just SAT practice. I enjoy it because I can goof off occasionally, while still making a bit of progress on my studies. What's new is that my parents have entered me into a piano class in order to increase my knowledge in the area of piano, in case I fail at studying engineering and I end up having to make money by teaching children how to play piano instead. I'm glad that they care. So, my schedule... at least to me, seems a bit busier than it was before. The basic layout of my schedule now consists of school, piano, and taekwondo. Piano and Taekwondo probably will be changing every day, so that will be fun. Hopefully, all this will pay off in the end.

I think I lost concentration in the middle of this, so I apologize if this ends up not making sense. I figured I would just write something.

-Sam Rho