Believe!

Believe!
By Abby Kim

My two years at GLP have been those of mixed messages and confusion. The naïve, slightly intimidated girl with her crisp new uniform and shiny shoes has run a long lap and found herself a cynical, weary, soon-to-be high school senior with permanent dark circles under her eyes and a penchant for bad jokes. Sure, maybe she’s learned a thing or two in class, and maybe her essays are a little better and she knows what a sonnet is, but other than that, sitting cross-legged on her bed and staring off into space, she can’t remember anything sold enough to slip into her pocket.
That is, if you look at it from the cynical, weary, soon-to-be high school senior’s point of view—the naïve, slightly intimidated girl can look back and see a lot of things worth scrapbooking: the poems that Mr. Bruske made us memorize for extra credit, the coffee Mr. Hidalgo would sometimes give us if we were all falling asleep in class, the GLP excursion to Leeum, the giggly study hall hours during which we would do everything but our homework, Mr. Dranginis’ excoriating-turned-endearing sarcasm, Mr. Lee’s Jay-Z performance, and Mr. Kim’s very very interesting Romeo and Juliet lectures. There are two years’ worth of laughing and singing and all-nighters and caffeinated drinks and learning piled up in my memory shed, and it would be a shame to call that nothing just because it can’t be on a resume.
My memory shed, however, is sometimes locked tight by what I am told constantly—don’t trust your friends too much; they’re your potential competitors, what you love isn’t exactly what’ll send you to college, that party / reunion dinner / trip is a total waste of time you could spend on something else. On top of that, we are perpetually urged to give up our rainbow visions, and our heads are shoved into cold water by strong, ruthless hands.
It is no longer surprising when a ten-year-old kid says that she wants to become a teacher because the job is stable with an ample paycheck. Politics seep through children’s books, movies, and cartoons and kids are disillusioned by society too soon. They no longer inhabit playgrounds but instead fill English and math hagwons, taught by their no doubt well-meaning parents the fundamental rules of competition—you have to crush some heads before you can reach the top.
This rule becomes even more pronounced at Daewon, where a select group of students compete with each other for entrance to prestigious colleges. We see, or rather, are told that we see, the battle unfolding before our eyes, and are under constant pressure to compare and beware. Lofty ideals and ambitions are condemned as impractical. This becomes even more confusing for us because in our GLP classes, we are told to uphold those very ideals, to question hegemonies and power structures.
It’s a mixed message indeed, when we study in a program designed to offer us an opportunity for an escape from the oppression of the Korean education system, to expand and grow into “global leaders”—how can we achieve such elevation when any chance of dreams is cast off?
Therefore we clash, and are thrown into confusion—maybe that’s why, in the midst of rushed cramming and essays and APs we feel cramped and lost, and maybe that’s why there isn’t a moment into which we wholly put ourselves. And at the end of a year, I feel that we need a new message.
I’ll make it brief: kill that high school senior inside of yourself, along with all that cynicism, weariness, and distrust. Instead, believe in fairy magic, and build castles in the air. Do every silly, impractical thing that people tell you not to do. I know that it seems like an incredibly reckless thing to do, something that will leave you totally unprepared for the years ahead of you, but come the eightysomething years after Daewon, you will find that this sort of vulnerability will be extremely beneficial.