I think that most of us had enjoyable experiences in school when we were young. I, myself, sometimes reminisce about my high school years, which were filled with funny events as when I got in trouble. I spent my high school years in Suwon, Korea. It is near Seoul, the capital of Korea. Suwon has distinct differences between its old and new towns. While the old town has narrow streets with complicated patterns like a maze and small houses without yards surrounded by the Hwaseong fortress wall built in the 18th century, the new town consists of tall and large apartment complexes and well-organized roads outside the walled compound. Most residents of the new town are newcomers from other cities working at the semiconductor Research & Development center of Samsung and are composed of young couples with children unlike the old town population, which is made up of families who have lived there for generations.
My high school was in the center of the new town. Most students lived in apartment complexes adjacent to the school. Most high schools in Suwon have an interesting policy that students have to stay in school until 11p.m. A lot of Korean students outside Suwon took private lessons after school to catch up or stay ahead in their courses. However, the education bureau of the province, located in Suwon, bans students from taking private lessons in order to strengthen public education. Because of this, every night an interesting situation happened.
To pick up their children from school, a lot of parents gathered in front of the school gate and the street would be jammed with cars. It caused a temporary traffic nightmare, the kind that normally didn’t occur at night, and generated complaints from the residents close to school. This crowded situation disappeared around 11:30 like a very fast moving tide.
There were always over 50 students and lockers in the classrooms, and students often brought both lunch and dinner boxes because the school didn’t have a cafeteria. Even though the school had scheduled lunch and dinner times, we always got hungry long before it was time to eat. To solve this issue, my classmates and I would eat lunch or dinner during break and the smell of food remained during class. Some teachers punished students who caused the smell, but for us, the problem was not the smell. Feeling drowsy after eating was the real issue and most teachers didn’t allow students to doze off in class. When students dozing off were caught, they had to go to the back, stand against a wall, and attend class without a textbook. At first, most students thought it was shameful, but soon we enjoyed this situation and even spontaneously went out without the teacher's permission. That’s because it was a chance to escape boring classes.
Sometimes we felt starved, and we secretly tried to go through a school fence to buy some snacks. My school didn’t allow students to go out without permission before 11p.m. and teachers kept an eye on the entrance. Sometimes teachers would catch these students jumping over the fence and punish them. After our regular courses, we took extracurricular classes and unsupervised self-study in a classroom for 5 hours, but those students weren’t able to join these classes. Instead, their desks were put in the corridor and they were watched closely for hours. Boy students would get corporal punishment such as being caned. Despite these efforts by teachers, however, many students didn’t follow the school policy because we felt rebellious. In fact, we stayed in school for almost 12 hours and we felt like we were in prison.
In retrospect, I realize that at that time, I just lived in a very small world and spent most of my time with teachers and classmates, so a lot of memories involved doing things behind the teachers’ back. Getting stressed out from studies is also a good memory now. When I see my high school friends, we still enjoy talking about those days and we are even surprised that we find ourselves missing those times.
submitted by Sunah Park
class: Explore NYC
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