<The 10th English Essay Contest>
By Kim Young Woo (2nd Winner)
It seems as though for the freshmen in Korea, they are more concentrating on how they can amuse themselves rather than getting better grades. In Korea, "university" responds to a meaning that represents freedom and liberation from their past, in which the students had to study up to 12 hours a day. The first thing that students learn after entering a university, is probably how to smoke and drink.Then why is it that so many of the freshmen in Korea wants to go wild all of a sudden? The answer which leads to this question is actually very simple. It is because they never had the chance to fully experience and enjoy their freedom. This freedom was restricted and limited from their parents and school. They study really hard to achieve their goals which is to get into an university. When this is accomplished, there is not much left for them to do. For this reason, it can lead the freshmen to examples of drinking and smoking. Some students even feel as if they had mastered all of their studying when it is really suppose to be the beginning of it.The problem is that teachers in Korea, tend to think that students only needs to study which gives them no opportunity to learn things that just cannot be taught through the textbooks like nature, morality and character building. They have so much to learn about themselves and their surrounding. I can assure you that memorizing a whole text book leaves nothing much important.Koreans have come a long way. There were times when we were invaded and colonized from Japan and there were times we had to face the IMF. Personally, I believe Koreans have done a remarkable job on finding their ways out through many problems and difficulties. For us to have come this far, the education must have taken quite an affect. However, we need to realize how fast the times are changing and with the education system we have today, which might have helped our past, will not be too much of a help in the future. We know it for fact by looking through our past presidents and the corrupted politicians. This maybe a result of today's education.I guess it really is difficult for us to figure out that university is not, and cannot be everything in life. Korea is probably the one and only country in the world where airplanes cannot be ran during the university entrance exam. Even though studying books in school maybe an essential element to people's success, we should also keep in mind that our "righteousness" should come first before any of education.