Reveal the Truth

If you are a student with at least one Korean parent, going to an American school, you will know the pressure of how much expectation your parents expect from you. I don’t know about other country parents, but Koreans always tell their international children that Korean students do much more work than them.

Personally, my mom always tells me that I should be lucky that I am not going to hagwon until ten P.M. every day. When my parents remind me of that, I have nothing to say.

Korean parents make their child feel guilty for not trying hard, when their effort is obviously proven. When I say effort, I mean how much you make yourself work to do your best. Korean parents think that if it isn’t a solid A, then it is not effort. They think that of other children can do it, so can theirs. They misunderstand being the best, with being your best.

Sometimes a student works up until midnight and sometimes doesn’t sleep. Even in those situations, the grade sometimes doesn’t come out as expected. What is the student supposed to do in those situations? There’s nothing left for the student to do except to just absorb the stress inside of them and try to bring up that grade by trying harder on the next assignment. That is a cycle of just stress and work. Mission impossible?

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Every once in a while Apple corp. makes a new model of the Ipod. Lately, the newest ones were Ipod nano new generation, Ipod touch, and Iphone. These Ipods can cost a few hundred dollars. They are very expensive considering that it is just a small mp3 player, but everyone has at least one. Many people have more than one. It is famous for its sound quality and it is very successful for Apple.

An Ipod model comes out around once or twice a year. That means either everyone has to change it or they keep using their old one. Most people cannot afford to buy every Ipod model that comes out so that leaves using the old ones. People think that if you are not using the newest model of the Ipod, then it isn’t good and it is trash. Many people change Ipods because they are peer pressured to. But these amazing machines were once extremely expensive.

I have the second generation of the Ipod nano and I believe that it is still very useful. Although it is slightly scratched and the buttons are a little dirty, the Ipod works fine. Just because my friends have the new Ipod, does that mean I should get one too? It is no different from when I first bought it. My Ipod was bought for $250 and no matter how much time passes; it will always have the price tag of $250.

(If anyone disagrees with this blog and thinks that I should get a new Ipod, please talk to my dad about considering buying me a new Ipod J)

In the modern world, everyone has a cell phone. Even elementary children have cell phones. Cell phones are a necessity of life for some people. Some people spend their life savings on one cell phone. Not only do people use cell phones to call, but to text and also play games. With cell phones as such an important part of life to everyone, wouldn’t you want to carry the best one there is?

Cell phones do not come from just one company, but many. Some cell phone companies that I can think of at the top of my head are Anycall, Cyon, Ever, and Motorola. These companies release so many cell phones out into the world that everyone changes cell phones about at least once a year. With this many brand new cell phones to chose from, who can resist buying another one?

I can bet my heart that the average household in South Korea has about five cell phones. People tend to change frequently and that leaves old cell phones that are just thrown away. Well it’s your money that you’re throwing away. You can do anything you want with it. WRONG. Each cell phone has harmful chemicals that can harm the environment biotic and abiotic. Cell phone chemicals can cause cancer and it will remain in the ground for a long time. Why are we doing such harm to the environment? Because we want to show our friends our hot new cell phone.

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A group of friends are going to the karaoke room to sing and let some of their stress out. They order a bag of chips called Shrimp Chips. They are singing and as they reach their hand in the bowl for a chip, something feels weird. It wasn’t a chip. It was a rat’s head.

A few days after that, a piece of a blade was found in a can of tuna. A few weeks ago, a part of a knife was found in a hamburger at McDonalds. Many more cases were found and not much was done to change it.

Mc Donald claims that although they are guilty, they will not change anything to prevent it from happening again because they know that it is a very small chance that that will happen, and they are sure that it won’t happen again in the near future.

The Shrimp Chips are still being sold in stores today. Even after that crazy incident, people still tend to buy the same bag of chips.

As food vendors, they should be more careful with the food that they give everyone. It is not their lives, but another’s life that will be ruined. They are given the responsibility to sell us food in good condition and they are so careless, that so many incidents happened in the past few months.

As a customer of some of these foods, I became much more reluctant of buying foods. Before, I felt safe and happy when I bought a bag of chips. Now, I feel like I am risking my life just to enjoy a bag of chips.

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Every year, at the end of the school year, everyone is so busy. The students are busy trying to bring up their grades one last time. The teachers are busy making the lasts tests and grading the last assignments, and everyone is busy rapping up the year. It almost seems as if everyone was procrastinating until that time.

The closer we get to the end of the year, the busier people get. The finals make everyone even busier. Students spend all night studying for tests and teachers use up a lot of their time to try to finish all grading before report cards go out.

Socializing is also important. Trying to keep contact even during summer makes everyone busy. Everyone is signing yearbooks before time runs out. It almost makes me wonder why everything is crammed up to the end of the year.

When summer breaks starts, everyone is free. Everyone is back to usual as if nothing happened. The joy of enjoying the next year starts soon.

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Our school enforces an English only policy. When anyone in our school speaks any language other than English, he or she gets in big trouble. It doesn’t matter if it is during school, or after school. In the hallways can lead to a one hour detention and in class could result in call his or her parents. It doesn’t matter if it is the lyrics of a song, or even one word. Not even konglish is allowed. (konglish = mixture of Korean and English) It is almost ridiculous how harsh the system is. The ironic part is, almost everyone in this school has Korean blood in them. The school is depriving our rights of speaking our own native language. The school should be trying to improve more bilinguals, not lessen them. It is true that students should not speak too much Korean in an international school because then, there wouldn’t be a difference with any other Korean school. It is silly how harshly punished one can be under for silly words. I blame partly the school because it is the schools fault for enrolling all Korean students. It is natural for us to speak Korean to each other once in a while. Is the school allowed to deprive us from natural rights?

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Summer is almost here. When I say summer, I mean summer break. It is a relaxing time for students to take a break from all of the work over the year. We deserve it. We worked hard in school, getting up early every morning, working our brains almost for the whole day. This is our time to relax. The student’s time. The time to think, play, and do whatever without anyone telling us to do…

NOT…

This is what summer used to be. Now, the meaning of summer changed. It is a time for students to have tons loads of hakwons. It is time for the students to catch up with work and do more work than the normal school year. Summer break for students can be thought of as a time to sprint, if the normal school year was a time to jog. It is basically, in four letters….HELL.

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All students learn from teachers. Teachers are more experienced and they know much more about the subject than the student. The student studies what the teacher teaches, and implants it into their brains. Whatever the teacher says is almost like a guideline. It is like a commandment. Everything the teacher says, goes.

Does that mean the teacher is always right? Does that mean the teacher is perfect? Does that mean the teacher is god?

I once had a teacher that said that he was god when he was in his classroom. He said that everything he said goes and that no one else’s words matter in that classroom. Even then, I found many mistakes that he made and pointed them out. Just because he said he was god in his classroom doesn’t mean he’s perfect. He was just implying that he was the leader in that classroom and whatever he says is probably more right than us. That goes for other teachers. Although most of my teachers don’t act like god in their classrooms, some do. Are they perfect? Is anyone perfect?

I know many students that are really depressed in their lives. They are called emos. This is a sorter term for being emotional. These emos are very sensitive and they usually think in very depressed ways. Extreme depression can lead to suicide. What leads to these “emo” ways.

As I see it, there are many ways that a person can turn depressed.

If the person’s family life is not good, then the person can be really depressed at home. The family is one of the only things that they can trust and when that goes away, they have almost nothing to completely depend on.

The school grades can have a great impact. Everyone is so stressed about work. They all compete. When a student cannot catch up to these competing people, it leads to depression and it seems like they have no chance in life, even when its only highschool.

The social life of a student is also very important. At this time of age, students think that friends, boyfriends, and girlfriends are everything. They consider them the priority and they just want more and more popularity. When something bad happens to the social life, the person can feel really depressed. Although when you think back to it, it seems like almost nothing, to a student it is everything.

I bet there are many more reasons for depression, but there are too many. With this many reason for a student to be depressed, how can a student not be depressed?

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USE YOUR ZERGLINGS TO KILL HIM. NOOOO. USE UR MUTALISKS AND DESTROY HIS SCV’S. OH MY GOD. HE’S USING HIS TANKS TO KILL YOUR DRONES. RUN AWAY AND USE YOUR LURKERS!!!!

I heard a rumor from somewhere that starcraft was a game designed to ruin boys. Although this is probably not true, it seems right so far. I do not know a lot of girls that play starcraft, or any other computer games for that matter. Boys tend to spend or waste their time destroying their friend’s base and making an electronic empire that will be gone with a simple off button. Even as a boy, I do not understand why we waste this time. It is fun, but it is not logical. It would be a much better use of my time to study Spanish or solve some math problems, but instead I am using computer graphic monsters to attack other pixels on the computer. As I say it now, it seems funny how I waste time, but I know that as soon as I have the chance, I will play games again. Is this really a game to destroy the future of boys? Or are boys just stupid?

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