setback in your life

Many Koreans describe their high school years as the worst of their lives. The students are expected to spend every day working towards one goal: scoring well on the college entrance exam. It is a life of 100-plus hours a week of studying and of heartbreaks when you just don¡¯t get the grade you wanted. More than a few end up committing suicide each year. But when my family was relocated to Korea during a time when I had gained confidence in my academic ability as well as lead the junior varsity tennis team to an undefeated season at high school in New York, it was a setback that many people may find difficult to understand. You see, I didn¡¯t speak the language.

During the first couple of months, I had difficulty understanding the lectures of teachers and handling the coursework. Not only did I need to improve my Korean language proficiency, I also needed to adapt to the much tighter and stricter educational system. There was a wider range of subjects to cover w...