EPTLooks like my parents don't apply to that statement because they often look down on my brother and I, lol.
Suicide in Korea - Page 4
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zoLo
United States5896 Posts
Looks like my parents don't apply to that statement because they often look down on my brother and I, lol. | ||
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dreamsmasher
816 Posts
On May 24 2011 09:43 zoLo wrote: To some degree, you and your parents are similar to me and my parents. When I was young, they put a lot of emphasis on school. I cared, but I didn't try a whole lot compared to the more academic Asians at my schools. The fact that they continue to make comparisons with me and their friends' children just made me sick. I dropped the thought of pleasing my parents and went on to do things MY way. I don't want to be some trophy that their parents showcase to their friends. I studied and work semi-hard in high school, but of course no where as much as the other student who took nothing but AP and honors classes. To this day, I do think what would have happened if I stayed on the hardcore academic student, but I am happy to where I'm at in college. it's quite funny because my parents have changed quite a bit from when I was young. they realized that there was more to success in western society than just studying and that to be truly 'successful' you need a mix of other qualities, however they never knew how to teach that me since they were not immersed in western culture. they basically told me at some point that they didn't/couldn't understand why certain things worked the way that they did, but they realize that there was a 'cap' to their success so to speak due to cultural/language barriers and if my generation were to be better than theirs, that it was essential that we grasp those concepts. i kind of took that to heart, maybe in a way that they never really got. i get a lot of shit for it still, but in a kind of fucked up way i'm obeying my parents lol. what i find to be truly odd is when i meet a white person whose parents are similar to mine or is socially awkward/etc... | ||
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n.DieJokes
United States3443 Posts
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VPCursed
1044 Posts
important life lesson for you there folks  Too much focus on academics causes things like this. It's a shame when people think the world is crumbling down because they dont have a 4.0 GPA | ||
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T0fuuu
Australia2275 Posts
On May 24 2011 09:45 zoLo wrote: Looks like my parents don't apply to that statement because they often look down on my brother and I, lol. LOL. Thats not true. They look down on you cos they think it makes you stronger. I think my parents changed after my sister had a mental breakdown because she thought they didn't praise her enough, asians dont give much merit to something that is expected(you arent doing good because you are top 10, you are meant to be there anyways and dont need praise for that). Then she went and became a fundamentalist evangelist and is loved by god and the church. Im treated much better now (they probably fear that i might go crazy and turn to god as well) but im also burnt out after dropping out of uni. Ill go back soon enough though I just dont know when and what to study. | ||
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Tazza
Korea (South)1678 Posts
I lived in the US for 9 years, and I transferred to this school in the middle of my junior year at an american high school. And to be honest, I think I worked harder at the american high school I was in. Also, its not like the kids in my korean high school are all about academics. The kids here are really good at basketball and other sports. I know this is just one example of a high school in Korea, but I have a friend that has friends that go to the number 1 ranked high school in Korea, and he says that the kids there also have a lot of free time as well. Also, when I did go to a regular Korean school in first grade for three months, I didn't have hagwons or anything, and school was an alright place. It certainly wasn't hell. At the beginning, when I first got accepted into this school, I was nervous because the schedule told me we had to study until like 2 am, and wake up at 6 am. I was obviously scared as hell and tried to get myself prepared for hardcore studying, but i was wrong. We have class from 8 am to 4 pm, but most of those classes consist of movies, playing games on computer, and other things. Then, after 4, we stay till 6 for "self study" and we eat dinner. After that, we can pretty much chill, or study if we have homework, exams, etc. At first, I was pretty shocked that such a school would do this. What I'm trying to say is that although the Korean school system might be advertised as studying 18 hours a day or something, the real amount of time studying would probably be around 1 hour to 7 hours, depending on whether there are exams. And yes, I am writing this during world history time, along with other kids listening to music/playing games/internet browsing. I'm not dissing on my new school at all. It's a great school that gives kids a lot of free time, and really gives a lot of guidance on what to do to get accepted into elite colleges. My point was to just say that not all Korean school are like the ones described above. Oh yeah, and Kaist is really the ONLY college in Korea that has such a tough system. Yonsei, Korea, and Seoul University are known for their relaxed learning styles and drinking. A few students have even drunk themselves to death. | ||
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thisisSSK
United States179 Posts
On May 24 2011 09:58 VPCursed wrote: CEO's didnt get to where they are because they studied all day and night and did well in school. But because they know how to deal with people. important life lesson for you there folks Too much focus on academics causes things like this. It's a shame when people think the world is crumbling down because they dont have a 4.0 GPA I dont think there are more uneducated CEOs than educated CEOs. | ||
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VPCursed
1044 Posts
On May 24 2011 10:00 thisisSSK wrote: I dont think there are more uneducated CEOs than educated CEOs. Im not saying they aren't educated... Im sure there would be plenty more qualified people that could fill the positions. But i am saying its alot more about how you deal with people. | ||
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dreamsmasher
816 Posts
On May 24 2011 10:02 VPCursed wrote: Im not saying they aren't educated... Im sure there would be plenty more qualified people that could fill the positions. But i am saying its alot more about how you deal with people. not everyone becomes CEOs. a very small fraction less than 0.01% of american society lol. | ||
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Irrational_Animal
Germany1059 Posts
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thisisSSK
United States179 Posts
On May 24 2011 10:02 VPCursed wrote: Im not saying they aren't educated... Im sure there would be plenty more qualified people that could fill the positions. But i am saying its alot more about how you deal with people. Isn't that kind of obvious that successful CEO's have a little bit more than "regular" CEO's? I mean all CEO's are very well educated; they're usually graduates from ivy league schools or other top graduate school. So of course something like being able to communicate more effectively is going to help. | ||
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Th0R
Canada359 Posts
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J_D
United States102 Posts
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slytown
Korea (South)1411 Posts
Recent evidence of this in the West has come about through the popularity and outrage of the book Tiger Mothers, a book about how a woman decided to raise her children "the chinese way" by being overtly tough on them. I mean not to say that being tough on your kids is wrong or that every parent/school/factory is demeaning to their subjects; how you raise your child is dependent on your social class and the specific child, but what's clear is that the emphasis on individual success for country/society/etc. has had drawbacks that need attention to. Great thread, and considering how much Starcraft relies on the Asian scene, we should show our support for our fellow students and workers. | ||
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Krampus
United States14 Posts
FYI, My sister went here as well, and took her life her junior year due to major hypomanic episode set off by academic pressure, much longer story but I'm not going to write my life story out on the innernettes. Also: I think people saying that governments should have protective measures for students under academic pressure think too idealistically about this kind of thing. No matter how you word it, any kind of support system, not would, but does bear a mark of intense shame at the upper levels. The problem here is the manner by which students are taught and tested, and the absurd fact that schools don't care very much about false negatives in test scores. When we hear about Asian countries, and to a lesser extent some western countries, that have systems where 1 exam dictates your placement, we shouldn't be thinking "wow they are harsh, that is terrible" we should be thinking "wow that is an incredibly uneducated and wasteful way of going about doing their job." They are essentially trading a large portion of the career life potential of someone who did badly on 1 exam for the ability to test people in a fast, and more cost effective way. Not a very good trade for society IMO. | ||
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HaTu
Korea (South)36 Posts
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MassHysteria
United States3678 Posts
 But for me to still remember doing that report shows you how much it impacted me to learn of the pressure that other cultures around the world put on students. At that moment in my life I felt really academically pressured by my parents, and that report taught me not only about another culture, but it made me examine my own personal situation and give me the know-how to understand my emotions better | ||
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Dice17
United States520 Posts
So thats my little story about pressure in school. Hope I can give another perspective ^^ | ||
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Tazza
Korea (South)1678 Posts
On May 24 2011 10:04 Irrational_Animal wrote: @ Tazza: But your school seems to focus soley on getting you into international universities or can you also make it into Korean ones? There is an international class, and a domestic class. Both are similar except for their curriculum. I guess the domestic class study a bit more. But they also play sports and others too. | ||
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VPCursed
1044 Posts
On May 24 2011 10:09 Krampus wrote: I'm a premed student at Williams College, guessing most people haven't heard of it, but from wikipedia: "56 percent of the students were expected to be valedictorian or ranked in the top one percent of their class." We're fairly selective. There is a fine line between nerdiness and insanity, and most students here are so far beyond that line into the realm of insanity that their origins are unrecognizable. What makes me so mad about this whole culture of academic perfection is that for all the hours that a lot of these students put in to get perfect grades, it doesn't really translate into any usefulness. It's all for nothing. It's a correlative effect, rather than a causal effect. The measurements that school use for efficiency's sake are only proxies for the real qualities that they are looking for. For instance, a high GPA in biology is meant to mean you care a whole awful lot about the subject, and as a researcher you would have a passion for it. 99% of what you need to know to perform at a job in say the biotech sciences, you are taught when you are hired. What school is meant to do, is give you a passion, and having a passion for something makes it so you don't have to work hard, because work is easy. There has been tons of research done on how sleep deprivation, chronic stress, and other factors that are brought about by a stressful learning environment can inflict very significant damage neurologically (look up hippocampal neurodegeneration), yet this old anxiety based system of fostering inter-student competition is still used because administrators, professors, and many others are deluded into thing that "no pain, no gain" applies well to academics. Many professors hate this new wave of students with a firey passion because they are like robots who memorize rather than learn to apply concepts, yet at the same time, teach and test in a way that fosters this phenomenon. You know when someone is discussion a particular strategy in starcraft, and you are really into the information, and you can't stop thinking about it? You could spend hours doing unit testing to figure how well something works? That characteristic is what makes a good researcher. Making flash cards of all of the unit stats, and boasting that you know how much a corrupted roach with +2 armor takes from a +1 attack roach doesn't make you a good researcher (edit: I say researcher, because I can only speak from my own experience, but from everything I have ever seen, this is the same for pretty much any profession. Warren Buffet is a pretty good example of this). When you know why you are learning something, you'll remember it for a very long time when you do learn it. If you are learning something so that you can score higher than someone else, you use learning strategies that have a short term advantage. You would think that people so focused on academic improvement would pay attention to the science of learning itself, but it's completely ignored. I think much of it comes down to bigotry and narcissism in the academic community (high schools are measured in SAT scores, premed programs measured in MCAT scores). FYI, My sister went here as well, and took her life her junior year due to major hypomanic episode set off by academic pressure, much longer story but I'm not going to write my life story out on the innernettes. Also: I think people saying that governments should have protective measures for students under academic pressure think too idealistically about this kind of thing. No matter how you word it, any kind of support system, not would, but does bear a mark of intense shame at the upper levels. The problem here is the manner by which students are taught and tested, and the absurd fact that schools don't care very much about false negatives in test scores. When we hear about Asian countries, and to a lesser extent some western countries, that have systems where 1 exam dictates your placement, we shouldn't be thinking "wow they are harsh, that is terrible" we should be thinking "wow that is an incredibly uneducated and wasteful way of going about doing their job." They are essentially trading a large portion of the career life potential of someone who did badly on 1 exam for the ability to test people in a fast, and more cost effective way. Not a very good trade for society IMO. Why cant we have people like you running our country? :D well said. I completely agree. | ||
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