September 9 2013 Imagine you have written a short story, film, or play about your last four years. Briefly describe the one moment or scene that your audience will most remember from this autobiographical piece. What will they learn about you from that moment?

I was the age of nine four years ago. Of the many crucial events over those four years, such as gaining knowledge, health, and stronger friendship bonds, one of the most outstanding moments occurred just a few weeks ago, during the summer of seventh grade.

Hagwon is a Korean word meaning ‘educational academy.’ My mother rarely sent me to a summer studying academy until this year. She strongly believed that I was now at the age of obtaining higher knowledge standards. Luckily, there was a high-level English hagwon five minutes away. We decided that I would go every other day excluding the weekends, from ten in the morning to one in the afternoon (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday). One of the main reasons she sent me was because of my limited vocabulary and comprehension. Our goal was to improve the iBT TOEFL grade I took as practice a few months ago. She believed that I would accomplish by practicing everyday.

iBT TOEFL classes were not easy at all from the beginning. We were required to memorize about a hundred vocabulary words, with an hour’s worth of worksheets to do. After a month of hard work, I had to stop going to these lessons due to school, which was going to begin the following week. In order for me to see my progress, the academy kindly registered me for the TOEFL. As expected, my score had improved. At the moment, I am planning to attend afternoon classes again for even more improvement.

Not only did my mother send me to this academy, but she also helped me prepare for eighth grade math. I immediately agreed with her because I haven’t had a math teacher for a while, it was true that my grades for middle school weren’t progressing at all, and I agreed it would be the best for me. We contacted the tutor I had had a few months before and I started taking lessons from her the following week. We finished the book in less than three months and I am currently doing high school math. To be honest, some lessons were tiring but come to think of it, they were worth it, particularly in terms of tests in school–since I was confident in math, all I had to do was review for a few hours.

This summer was quite special for me in terms of knowledge. While memorizing vocabulary words, I came up with my own ways of learning them more easily. This led me to think of studying much more positively than I had before. When high school comes, there won’t be many worries since I will have mastered a few ninth grade subjects. In conclusion, I have gained more confidence and knowledge than I ever had before.