When I was in my second year of high school, I was almost always ranked second in the entire school. The funny thing was that the student in first place changed from time to time, but second place seemed to belong to me — almost as if my name had been written there in advance.
That did not mean I had always been a good student. Until middle school, my grades were ordinary. I was not especially poor at studying, but I was not particularly good either; I was somewhere in the middle, quietly passing through school without drawing much attention. Adults often told me to study harder, but their words simply passed by me. Nothing they said was strong enough to move the heart of a boy going through adolescence.
Back then, life at home was difficult. When I was in the second grade of elementary school, my father left his job at a U.S. military base in Uijeongbu to start a business, but life did not go the way he had hoped. After the business failed, our family came to Seoul with almost nothing. In Uijeongbu, we had once lived in a house with a yard; in Seoul, seven of us squeezed into a single small room. It was not exactly the kind of environment where a child could easily sit down and focus on studying.
Of course, I cannot blame everything on my circumstances. But as a child, I used that hardship as an excuse to keep my distance from studying. I did not even think seriously about why I needed to study — it simply did not matter to me.
Then I entered a technical high school, where many of the students came from families that were not well off. The atmosphere was clear: learn a skill quickly, graduate, and get a job as soon as possible. For many of us, school was not a stepping stone to dreams but preparation for survival.
But something unexpected happened during the first exam. I had studied a little beforehand, nothing extraordinary or intense, just a modest effort. And somehow, I ranked within the top ten in my class. The people around me were not the ones most surprised — I was.
I remember showing the report card to my mother, calmly, almost as if it were nothing. But her face lit up with joy in a way I had not expected. That was the first time I saw studying mean something — not just to me, but to someone I loved.
For the first time, a thought crossed my mind: Wait. Maybe I can do this. It felt as if something had struck me inside. All through middle school, no amount of nagging had moved me, but one report card did what countless lectures could not. It shook something awake in me.
No one forced me, and no one pushed me from behind. Once the feeling took root that I might actually be capable of doing something well, my attitude toward studying began to change, and I started picking up books on my own. During my first year, I stayed somewhere around the top ten in my class. By my second year, I began to gain real momentum — in English, math, Korean, physics, chemistry, and most academic subjects, I stayed near the top. I even enjoyed some of the technical theory classes.
Practical training, however, was a different story. I was not good with my hands, and working directly with machines, tools, and materials did not come naturally to me. In a technical high school, weak practical scores were not a small problem; they were a serious weakness. That was probably what kept me from becoming the undisputed number one student, since no matter how strong my written exam scores were, practical training always seemed to pull me back down a little. Still, in academic subjects, I rarely gave up ground, and so I became a rather unusual student — almost always somewhere near second place in the entire school. The student in first place changed now and then, but second place stayed strangely familiar.
Even now, when I think back on those days, I cannot help smiling a little. Looking back on my life, I realize that what changed me was not a grand decision or some noble goal, and it was not a painful lecture from an adult either. It was one small memory of success from my very first high school exam — and the look on my mother’s face when she saw it.
People do not easily change because someone pressures them or tells them what to do. But once they experience, even briefly, the feeling of “Maybe I can do this,” something begins to move from within, and from that point on, they no longer need to be dragged forward — they begin to walk on their own. That was one of the most important lessons I learned as a young student.
I did not gain confidence because I became good at studying. I began to study because one small moment of confidence had taken root in me. And that small spark of self-belief, born from an ordinary exam in a technical high school, carried me farther than I could have imagined at the time.