<This is another free-writing post>

 After a long vacation, a new semester has begun today. After seeing 18th wavers, I finally felt that this is my sophomore year which means more responsibilities for me. My roommates and I called six freshmen of the opposite room and briefly talked about the life in school. They all seemed kind of nervous, which reminded me of myself exactly one year ago. It took more than a month to finally get the hang of how school rules work, make some friends and realize that I am not here for a camp but to study as a high school student. The school environment is free and students do not feel they are restricted from doing what they want to improve themselves. It also encourages them to ask teachers to create new classes that are not provided as regular courses.

Some teachers in the school say that students here probably have the most time among other high school students in Korea. This sounds like students can study a lot in great depth with friends since students all live in a dormitory and can exchange help on others' weak subjects. But it is also easy for students to get lazy and slack off, thinking that they have enough time to finish their assignments. In most cases, they suddenly realize time has gone by so fast while they were playing computer games, playing sports, or just talking with friends.

In the last few days of the vacation, I have set up some goals for this semester. One of them was not to waste time doing something that will do me no good. It may provide a short period of pleasure (for example, when I play computer games with my friends), but the feeling of happiness does not last long, and soon turn into great regret and even self-hatred. That is why I am proud of myself for what I have done today; I went up to 11th floor with my friends and spent four hours studying mathematics. I did not listen to music while I was solving the problems, which is what I always did during the winter vacation. I knew that it would distract me from concentrating, but I kept on not focusing on the problems in front of me and, to be frank, wasted valuable time.

On retrospect, this winter vacation was another fiasco without carrying out the goals I set. But since I have done so well for today, the first day of a new semester, I hope I can keep this up and not lose my willpower. Whenever I feel the urge to spend time with my friends or indulge myself in 'entertainment', I will think of my future and my family. I will do something that will help me achieve my dreams later such as reading books and studying Spanish grammar, or 'intellectual entertainment'.

(I'm going to do a free-writing for this post. So it may contain wrong uses of words, grammar, and even may not make sense at all.)

You wanna play football? Well, first you gotta learn how to play it!

In order to play any kind of sport, learning the rules of it is the first step you have to take. No matter how you want to play, you cannot play the game unless you are aware of how to play it. This applies to virtually every aspect of life. I am a high school student, so I often take classes of subjects that I do not have much interest in, or that I am not good at. Economics is one example. I am not sure if I will major in economics later in university, but I took economics classes in the previous semester, and I am thinking of taking it again this semester. Having knowledge of how economy works can be a  precious asset in my life, as the world is working on capitalism now, and I will have to manage my income. It is the same for other subjects like mathematics, politics, and chemistry.

Let's take Spanish as another example. Personally, I do enjoy learning new languages because it provides me new means of communication. This also means that I can talk to more people and get access to more information. So learning a new language does opens up a lot of opportunities in various ways. So far, I have studied English and Spanish (pero todavía no hablo bien el español) and I am much pleased with the progress I am making. I am planning to learn French, German, Italian, and Japanese as well, and hopefully more. But to get back to the point, studying a subject or field that one did not have much experience in, is like learning rules for undiscovered areas of the world. It might not be easy and one will have to undergo many obstacles and lots of practice to gain expertise and insight. But as they say 'What goes around comes around', and 'No pain, no gain.', it will surely benefit you in some way later in your life.

So I have been recently thinking that school can not only be a place of building my dreams for my future, but also a place where I can learn essential rules for various games. It may not prove to be important or useful now, but hey, a tree does not grow like 10 centimeters in one day. But if you check how much it grew, say a year later, you will be surprised to see how tall it has become. So my goal for this semester is to become a tree. A tree that continuously do what he has to do for his future, without procrastinating, even though it is having trouble getting sunshine between a bunch of tall trees, because a small tree will live longer and stay taller for a longer period of time than other, already-tall trees. I will not get easily frustrated with test results. If I learn from my past mistakes and correct them, the problem is solved.