11/13 정모 스터디 토픽

[sydney]

Over 660,000 students take college entrance exam

More than 660,000 high school students and graduates in South Korea took the state-administered annual college entrance exam on Thursday, the most crucial test seen as a deciding factor in an applicant's choice of college and subsequent career.

A total of 668,522 people applied for the day-long standardized College Scholastic Ability Test, of which about three-quarters were high school students, the ministry said, adding this year's number of test takers dropped by about 4 percent from last year.

The test, administered at 1,191 test centers across the country, will run for about nine hours through 5:35 p.m., including lunch and breaks, and consists of five sections -- Korean language, mathematics, English, social and natural sciences, and a second foreign language -- the ministry said.

As part of efforts to ensure that the most crucial test in a student's life was executed without any glitches, the government imposed various traffic control and anti-noise measures.

The subway ran more frequently in the morning rush hour, and traffic was banned within 200 meters of test centers, while government offices and enterprises in nearby areas delayed their opening by one hour to 10 a.m., according to the government.

Police operated a temporary call center to serve students wishing to ride in a patrol car or on the back of a motorcycle to reach their test centers, while dispatching more than 13,000 officials across the country for test takers' safety and convenience, the National Police Agency said.

Flight landings and takeoffs will be banned for 13 minutes during a listening test for Korean in the morning and for 20 minutes for the English listening exam in the afternoon, according to the education ministry. 

Test takers are banned from carrying to their seats electronic devices, including mobile phones, digital cameras, MP3 players and electronic calculators, for concerns they might be used for cheating, the ministry said.

Students will be individually notified of their test results by Nov. 28, it added.

Question

(1)   Do you remember when you take college entrance exam? How was it?

(2)   Do you know someone who took college entrance exam this year?

(3)   Do you think college entrance exam (Soo-neung) is critical our life? Why?

(4)   If you have children, what can you do for them at college entrance exam day?

(5)   If you go back to high school years, what will you do?   

(6)   Do you have any regret that you didn’t do something in your college years?

I'm 40. Am I grown up yet?

Jim Butler is a husband and father of two – and he's about to turn 40. But despite ending his extended adolescence of 'shameless self-indulgence', he still doesn't feel like a proper adult. His father felt grown up in his 20s. So what has changed?

At the end of the month, my life begins. No, I haven't been door stepped by some cult, nor am I a preternaturally talented foetus. It's nothing as momentous or otherworldly as that, but it does, supposedly, mark something grand, poignant, possibly even final, for me. That's right, I turn 40. The precise moment when, according to modern folklore, life begins.

Now, seeing as though you're probably anticipating a spewed-up litany of woe-is-me disillusionment, allow me to head you off at the pass. I am perfectly calm and sanguine. Even my wife's ribald mocking (she's 32) after I received an invitation to an NHS health check – "for people between the ages of 40 and 74" – has failed to raise my blood pressure. Getting older has never fazed me. Which isn't to say that something isn't bugging me.

I'm married. I have two children. I've owned (and sold) a house. I've been in love at least three times in my life. I've cheated on a girlfriend (it wasn't big or clever) and am pretty sure I've been cheated on too (karma). I've experienced fluctuations in my career. I was deputy editor of a music magazine at 28; I travelled the world, stayed in fancy hotels, drank ludicrously expensive bottles of wine, went to the best gigs and clubs for free. I have also been made redundant and experienced intense feelings of anxiety and stress as a result.

Yet I still don't feel like a grownup. As a child, I assumed that one day I'd wake up and feel like a man: physically, emotionally, philosophically, whatever. I thought a switch would flick in my brain and that was it – I would be a man. A fully fledged, grown-up man. Clearly, that never happened, and I know it never will. When my dad hit that milestone, 27 years ago, I looked at him and recognised that he was a man, an adult, a grownup. When I try to compare and contrast my feelings about myself today, and what I thought about my dad then, there is a chasm between the two.

He was a man; I am, well, if not playing at being a grownup as my wife and I sometimes joke ("You mean, we get to take this baby home? On our own? With no one to check up on us?") then a sorry facsimile of one. I don't have a pension, my savings are pitiful and, as a freelancer, I'm only a few bad months away from penury. My dad wore a suit to work. Most days, I could get by in my pyjamas.

So what does being a man really mean? There's only one person to ask. The man to whom I still turn when I have grave concerns about this adult lark – my dad.

But how to broach the subject? I've never been backwards in coming forwards when I want to ask him about mending a fence, obtaining financial advice or buying a car, but talking about my feelings – let alone his feelings – I'm not sure we've ever done that apart from one occasion in 1990 when we went to the pub after I was having a spot of girlfriend trouble.

My dad was born in Sheffield in 1945. He married my mum when he was 23, the same year he bought his first house. I emerged at the tail end of 1972 and my brother Richard followed a year and a half later. In 1982, my youngest brother, Robert, was born. In the summer of 1985, a few months before he turned 40, we moved from Boston, Lincolnshire, to Taunton, Somerset, on account of my dad getting a new job as the director of a timber manufacturer.

My elder son, Stanley, is two and a half; my younger, George, is four months old. I've been married for just over a year. We live in rented accommodation. The differences couldn't be starker. So what was Dad thinking when he hit 40?

"My focus was primarily on my family and our recent move," he begins. "I wasn't thinking inwardly or being introspective. I was just concentrating on my new job, making a success of that and ensuring we were all settled in our new surroundings."

Did he consider himself a man by the time he reached 40? "I had done since I was in my late 20s. I felt I had reached manhood when you and Richard were born. Until then I felt like an overgrown adolescent. But by the time I had hit 30 – was married, had a mortgage and had kids – I definitely felt like a man. It wasn't something I really thought about."

Aged 30, I was still living a life of shameless self-indulgence, and refused to contemplate anything broadly resembling responsibility. Extended adolescence they called it. Was I an immature fool? I daresay I was.

"You have to understand, we – my friends and I – never talked about our feelings in the 70s and 80s," he recalls. "Things were different then. Once your mother and I got married I stopped socialising with my friends on my own. I assumed I had different responsibilities and couldn't carry on in the same vein."

Then he tells me something that does make me stop and think. He says that when he was growing up, he thought you would gradually grow into a man, that it was something you became through experience. And, in his estimation, that's what happened. He left school at 17, and over a 13-year period, during which he acquired a job, got married, bought a house and had kids, he evolved into a man.

I did things differently. After school, I went to college and then university in Manchester. After graduation, I spent three or four years prancing around Manchester. It wasn't until I was nearly 27, and had moved to London, that I got my first proper job – a full 10 years after my dad had begun his career.

From there, my life experiences have broadly followed his – give or take an ill-advised wish to start a club night with my mates in my mid-30s, or a fleeting wish to go travelling (not backpacking, though) with my girlfriend, now my wife, when we first got together. OK, the dying embers of my hedonistic youth probably didn't end until around 2006 when I went to my last nightclub – "I always thought good luck to you when you were still going out at 30," my dad reassures me kindly – but maybe I'm not quite the helpless case I feared.

I have matured, albeit slowly and discreetly. Looking to the future, the happiness and fulfilment of Stanley and George is paramount. I can see a time when we might leave London. I no longer obsessively look at people's ages to see when they achieved something. Why did it matter how old Robert de Niro was in Taxi Driver? I had never acted, had no desire to act … yet I persisted. No longer.

Do I feel grown up? No. Does that matter? Probably not. It's what I do that counts.

In other words – and I can't believe I'm writing this – turning 40, being a man and growing up is not about arriving at some mythical destination but, rather, embarking on a memorable journey.

And who taught me that? My dad.

Questions

1.     How would you describe the concept of “grown up”?

2.     Do you feel that you have grown up?  If so, when?

3.     Talk about your adolescence.  Were you happy back then?

4.     How does a person grow up?  Through education?  Experiences?   Reading? 

5.     If you have concerns and need to consult, whom do you turn to for advice?

6.     Who is your mentor at work?  Mentor in life?  Are you mentoring anyone you know?

7.     Discuss the sentence highlighted in sky-blue.  Do you agree?

[니콜라스]

수고 했습니다. 주제 Simple 하고 좋네요!!

[Jinny2]

두번째 스토리 읽느라 끙끙...
Am I illiterate yet??
화욜가서 많은 도움 요망 ;;;

[Eddie H]

헉 제가좀 늦었네요 12월 첫주에 올리겠습니다

[마이크]

결혼하고 애낳으면 예전에는 grown up 으로 쳤는데,
제 주변 형님들 보면 그래도 부족한 경우가 비일비재. ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

[써니]

고생하셨어요~본인 얘기신지..turning 40..ㅋㅋ웬지 공감가시나보당..