Han sang deok / first draft

Meaningless Effort

 

          Memorable experience.. lots of memories pass in my head. Good memories, bad memories, etc. Age 22, third and fourth semester in Korea, is the time to start and do 'something'. People decide something big and huge at this time. They find hard examinations and challenge to them, go to serve in the military, and study abroad to look at the big picture. My big picture was already set to police and I needed to have the dedication and commitment to the society. So I decided to do some volunteer work.

 

          I did volunteer work with all my heart at that time. While doing the volunteer work 2~3 months, all were good and happy but the most meaningful experience was the activity at the Aram Teenager Mentoring Center.

 

          Aram Teenager Mentoring Center is the center for the economically poor and economically ill teenager, which provides various programs to aid and help them. One of those various programs is one-to-one mentoring program. This program matches a teenage student with a college student. After matching, under the program they do lots of activites to have close relationship. Its purpose is to give those teenagers high–quality education and emotional stability.

          Participating, I was matched with a girl named Park Si Un. About her name, at first I confused her name 'Si-un' with 'Si-yun'. At the teaching time it was okay, because I could just pronounce quitely when I called her. But, sending a text message to her was another thing. Even in my phonebook, her name was saved 'Si-yun(un)'. Finally I got a trouble. I texted her with the name 'Si-yun'. She was really ticked off and disappointed with my indifference. At that time I excused to her that I mistyped it, but i'm still really sorry about that.

 

          I taught her math. Math is the study of number. In order to do math well, there are minimum conditions. You need to be familiar with numbers. Also, you need to have 'normal' memory. Nevertheless, she didn't meet those conditions. I was frustrated. When I teach, I usually get bunch of empty papers on the desk. With writing basic notions like set and sequence, I explain every inch of them. Finishing, satisfied, I smile at the paper dense with my writings. And finally I let my student to solve the problems.

 

          However she was totally different. I couldn't smile. First this poor little girl dislike numbers. She got lots of calculation mistakes and she could not remember whether she did plus or minus even a second ago. Naturally, she got depressed when meeting lots of numbers. Second, she had poor memory. She kept asking me same notions I taught in the paper. I got upset. I didn't know what to do with this girl. I used to get angry and yelled to her.

 

          Friends and seniors thought me strangely and said to me on the bus "Why do you do that to her? she already give up studying. She can't calculate well, you know that." "It is just volunteer work. Volunteer thing. You know what it means. Seriously, do you like her?(of course not)" Even in the manager of that center said to me that I need to be calm down and face the reality. To sum up they said that my effort was meaningless thing.

 

          Time went by. It was the 9th meeting. She gave me a piece of paper. It was a report card which was marked '1' on the math.

 

          3 months passed. she gave me another paper. It was a certificate for the university. In fact she was 'choosing' the univiersities. She asked me "Where do I have to choose? Deok teacher"

 

          There is no endeavor in the world which is meaningless.