I failed the first university entrance exam five years ago. Very sick of studying, I decided not to apply to the second chance which was scheduled one month later. My mother almost entreated me to take the second exam. At that time, I really hated studying and I didn't think I needed to go to a university. Even though I might not graduate from a university, I thought I could do anything that I wanted to do. However, because of my mom, I took the second exam and I passed it.
        During the first semester in the first year, I tried to spend as little time as possible. Most of all, I didn't have any affection for my school. So I just returned home early without even spending time with friends. I usually went home before the sun set despite the fact that my home was far from my school. I got very low grades in the first semester because I was absent so many times from every course. From the second semester, I changed my mind. I thought I'd better do my best if I should be here. When I became a junior, I became temporarily crazy about the computer network. Every night I didn't sleep because of chatting with someone through the net. Because I didn't sleep at night, I slept in the middle of classes. My grades were terrible. For the first time, I got two Fs. During the summer vacation, I pondered whether I would keep going to school or quit for a year. Honestly, I didn't think that I had to graduate from this low-level university. I thought if I learned some skills, I could be independent in my life without a degree. So I decided to take a year off from school.
        At first, I just took a rest for a month at home. While I was going to school, I didn't realize how tired I was of going there. It had taken almost three hours from home to school. After I quit school, I came to know how much I suffered from it. One or two months later, I started to work at a computer network company, Hitel. Until that moment, I had never worked for a company like that. I had just worked part-time for a few days or a week. My parents usually said that I'd better study if I couldn't get a good salary. So that was my first job in my life.
        I worked there for seven months. The task was so simple. I called the new Hitel users and checked their identities. Everyday I had to do the same thing. It was so easy and boring that I felt I was becoming stupid. I was afraid that I would stay in that state for the rest of my life. Moreover, other employees' conversation was so pitiful. Their educational level was high school. I was not sure, but maybe their conversation's materials were so simple and mundane because of that. It might not be true, but at that time I thought so. I really didn't want to be one of them. For the first time, I felt the importance of a university education, not because of the title, but because of the knowledge that I would get. When I was at school, I laughed at it. I sneered at my school because of its low level. But I realized that I had wasted my time complaining and had missed out on many valuable things that I could have learned if I had just tried. I realized another important thing. Before I worked at the company in society, I thought if I tried hard, I could be acknowledged regardless of my educational background. But I was wrong. No matter how hard I tried, if I was not a university graduate, I couldn't be treated like a university graduate. It meant I couldn't even get a chance to apply to some career fields because of my educational limitation. I couldn't endure that situation.
        Because of this, I made up my mind to return to my university and study hard. In order not to become stereotyped, I read many novels in this period and saw movies every Sunday. In my case, reading novels and watching movies functioned as the same thing to me: Thinking. After one year, my mental attitude was changed a lot. When I started to study again last year, I really did my best. I came to know the way to study literature and how interesting it was. The more I studied it, the deeper I fell in love with it. I got to have a new purpose, studying abroad. If I hadn't quit school, I am sure I would have gotten even more terrible grades in the second semester of my junior year, and I couldn't have found the reason why I should finish my degree. After all, this period was a turning point in my life and the experience from that time was so precious for me.