Last time I cried

Last time I cried

 I was a little reluctant to post this essay, because, first of all, this is something about KMLA, and some peers are already aware of the event I wrote about. And, secondly, I think I was being very weird at the time when this event happened. Anyway, I want to say that I wrote this essay as honestly as possible though it might seem weird to some of the readers.

 As my acquaintances might guess, I hate crying in front of others; I hate revealing my emotion in public. I usually dealt with challenging and stressful events in KMLA on my own. And in most cases it worked quite well. However, there are things that perseverance does not help such as trouble in personal relationship. Last year, at the end of the first semester, I cried in front of other person for the first and the last time in KMLA, because of such trouble, though now it seems trivial.

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  It was during Minjok Festival, the most free day in my junior year. All the stages simply looked fun and excellent to me; until I received a text message from Mom. During the break, I read the message.

   “Jiseon, you got a bronze prize from the academic festival! Congratulations!”

  It was certainly great news. Then I became curious about who won the first place. As soon as I read the list of awardees, I cried out, “Ridiculous, it’s crazy!” The 1st prize was given to four senior students, whom I sincerely respect as Sunbaes, but whose presentation, I thought, was a B.S. All the prizes in physics were given to the seniors, except for me and another member in the physics club. I didn’t want to blame seniors, but I thought that something was wrong about the result. Most students who watched the presentations said works of our club were comparatively well done.

  Nonetheless, I was not bold enough to argue with the teachers. Instead, I dug up the criteria of the academic festival written in 2009 in KMLA Online. The most heavily scored criteria was “creative motive of the research”, which reminded me of a question I was asked. After my presentation, one teacher threw me an unexpected question,

   “According to your paper, you started research when you found the interesting phenomenon ‘accidently’ while cleaning up. Is it true?”

  I had prepared for the questions only about theory and experiment. Honestly, our club members had started the research to practice for a national competition. We chose topics from the national competition of last year. I had never imagined that someone would take that line so seriously. At first I beat around the bush, but later told the truth.

Only after I saw the criteria, I regretted my answer. But I couldn’t still understand that criterion. ‘What’s so important about creativity of the subject? Can it represent one’s ideas and perseverance?’

  A few days later, Mr. Kim, the instructor of the club, mentioned about academic festival. He said there were some mistakes, such as not answering a question honestly. After his comment, he added, “do you have any question?” I raised my hand unlike usual.

   “I think our purpose of research doesn’t fit with school academic festival.”

  He stared at me and said,

   “What do you mean?”

  I explained that we were bound to choose the subjects from the competition of last year, so we could not be so creative about our topic. He frowned and asked again.

   “What do you mean?”

  I repeated the same response. His face turned red.

   “SO, WHAT DO YOU MEAN?”

  He asked me to stand up at the back of the classroom. He asked me if I was trying to say that the teachers were being unfair. I only repeated the same answer. My voice started to tremble. He finally said, “It’s not it. You’re wrong.”

  Wrong. That word somehow stabbed my heart. I wished I could defend myself that I was only telling that we could have been evaluated better if the criteria were focused on the research itself. That I was terribly sorry when my peers were not rewarded, who went through equally difficult moments. But I couldn’t, because I didn’t want to blame others anymore. I was frustrated that he did not try to understand me. I didn’t mean to blame anyone; I only wanted to say that the criteria might have been unfair.

  After the class, the event replayed in my brain all day long. The next morning, I talked about that incident again with my advisor. I planned to make it short, but as I started to talk, I burst into tears. She patiently waited until I found relief. I cannot remember what my advisor said exactly, but I remember that I felt much more comfortable after I cried.

  It did not take too long to realize how shortsighted I was. I overlooked my weaknesses, busy blaming external factors. I could find many errors and flaws in my research paper, after rereading it carefully. And of course, it was possible for me to find the meaning of the research, even if the problem was not new; I shouldn’t have lied in any case. I think I was being unusual and overly sensitive. However, because I expressed my thought boldly in front of the teacher, because I was bitten so hard, I could stop, before the small vanity grew any more, and look back on myself.