An Encounter in their high school locker room changed Jimin's view, it leaves him unsettled. He is infected by troubling thoughts and dreams. Who will provide him peace now?
I told myself I would take it easy and just enjoy the dance. It was just a way to wedge some aerobic exercise into my week, nothing more. I played on competitive club dance teams from fourth grade through middle school.
As a freshman in high school, I danced on the JV team and made varsity the next year, the only sophomore to do so. For my size, I was surprisingly fast and graceful and I excelled as a ballerina. The one year I danced varsity, our team placed third at state, the best our school had ever done.
I was in summer training before my junior year when I suffered a complete tear and detachment of my quadriceps tendon and had to quit. My parents were devastated. But, honestly, for me, the injury had been a relief.
My body really wasn't cut out for ballet. By sixteen, my proportions were all wrong. I was too short and too bulky.
I'd always trended toward stocky, but once I hit fifteen or so, I started to put on weight quickly, both fat and muscle. As I filled out, the dance became more and more of a grind, and the huge time commitment strained everything else in my life. Mostly, I had been dancing so zealously in an attempt to be the perfect, well-rounded scholar/athlete I thought I needed to be to get the best scholarships, get into the best colleges, and have the golden career that my parents -- achievement-obsessed immigrants from Korea -- expected of me.
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After my injury, I doubled down on my studies to make up for my perceived deficit. I took math, science, and Korean courses at the local university in the afternoons and evenings on top of my high school courses. To keep fit, I would train in the weight room with my dance buddies in the mornings before class.
I guess it's fair to say I worked myself harder than ever. In the end, I got into the schools I needed to in order to appease my parents. They were a little upset that I chose to attend the farthest possible school from them, on the opposite coast, but they couldn't argue with the brand name.
I needed a break from my family, and going away to a place where I didn't know anyone felt like the best way to do that. For a while at least, I felt I had found the freedom I was seeking when I got to school. I quickly met a group of guys who became good buddies.
We drank and smoked weed together, something I'd never done in high school. I went to parties. I met a ton of people.
I made out with girls and had even drunkenly hooked up with a few of them. For the first time in my life, I felt unburdened. Pretty soon, though, the intensity of college kicked in. My AP courses and college credit had waived me out of most of the intro classes required for my major, which meant I was taking relatively intense courses as a first-semester freshman.
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My friends continued to party pretty hard and I joined them when I could, but I ended up drifting away from the social scene and just studied really, really hard. I didn't really miss the parties, honestly, or the socializing. I was truly absorbed by my work.
I decided not to go home over the summer and placated my parents by landing a paid internship at a nearby pharmaceutical company. I worked really hard there, too.
