Forever And Ever (BTS)

Chapter 35

Namjoon scribbled equation after equation on his maths worksheet. He sighed once again. As much as he liked maths and was good at it, it was just tedious sometimes. Especially when the questions were all similar because they were only one segment of a topic. He didn't see the point of having so many questions when he was just writing the same thing. Why couldn't the teachers just choose a few to test their understanding? Namjoon deduced that they only needed at most five questions to see if everyone knew the topic, based on what they'd set. He shook his head as he finished off the worksheet and packed it in his bag. I wish I could just not do the homework once in a while, he thought. It'd be nice not to have all the teachers' attention focused on him for once. He lay in bed with that thought in his head. It stuck there, keeping him awake. He tried to get it out of his brain by telling himself all the trouble he'd get into at school if he really decided to rebel. But it didn't work. I'll ask Dad, he thought, I can see what he thinks.

Namjoon got out of bed and went to the living room, where Mr Kim was watching television. "Dad," Namjoon spoke, "can I talk to you about something?" Mr Kim nodded. He was slightly worried, it seemed like all his boys were having troubles nowadays. "What's going on, Joon?"

"I think I'm stressed from school. The teachers all force me to do more work than the rest, at a higher level, because my grades are good. I'm already the best in the cohort, but they still get angry if I lose even a single mark. I don't understand it. Even if I lose a few marks, at the end of the day I'm still the best. Why do I need to be perfect? Perfect isn't even achievable. I don't even think academics are that important, in the grand scheme of things. I just do it because they give me so much pressure. I hate it, but I don't know what to do."

Mr Kim was sympathetic towards Namjoon. He remembered his days in school, when he'd see his smarter classmates get pressured by the teachers who expected them to get full marks for everything. He understood where Namjoon was coming from. It seemed that the education system hadn't changed at all. 

"My classmates were in the same predicament as you. They couldn't bear it. One day, they just couldn't take it anymore, so they stopped doing their homework a week before exams. When the teachers asked why, they said to wait for the exam results and nothing more. The results came, and they got the highest scores out of the cohort. They then told the teacher that giving them piles and piles of homework was not useful as they thought. What was important was to work smart, not hard. Someone could do a million questions on the same topic and get all them wrong, because they haven't gotten the concept in the first place. It's much better to do a few questions that allow you to prove your understanding and application skills, rather than do question after question and tire your brain out without learning anything."

Namjoon listened in awe. What his dad's classmates had gone through sounded exactly like what he was experiencing. He couldn't help but feel inspired by them. "But I don't want to upset my teachers. If I do anything against their wishes, they'll hold me back and lecture me until I do what they expect of me." Mr Kim pondered this for a minute. "Then I'll talk to your teachers with you. You can ask them to set up a time to meet us, and we can explain how you feel to them together. How about that?" Namjoon nodded, feeling reassured that he would have his father by his side. "Go back to bed then, you need your energy. It is school, after all." Namjoon was finally able to sleep peacefully, without a single doubt in his mind. 

"Mr Kim, nice to see you. What can we do for you today?" Namjoon and Mr Kim sat at the teachers' table across from Namjoon's form teacher. Mr Kim cut straight to the chase right away. "Namjoon has been telling me that he feels overloaded by the amount of work you and his other teachers are giving him. I would like to discuss how we can help him feel less stressed about his academics. Personally, I don't see the purpose in giving him so much extra work when he obviously doesn't need it." The teacher's eyebrows rose, "Namjoon is at a level much higher than the rest. We give him extra work so he can challenge himself and set an example to the rest of his peers. If we don't consistently challenge him and let him do the same work as the rest, he'll start to get complacent and his grades will slip. We're just preventing that so that his place in a good school is guaranteed. What is so wrong with that, Mr Kim?"

Namjoon took this as an opportunity to speak, "Miss, if I may... sometimes the amount of homework you give me is just too much. I have to stay up much later than I would like to complete it. And most of the extra work isn't even related to the topic we're learning. I would just like to ask if you could consider cutting down on the work so that I have more time for myself. Isn't holistic development important too? The report book has a section for it, but I don't get the chance to work on that, because you focus too much on my academics. And not to sound conceited, but I believe that even without the extra homework, I wouldn't be complacent and I wouldn't let my grades fall. That's my work ethic. I'd practice on my own and be more willing to do so because it'd be my choice. Can't you trust me to do so?" 

The teacher was speechless. Mr Kim gently continued, "I agree with everything my son has said. From what he's told me, with just his own hard work on top of the homework that the whole class gets, he'd do better than his peers. And I don't believe that getting full marks for everything is a necessity. So perhaps, you should stop pressuring him. He should not be feeling this much stress at his age." With that, Mr Kim stood up and gestured for Namjoon to do the same. "Come on, son, let's go home. And you won't be doing any of the extra homework you got today. I think you deserve some time to relax." And so, the two walked out, leaving the teacher sitting at her desk, their words running through her mind.