Ep1. A Korean College Student’s First Complex in Life | by Silver Bori | Nov, 2025

In 2001, I was 22 years old when I dropped out of university, right before my junior year. I left that damned school I could never mention with pride. I had already failed once at college admissions.

Back then, when neither parents nor teachers really understood the admissions process, I got into a regional national university through an early admission program based on standardized test scores — you just needed to be in the top 15% to apply. At first, I was happy. Many of the smart seniors from my high school went there.

But soon after enrollment, I learned the truth. Students with scores over 100 points lower than mine were getting in through additional admission rounds. Friends with scores similar to mine were attending much better universities. That’s when it started — the academic inferiority complex. The class of ’99 became a number I desperately wanted to erase.

If I had been smarter and more resourceful, I would have managed my GPA and prepared for the TOEIC during my sophomore year to transfer as a junior. Or I would have retaken the college entrance exam while still attending school. But my parents refused to let me retake the exam, so I spent my days resenting myself for choosing that school.

The result? Academic probation in both semesters of my freshman year. I barely avoided it in my sophomore year, but I still couldn’t pull myself together. When my boyfriend at the time left to study English in the U.S., I dropped out too.

I wanted to go abroad as well. The U.S. was too expensive, so I thought maybe Australia or Canada — somewhere more affordable. But my parents had no intention of sending me.

I got a job as an academy instructor, teaching English. I was good at it. I started with middle school students, and when my ninth graders moved up to high school, I began teaching high school classes too. During exam periods, I was busy with weekend sessions, but I loved earning money. I was making a little over two million won at the time — quite a lot. My cousin, six years older and working at a major company in Yeouido, made about the same.

But there was a problem. When students asked which university I attended, I could only say I was on a leave of absence. I couldn’t tell them the name of my school. The other instructors were all from Ewha, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, or Kyung Hee University.

Whenever students asked, I brushed it off with an awkward “It’s a secret,” but inside, I felt smaller and smaller.

At the academy, there was another English instructor from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies who spoke fluently with the native teachers. Her major was Spanish, but ironically, she couldn’t speak it. She had spent a year in the U.K. during her junior year and said her English had improved tremendously while working part-time at a restaurant in Central London.

“This is it,” I thought — the first step toward becoming someone confident.

I had saved about 17 million won over a year and a half, so I decided to work six more months to save enough for a year’s tuition and living expenses in the U.K. The moment I set that goal, I grew restless.

I bought a Grammar in Use book and IELTS materials to study, but they felt too easy, probably because I had solved so many college entrance exam questions before.

I sent an email to my boyfriend in the U.S. saying I was going to the U.K. I didn’t explicitly write “let’s break up,” but my words of gratitude and wishes for his future happiness made it clear. He was always kind and upbeat, someone who would drive long distances to pick me up or drop me off — a gentle, humble man from a wealthy celebrity family.

I wasn’t worthy of him — immature and full of pride. I ignored the several international calls that followed. That’s how I ended things, unilaterally, with my first love and best friend.

In 2003, the day finally came — departure for London, the place I had been dreaming of. My dad had been fighting with my mom for months and was living in a nearby studio apartment. My younger brother was in the military. My mom, left alone, had become addicted to gambling and rarely came home.

Still, she cried all morning the day I left, knowing I was going far away. It broke my heart, but I was sick of that house — sick of everything. My dad, a high-ranking government official, always had women on the side. My mom, who had fallen into gambling since my freshman year, had ruined the family finances, losing hundreds of millions of won in just two or three years.

“With all that money to lose,” I thought bitterly, “why didn’t they just let me retake the exam? Why didn’t they send me abroad?”

Carrying that futile resentment, I went far away — to a place where nobody knew me.

But once I arrived in the U.K., I realized it wasn’t what I had imagined. It was different