Reflective Essay_My KMLA Life

It has already been a year that I 'lived' here in KMLA. KMLA is a school, a school which is totally different from ordinary schools. Besides, this school entirely changed my life style for a year.  Maybe because all the KMLA students, including me, eat, study, sleep and play at the dormitory and solve every trivial problem by ourselves. We are literally 'living' at school, and that fact made me more diligent and strict to myself. It was hard, and till now, I feel hard in some aspects, but I could learn many things through a year in KMLA

Among many things that I learned in KMLA I want to talk about that I learned how to clean the bathroom. Some may laugh at the first sentence. "Is that all that she learned from dormitory life is just to clean the bathroom?" People may expect from me to learn something big, such as independence or something. But, learning how to clean the bathroom was also a big and meaningful thing to me, because the fact that I don't even know how to clean the place, although I used it every day for 16 years, was kind of shock to me. I thought I was old enough to live by myself. However, I was merely a child who was in need of help of adults around me. 

Well, I also did some cleaning when I was at home. I brushed my room, tidied up my desk, and made up my bed. But that was all. I just had to clean up my room, 'my area.' My brother and I had to clean our room, but my parents had to clean not only their room but also the rest of the house, such as living room or toilet. I took it for granted for 16 years, and I had never thought of cleaning the bathroom by myself, because it was not my task. However, there was no 'my area' in the dormitory room. The whole dorm room was 'our area' and it was us who had to clean the bathroom. At first, it was unfamiliar to clean there, but soon, we learned the way to clean through real-life experience.

Although we are skilled at cleaning the bathroom, still it is a bit disgusting. To clear the drain, we have to endure disgusting smell from the hole, and remove a bunch of hair and dust from it. Those hairs are from us but I can help thinking they are nasty. When I first experienced such things, I thought of my mom and dad. They cleaned all those hairs from my brother and I (mostly from me), without any complaint. I suddenly and anew, felt grateful toward my parents for their efforts to raise us. Of course, they have much more hardships, which are incomparable to the hardship of cleaning the bathroom. But, it became a chance for me to think about my thankful parents. Just knowing and experiencing at least a little part of hardship that my parents would have suffered from was different.

It is true that I am not fully satisfied with this school, and sometimes, I even feel all those things that school require from us such as morning exercise of 애국조회 is useless. But I can't deny the fact that, there is something that I can learn, such as my parent's love, even from cleaning the bathroom. And that's the reason why I love this school and the time I spend here is valuable. I hope that I can learn more for the rest 2 years.