So, I watched this Korean drama called “Study Group” on Viki. And I loved it—not because I’m a critic, but because it cracked something open in me. Yoon Ga-min, the lead, is a terrible student with one fierce dream: to go to university. I was a terrible student too—but I had no dream, just a hunger for things that rhymed and a habit of wandering.
Watching him, I didn’t just see his struggle. I saw my own: the confusion, the loneliness, the strange joy of learning when it isn’t about grades. And I realized—I may not have been the best student, but I was a survivor of the system. Quietly, stubbornly, in my own way. So, this isn’t a review. It’s a reckoning. A gentle one, maybe—but make no mistake, it comes from someone who’s still standing.
For me all dramas are a way to live in extension over my current reality. For the duration of these dramas’ run-time, I go through the classic process of cathartic experience wherein as per ancient drama rules be cleansed.
The first thing that attracted me to the main lead was he was also a poor student like me. But unlike me, his one ambition in life was to go to university. That persistence, I acquired only after I realised that it was a lie that education ends with schooling! I honestly believed that after High school all education stops but I did not know what one did after education too!!
I was equipped with a lack of dream and a desire to rhyme words. I couldn’t possibly imagine any kind of industry in which I would be working or gain skills. I became an itinerant learner. If a subject sparked my imagination, I followed it, whether or not, it appeared on an examination paper. So, it was not difficult to understand Yoon Ga-Min desire to go to college.
Sometimes, one’s aspirations are just such that looking far away towards the destination is hindered by the next goal alone being visible to the person dreaming. In a way, this drama was not telling that the Yoon immediately improved because that will be fantasy.
From personal experience I know that one topic which is clear once becomes muddled the next time. During my 9th and 10th grades we had the same textbooks and all subjects were hard. I could relate to him copying even the teacher’s exclamation and comment on the sleeping class which he felt was part of the lecture. I have also done that and then realised that it was an instruction and not lesson notes.
Even today, I remember the lesson on Rivers which was fascinating to read. Somehow, I was inspired by the young river from the snow clapped mountain to its rush through different terrains and then eventually reaching the plain as ox bow formation or as delta mingling with the ocean or sea the river penultimate destination.
For the life of me, it seemed like a story of mankind from babe in cradle to adage. The other one was the volcano and its parts. It was not school of drudgery but it also fun to learn something that picked my interest because my brain was forming connection. The frustration of not understanding the subject felt like Magma to me and so Volcano felt like release.
When the difficulty levels of subject escalated, I felt an urge to flood the subject and take it down. I felt like a young river formed in the mountain or just be the Ganga who pecked about following King Bhagirath wanted to destroy earth with her force. When she was contained in Shiva’s matted hair and released as a calm stream there was order but then Ganga was mischievous too. Much like Rivers are a force by them.
This concept fascinated me the most. I felt it while reading about the rivers and volcanoes. These were the two topics in Geography that stayed with me back then and even now. I remember the emotion and passion with which learnt those topics alone. I remember Julius Ceasar play of William Shakespeare. Venne Diagram in Math. I loved graph too but not skilled in it. It was around that time someone taught me to shade a coin. Often, I would shade One rupee and 50 paisa coins on home book for notes.
The drama showcased his passion for Martial arts and to get into college. As for me college wasn’t even my dream, I just wanted to wander around learn using my senses. My most favourite subject were the lab classes. I loved Chemistry lab session and maybe a little bit of the Physics lab but detested Biology lab because I didn’t like to dissect a flower and I will always make a clean work in one flower. This way the other flowers can be saved, and I can place them under the statues of Joseph and Christ child and Mary and Christ child in the long hall of the school chapel. Since back then, I knew all gods were one and the same. It is the human that sees the differences.
I remember that for the public exam lab test, three of my classmates and I got Copper Nitrate as salts for testing and inferencing. But each time we did the brown ring test it failed. So, we went to the external and showed her the issue. The external also retested it and showed us the brown ring which dissolved once you straighten the tube. On attempting the second time, the external just said we need to straighten the tube and show the brown ring. Eventually, after much attempt the external noted down that the four of us got the brown ring. I think there must have been some other chemical component, or the salt was not pure.
But generally, I loved the chemistry lab and often was the first one to get the salt tested. I immensely enjoyed watching things bubble and steam coming out. Initially, I was very frightened of Burner. But later settled down to lighting it and heating tube with it. I think that is when I told my mother that I wanted to make tea at home to get the hang of lighting the stove.
The drama showed how Yoon Ga-Min chose the library as a meeting place. I was also searching for the calm collected spaces for my learning through experiential ways. There was a passage on either side of the Chapel. On right side of the chapel was a hallway and on the left was a grilled pathway. I feared the hallway but the pathway was quiet and faced the Primary class assembly. I always picked a spot during my high school days, to stand outside the chapel on the Mary and Christ child’s side on the block long passage with my arms draped on the rail watching the lush green tree which gave shade during high afternoon.
There were squirrels that run up and down the tree and I watched this peaceful entertainment played out just for me. This spot no knew and once I reach the school usually the first person to arrive and greet the Watchman standing at the entrance gate, I loved this quiet time the most.
I would debate and commune with nature and watch July clouds, and the green of summer and joy of calm collected peace that felt only in school. I may not be the best student in the class; but I enjoyed going to school for these moments of alone time. Our school had a gated garden, a Mother Mary’s grotto, a duck shop which closed after my sixth grade or so, not sure. Then, there were the library first a small room with steel shelves and then in high school a three-classroom big in size and neatly arranged books shelves which had wider range of books to read.
I remember picking a poetry book written by a girl who suffered from Leukaemia and how her words made shed tears and feel every single needle and chemo that she had. Her verses made me feel positive about life and my hardship over studies felt less important to me. I kept reading narrow and wide. But I did have one fetish for a Desire Silhouette romance and only two books. It was written on Greek and French heroes and heroines. I felt that book was well balanced storytelling. Even back then I was fascinated how easy to read it was. Even today I had purchased the old copies of these two books in second-hand book selling app.
The assembly in the drama was indoor auditorium and in contrast my school assembly was an open space with sand a ground. I absolutely enjoy sitting with Rochelle my 9-10th Classmate before assembly and pick a stick and keep drawing circles while I conversed with her on random stuffs or her planning a learning session for home. I sometime followed and sometimes tell her it failed. Then she would come up with some other options to try the next day.
The classes may have been boring but the environment to learn was impeccable and I enjoyed every alone time with nature so much. I wasn’t a great fan of sports and rather not be found slain there of course!
That reminds me, on the basketball court outside the wall on the other side of the road there was a two storeyed house which seemed to have not been occupied. We had stories of ghost living in the house, when it could be the residents had gone on a trip and were not occupied or there were plans to rebuild but we made up stories of ghosts living and windows shutting by themselves. I was scared and never went that way alone.
Around 8th grade I began eating alone and sometimes I would wander around and eating with someone who invited me like Rochelle who would call me over to eat with her group and I would join. From 8th grade I have been floating around, but then I started to shorten my lunch time so I can go to the library to pick some books. It was such a pleasant moment for me.
I must say that I loved my school library so much even though it started out as a small room holding books with sister stamping return dates and later when it grew my greed for books grew too. When I saw Yoon’s friend the top scoring student dejected by the hurdles to peaceful learning sleeps in the library. I felt the book he used as pillow was often a joke in my house. My sibling would joke maybe I should place book under my pillow so the osmosis process would happen and the knowledge from high density to low density would result in my being a better student. I believed it and tried it too but didn’t work though!
And that’s when it hit me—Yoon Ga-min fought his way to a dream. I wandered my way to a self. He studied. I observed. But both of us refused to break. He used his fists; I used my curiosity. He wanted a degree; I wanted a library, a quiet hallway, a squirrel running up a tree while I watched, doing nothing at all—but knowing I belonged there. I may not have his persistence, but I have my own: the kind that shows up every day, that keeps reading, keeps remembering, keeps finding peace in the smallest things. I never got his grades. But I got his grit. And that’s not nothing. That’s everything.
Itinerant Storyteller 