In my three-week, ten-hour-a-day stay at a Korean SAT boot camp (학원, hag-won), I learned that sometimes, all it takes to survive an absolutely miserable experience is finding someone slightly less miserable to sit with.
My friend Akin asked me a few days ago if I would rather be a loner and sit by myself every day for the rest of my life, or do the depressing Korean SAT boot camp (학원) I endured during my summer in 2025 all over again. I looked at him straight in the face, and he smirked at me. He knows how much I hated that SAT boot camp, but his question really made me think about whether it was really that bad.
In July 2025, I spent three weeks at the boot camp. But somehow, I felt lucky. Most people had already been there for five weeks due to the insanely high expectations of their Korean parents. Still, every morning, I would stand for an hour on the overcrowded subway, getting squished like a NeeDoh. The camp was ten hours long, with an additional two hours of homework assigned every night.
Worse still, due to my late arrival, the majority of the people had already established their friend groups, or were loners who were comfortable with being by themselves, a luxury I could never understand. So, for once in my life, I was a loner. I couldn’t imagine how anyone could voluntarily do this: chowing down on my McNuggets and scrolling on my phone during lunch was beyond depressing. I wasted my only freedom scrolling through Instagram Reels.
On the third day, during a break in the middle of class, I eyed the only other loner. He was lanky with greasy hair, also scrolling on his phone. I went up to him with the hope of sparking a friendship—maybe two loners could become a duo? After speaking with him, I realized we had nothing in common, but I had no other choice. So, I reluctantly asked him to eat lunch with me, and he said yes. He introduced himself as “Monkey.” Monkey was Chinese, Monkey was always sleeping, and Monkey was always calling his e-girlfriend on Discord while we were eating lunch together. In fact, sometimes he wouldn’t even put up a semblance of a friendship and would instead call his e-girlfriend alone. Thinking back on it, maybe Akin’s “would you rather” isn’t so bad; what’s the point of being a loner if the other option is being a loner and doing a grueling SAT camp?
In the middle of the second week, I remembered that there were three Korean American girls in my class. They had been there the whole time, and the only interaction I had with them so far was when they randomly named me “Suzz,” meaning “sweet huzz.” I would laugh uncomfortably and go back to focusing on my studies while they cackled obnoxiously. I hadn’t really thought of befriending them, but when compared to sitting next to Monkey, which was like sitting next to no one, they evolved from a piece of coal to a diamond. I asked if I could join them during lunch, and they readily agreed. Unlike Monkey, we had something in common: we were all Korean American, even if they had egregiously unfunny and stupid “popular girl TikTok humor.” Monkey didn’t seem to notice when I stopped sitting with him, and I also felt no different because no connection had ever formed.
In the final week, only two of the girls were left: Erica and Yoon. For some reason, they still refused to call me by my name, yelling “Suzz!” every time I entered the room. But other than that, they treated me like a part of their friend group, letting me sit with them and sharing all the “tea.” They made my experience at the camp much more bearable. On the final day, as we all separated, I realized that I was actually sad to see these girls go.
So if I were to answer Akin’s “Would you rather,” I think I would do that SAT boot camp again. I was able to befriend these girls who I thought were in their own clique, simply because of the small commonality that we were Korean American. Even if they’re not my best friends, they’re still the ones who made my experience at the camp so much better than it otherwise would have been.
