In KMLA, most of students share
information, chat with others, and make announcements through Facebook, a
well-known social network service. These characteristics that I mentioned are
general ones that other Facebook users also do. However, there is one more a
very unique custom in KMLA using Facebook: listing friends as spouses or
relatives. Not many people can deny the fact that from the viewpoint of outside
world, this phenomena is quite eccentric. However, within a special
circumstance like KMLA it is different, and I believe that this action has
mainly two meanings.
KMLA, as a matter of fact, is a school
located in Gang-won Province, far from urban area. Due to this low proximity to
cities, all the students have to live in dormitory, which is apparently hard
experience for teenagers who just graduated middle school. There is no one that
they can get care from, and convenient city life style does not exist. What
students in KMLA has to depend on is oneself, or other people that are facing
the same difficulty and tasks. This makes students in KMLA try to be as much as
friendly with their friends, and build intimate relationships with them. In
this situation, I strongly insist that being relatives or spouses on Facebook
substantially makes this process much more facile and easier. Rather than just
making close relationships and spending lots of time together, under the link
of ‘informal couple’ or ‘informal family’, students would feel larger sense of
kinship with their friends. Moreover, the openness of Facebook makes this
intimacy much more concrete, because by showing to others how much they are
close to each other, and getting positive responses from a number of people such
as ‘like’, they would feel much more connected and thus be more dependent. Thanks
to this firm connection, students can deal with difficulties such as stresses
from study, much more easily. Hence, it seems that making close relationships
with friends on Facebook was induced by harsh condition of KMLA, and students
use this in order to enjoy better school lives.
On the contrary however, to me, it looks
like students in KMLA are implicitly being contradictory to themselves.
Generally, in this isolated community in which nevertheless academic
performance is fundamental, students both consciously and unconsciously be
sensitive to this, and feel sense of competition to others. Of course other
activities at school such as club activities or having fun with friends help
this sense to be weakened, I still think that the competitive atmosphere does
not disappear keep surrounding the students. On this perspective, I believe that
the students are unintentionally hiding their desire to beat others or
eagerness to be better, by taking advantage of Facebook’s relationship listing
function. Again, the openness of Facebook helps this be firm, because as more
and more people recognize intimate relationship of two, the unconscious
intentions is less likely to be uncovered.
It is quite ironic to say that the special
custom on KMLA helps students be close to each other and adapt to school well,
but simultaneously it becomes a method for concealing involuntary competitiveness.
Considering the first semester that 18th wavers have successfully
passed without causing noticeable conflicts, I am really pleased to say that we
are using Facebook more for the former reason. Furthermore, I hope that this
trend maintains until we graduate, to achieve better school life and true
meaning of ‘KMLA family’.
595 words, 50 minutes in hand-writing
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