[University Entrance Exam] One Month into Ronin Life: A Reflection to Avoid Being Consumed by May Anxiety

One month has passed since your ronin life began. The excitement of April—gathering new reference books and starting prep school classes—has settled down, the first mock exams are over, and this is likely a time when you are suddenly coming back to reality. Seeing classmates who have entered university enjoying their glamorous campus lives on social media may sometimes leave you feeling an inexplicable sense of anxiety or loneliness.

However, how you reflect on how you spent this past month and how you correct your course will significantly influence your success or failure next spring.In this article, I will talk to ronin students aiming for national universities about the realities you must face right now and concrete measures to avoid failure.

Are you able to stabilize your daily life without being swayed by emotions?

What determines success or failure in ronin life is daily self-management ability more than academic ability. Over this past month, have you been able to establish a consistent rhythm of waking up at a set time in the morning and focusing on your desk?

It is extremely dangerous to try to study by relying on motivation or driveEmotions are as fickle as the weather, and especially when aiming for national universities, which involve many subjects and a long-term battle, you will never be able to cover the vast range of study material if you are swayed by waves of motivation.

What is important is the habit of moving your pen at a set time and in a set place, regardless of whether you feel motivated or notBy deciding your actions in detail, such as "opening your vocabulary book as soon as you wake up" or "starting math exercises as soon as you sit in this seat at the library," you can focus on learning without wasting energy on daily indecision. If your rhythm has been prone to disruption, please restart by first fixing your "wake-up time for tomorrow."

Have you put the reasons for last year's failure into words and reflected them in your studies?

Are you dismissing last year's failure with vague words like "I was just a few points short" or "I just happened to fail on the day"? Without being able to break down the reasons for your failure into concrete terms, you will never pass next year.

What you should reflect on is not just the amount of study, but the "quality of lost points."For example, if you lost points in math, calmly categorize whether it was because you lacked knowledge of the formula, had the knowledge but couldn't derive the solution from the problem statement, ran out of time, or made a simple calculation error.

In the secondary exams for national universities, how you use your knowledge is strictly tested. If you vaguely attend prep school classes without clarifying your weaknesses, you will end up falling into a self-taught style of only studying subjects you are already good at. Please face your weaknesses once again and confirm whether your study plan is concrete enough to accurately address them.

Are you able to recognize mock exam results as an "illusion"?

The first mock exam held in May generally has a limited scope of questions out of consideration for current high school students. For ronin students who have already finished studying the entire scope at least once, this condition works overwhelmingly in their favor.

Therefore, the high deviation scores and good results in spring mock exams are highly likely to be a kind of "illusion."A good result at this time is merely the bare minimum starting line for a ronin student aiming to pass a top-tier university.

From autumn onwards, current students who have finished studying the entire scope will improve their academic ability rapidly. If you remain at your current level, your relative position will inevitably drop due to the rapid catch-up of those around you.To avoid this losing pattern, you need a sense of speed that works backward from reaching the passing level by summer, without becoming complacent with spring results.

If you are feeling crushed by anxiety right now, try writing that anxiety down in a notebook or on paper. Visualizing the confusion in your head will lighten the burden on your brain and help you regain your composure.

Ronin life is a valuable time to cultivate the power to discipline yourself, as well as a chance to redo your exam studies. Calmly analyze the progress you've made and the challenges you've identified in the month of April, and starting today, let's steadily accumulate one point at a time again. It is only beyond that steady, daily accumulation that the smile you hope for in a year's time awaits.