Dohoon Hong/Chapter 3 Final Draft/Tuesday 1pm

The All-Rounder

I first met him during my first year of high school. His name is Tim. We were designated to a same class room and the first thing that caught my attention was his physical feature. He was short; probably one of the shortest people in school. He had a funny looking mushroom shaped hair, and he did not look very masculine, because he did not have a lot of muscles. Although he was short, he stood out in the class, because he was called by the teachers often. Everyone in my class immediately considered him as the smartest guy in our class. His big dark glasses could have been one proof of such thought. Also, people who graduated from the same junior high as Tim, told others that he was really smart. Eventually, he was called up front during an assembly at the gym to receive scholarship. Even though he was smart, he did not ignore others, and he rather showed a humble behavior saying, "No, I'm not that smart guys. I just do my best."

It was not until April, almost a month after the start of the first semester, when Tim and I started to get friendly. Our class was preparing for a soccer game against another class, when Tim came up to me and asked what position I wanted to play. I told him that I would like to play the forward position. At that moment I was surprised to see that Tim was also going to participate in the soccer game. The reason for the astonishment was that I thought Tim was a hard working student who always studies. However, he was a hard working student who also knows how to play sports well. During the soccer game, I was surprised to see him have agility and good control of the ball with his short legs. Since I loved to play soccer as well, we quickly became good buddies. I figured out Tim was not only stuck to his seat studying, but also knows how to hang around with friends.

Through playing sports, I found out that Tim has a nice personality and good sportsmanship. He would not scold anyone of their mistakes during a competition, and he would rather cheer them up so that they could do better next time. I've never seen anyone speak badly about Tim, and he was always getting along with everyone without any conflict. When he gets irritated sometimes because of someone's behavior, he would not express his anger right away, but he would rather try to solve the problem the best way to avoid any strife. This kind of behavior was also surprising because he is the youngest in his family, his oldest brother in the age of 30. Usually, the stereotypical thought of the youngest person in the family would be someone who always relies on and depends on their older siblings. Moreover, they tend to be more immature than their age group. Although not the kind of guy who would run for the president of the class, Tim has leadership among his friends or in small groups.

Now, Tim is serving in the military as a marine. Over the years, he has grown taller up to about 170cm, and he got to have huge biceps because of hard training in the military. He is starting to look more like a grown-up man which is a very different image from high school. He is always striving to overcome his thresholds, and I feel very lucky to have such a friend to learn from.