'Life out of Orbit' author tells there is no need to live extraordinary life

Lee Ji-su, author of an essay book titled "Life out of Orbit," poses for a photo at a bookstore in Seoul in this February 2020 photo. Courtesy of Lee Ji-su

By Jung Da-min

Students who excel in school often take advanced courses so they can go on to a special-purpose high school and then a prestigious university to eventually get a coveted job such as a doctor or lawyer.

Lee Ji-su, 29, the author of a book of essays titled "Life out of Orbit," said she thought she would also take a similar route after graduating early from a science high school. But she failed to get into a prestigious university. She then thought her life could not enter the ideal "orbit" she had pictured in her mind.

"As I wrote in my book, I think the biographies of great men had ruined my perspective on life. They made me think that I need to live an extraordinary life," Lee said during a recent interview with The Korea Times at a cafe in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province.

"After failing to enter the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) that I had been aiming for, I thought I failed to enter an ideal orbit of graduating a science high school and KAIST to get a doctorate, an ideal life orbit for an elite as I had been drawing in my mind."

Spending a year at Ewha Womans University majoring in physics, Lee started studying for the state-run exam selecting public officials.

"I thought I needed to prove that I was an extraordinary person who had taken another challenge to become a public official, as I failed to achieve my initial goal of getting a doctorate from KAIST. I did not realize that I was only trying to fit into an ideal I had been imagining in accordance with what I thought people would admire, not based on my own values established from my own experiences," Lee said.

After two years of studying for the exam, Lee felt that she was not good at writing on a certain subject and thus would not be able to get good grades in an exam that included descriptive answers to questions.

Lee said she realized her scope of life experience was too narrow to make decisions different from the stereotypes she made based on what she thought people would admire. That was the first time she made a different decision to read as many books as possible to learn how to live a different life.

"Until then, I had read few books as I thought reading books other than textbooks was a waste of time when my main goal was to get good grades in exams," Lee said. "I studied really intensely at a science high school so did not have the time to read other books."

Lee said she was like a child in terms of learning different perspectives after starting to read books in various fields and decided to write about her own experience of her life perspective being changed.

The cover of Lee Ji-su's book of essays titled "Life out of Orbit" / Courtesy of Lee Ji-su

In March 2019, she published her own book of essays titled "Life out of Orbit" after taking a class on independent publishing designed for those who want to publish their own stories. Lee said she wanted to tell her readers that there was no need to live the extraordinary life that is often found in the biographies of "great men."

"I think we need to be careful in recommending children read biographies which tend to tell them that they should be leaders in certain fields of society while in reality there are a larger number of followers. Being a follower is not a failure but a part of our daily lives," Lee said. "I believe there should be more books telling stories of ordinary people, not of great men."

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