I wondered for a long while what OTL meant. Some of my Korean students use that term. I thought it was an acronym for something. Since Koreans have an entirely different alphabet, I figured it must be something that at least relates to English in some way.

Rather than display my old-fogginess and admit I don’t know what OTL means, I scoured the internet for meanings and consulted Korean/English dictionaries for the true meaning of OTL.

It turns out it has nothing to do any of the letters, other than their shape. Its an “emoticon,” that signifies meaning by the shape of the letters. In this case, its a person on their knees in defeat.  The kids were using it to talk about some upcoming tests they have in the public schools and some tests we gave in our school. We had many of them OTL.

I  gotta get out more.