To Survive

[Kim Yen Nguyen]

All I have done up to this time of my life is to survive in this advanced and competitive world, and I intend to be the stepping stone or ladder so that my younger brother and possibly my descendants can use for their social mobility.  I have spent eleven years of my childhood in Vietnam, an impoverished country.  I have seen with my own eyes and understood that in many places in this world, many people are born into poverty and could never be able to escape that cycle no matter how hard they work.  They are poor, unable to afford their children a higher education, nor help them start a business. Thus the children grew up to fill in the social position of their parents before them and so their own children will eventually become like them. An endless cycle.  Even though my family has a low income, we are much more fortunate than many other Vietnamese living in Vietnam because in the U.S. there is a public education system giving me and my siblings a chance to attain an education and very likely to climb up the social ladder.  With this knowledge, I feel that it is my responsibility to get a college education and succeed here in the U.S. so that I can have a better life than my parents, so that my parents can have a better life than before, so that I can help pave my younger brother a smoother path to success.  I want to be able to make a lot of money, I want to be able to support my parents in their old age and to give them everything they ever wanted, I want to be able to say “yes!” when my brother asks me if he can have a toy that was being advertised on the television or if he can go to an amusement park.  I do not consider myself to be so fortunate as to worry things like my identity or whatnot that other people often talk about because that is the privilege of those who are already have enough wealth so that they no longer know of the fear of hunger and thus have the time to consider their identity.  To me, what matters is that I do my best so that I can have the best future possible within my reach and to be able to afford my family a life that they dream of.