Because they didn’t get a chance to. From my childhood, my mom has told me endless stories of how she did not get a chance to go to school because of my grandmother’s economic hardships and toils as a single mother when my mom was a teenager growing up in Thailand. With seven brothers and one sister, my dad and his family had to make sacrifices as well. These stories are still distinct in my mind and have remained there ever since. They have become a driving force in my life and have influenced who I am, what I do, and especially, why I do it.As their financial conditions worsened, both of my parents had to prematurely withdraw from their education. While my mom left school to help her mom sell home-made Thai desserts, my dad put his education on a hiatus to help his family with their failing restaurant. Unfortunately, neither of my parents had a chance to return to school. From these stories, I have come to appreciate all the things in my life that my parents lacked at my age even more. They have taught me to not take the roof over my head, clothes on my back, overflowing pots of food in the kitchen, books in my backpack, and above all, my education for granted. Because I have seen the discrepancies between my life and the lives of my parents, I am ever more eager to take advantage of opportunities they did not have and make them proud. From then on, I have focused on school and set a career goal of entering the medical field as a pharmacist. I promised myself to make the most of my blessings in life because as I have seen first-hand, not everyone is as lucky.
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