Ma Yan Chapter Summary

Reflection 1
Throughout the diary, it is important to Ma Yan that she does well in school because she feels the need to provide for her family when she is older. She feels that if she wants to provide for them that she has to do well in school and get into a good university. She mentioned many times throughout the book that she doesn’t want her parents to keep exhausting themselves for her and that to do that she will have to study harder. My own feeling about getting good grades is that everyone should try to and work hard to achieve good grades. I feel like everyone should work hard to get into a good college or university and to have a good job when they are older. I feel that no one should just slack off and live off their parents money.
She has to ration her food to survive, she has to walk a far distance to get to school and her parents don’t work a desk job. But there are other ways that she can relate to American teens. She cares about her grades and she cares about what other people think about her. Most American teens care greatly about their grades because they want to get into a good college/university and get a good job just like Ma Yan wants to. Another way they are similar is that American teens usually care about how they appear to other people. They care about their appearance and they care about not looking “poor” by American standards. Ma Yan has also mentioned in the book that she hangs out with richer kids and she will eat less in the upcoming days of them hanging out just so she can buy some stuff that they buy. In Ma Yan’s diary, I related to her to a couple ways. One way I related to her is that she cares a lot about her grades. I care a lot about my grades because I want to become very successful when I am older and I want to get into a good university/college. The reason behind her caring about her grades is that she wants her and her family to escape