It is so difficult to live in the United States, the land of opportunity, without education and the English language. Without these two things, our lives seem like meaningless. My family is one of the victims of this problem. Two years ago, when I was a senior student in high school, I almost could not graduate from high school with diploma in hand because of failing the exit exam twice and my lack knowledge of English. At that time, I really wanted to give up and ended my education at that level, but the encouragement of my parents had helped me go through this challenge to succeed the first accomplishment in my life.
The first challenge started out when my family immigrated to this country. Indeed, living in an unfamiliar place is not easy at all. Everything is totally different from my own country such as the weather, culture, food, communication, and education. My first educated place in America was Rancho Cordova High School which is located in Rancho Cordova county of California. Truthfully, when I first began to learn English with eleventh grade in High school, I was just like a …show more content…
deaf and mute person in the class. I didn’t understand what people were saying, and of course I could not speak English as well as people here.
The second day of school, I carried the schedule around the school with innocent face and lost my direction to get into the classes. At that time, I even could not express my feeling by asking the only basic question such as “Would you please tell me how to get into this class.” In that moment, I recognized myself was an alien who came from another planet. My feeling was so down, and I felt so lonely in the world. One day, when I was sitting alone in the bench at school, a white girl with a pretty blond hair whose name is Sarah dropped by to say hi and wanted to make friend with me. She asked me whole bunch of questions, but I didn’t know how to response. After few minutes, she knew that I couldn’t speak English, and she just walked away. I almost cried out in the public, and I felt myself so stupid.
Time by time, I began to be familiar to the new life and my studying at school. At that moment, the goal of graduating from high school was important than anything in the world. This is not only my dream and also a significant promise to my lovely parents, because I wanted them to be proud of their only daughter in the family. Besides that, I wanted to bring an honor to my family, take fully care and support sufficiently for the rest of their life with certain status in the community.
A year later, the last year of high school, I should be very happy instead of the anxiety and sadness which were carried on my face.
Unfortunately, something happened out of control; everything turned out bad to my goal. The other obstacle had come to me again, and I know that I had to deal with another challenge. In that year, class of 06, the educational law had changed in California. The government had required all the students to pass the California Exit Exam to graduate or we could not walk stage. I was so worried about this problem because I already failed it twice. I only had one more chance to take it in February. Actually, with two years of learning English, this test was really a struggle for me. I totally lost self-confidence at that time. I was so upset about the promise I made. I always asked myself “what can I do
now?”
When my parents received the news, they didn’t feel so disappointed about me. Furthermore, they encouraged me to work harder and try all my best to do the exam as good as I can. With their support, I completely got back self-confidence to struggle with the next challenge.
The morning of the exam day, I got up as early as I could to prepare spiritedly for the test that will take four hours. When I walked into the kitchen, I could sniff out the smell of delicious sunshine up egg with bread, which is ever my favorite food for breakfast, that mom cooked in the early morning. When I was ready to leave the house, my parents gently said to me that “Loss is experience of success. Mom and dad always stay behind to support you. Don’t worry! My sweetie” I looked at her with tears in my eyes and said,” Mom, I won’t disappoint you.”
After two months, the result of exam was coming on May 10. At that day, when I walked into the counselor’ office to receive the result, my hand was shaking, my heart was pounding so fast, and I entered into Mrs. Tiger’s office with extremely worried face. Meanwhile, she announce my result with smiling face that “Congratulation, you pass the exam with the score 361”. At that moment, I was so surprise, excited and happy. Rapidly, my tears kept falling, and I couldn’t even hold it. Finally, my dream had come true, and I told myself that I did it. Absolutely, I could have a graduated invitation for my parents.
The graduation of my senior year was celebrated at the gorgeous park in Cal-Expo. Obviously, I was so nervous and excited on that big day. There is one scene always store in my mind which was my parents’ joyfulness during the whole night. On that big day, they gave me a really big bundle of red roses. For me, whatever presents which I had received are not valuable than their happiness.
After I went through this difficult time, I recognized that it was only the threshold of my life. For an English learner like me, I know that there is more obstacles will happen in the life of college. Therefore, it helps me to prepare more strength and spirit to struggle to a lot of other challenges in college. Besides that, I also received the valuable lesson of two characters that a person need to have which are persevering and hard working are so important for us. These both characters will lead us to the way of success. Also, the most valuable lesson I had learned from this challenge that parents is extremely part of my life; my parents are ever significant people in my life because they are always by my side to support me whenever I overcome the challenge or difficult problem. Without them, there is no life at all for me.