PERSONAL STATEMENT

I was born and grew up in a northernmost mountainous province of Vietnam bordering
China. My entire childhood was surrounded by chronic poverty and pervasive ignorance in a little village where children of my age knew nothing but undulating ranges of grandeur mountains that even in my dream I would never have thought of one day I could break out of the vicious circle of illiteracy and innumeracy to become a lawyer and make an ambitious plan for further study in a world-class university in USA. Unlike peer friends whose sole dream was to have decent meals and warm clothes every day after school, I looked for another world from the foreign magazines that my dad subscribed for me using his scanty military salary. In my mind, a society where people were vested with rights to decent life, education and advancement was conjured up. And I cherished a passion to learn and explore that unknown world.
As early as high school days, I realized that English was not only a valuable tool for me to discover the world but also helped shape my outlook with more comprehensive and impartial eyes. Thus, I kept learning days after days to build up my English competency in a hope for a day when I could communicate confidently and fluently as a native. I still remember my feeling when I read the book “Message from Nam” by Danielle Steel and knew for the first time how the American viewed the Vietnam War. But for a certain command of English, my view of the War would have been biased with distorted historical education in Vietnam. Moreover, with a strictly-controlled education and media, knowing another language means having one additional means of communications that allows me to bypass the draconian censorship and to have more outward-looking, multidimensional and critical thoughts. All these have enabled to open my mind to the global world and