TICK-TOCK, the clock was counting down as beads of sweat caressed my face, most having been formed during my intense study session. I had a mere three minutes left on the reading portion to the practice SAT I was completing, but I could not resist noticing my mother eyeing me from the corner, making sure I did my work. If this was any other night, I would have questioned her lack of trust in me with my work but I knew she had every right to do so. Her eagle-like eyes on me stemmed from a not so distant past where I perpetually slacked off. From a young age, I simply failed to have any aspirations for my future and in doing so, was always content with the average. I never did more than expected but, never less than the bare minimum. My mother, …show more content…
My mother, with a sorrowful look in her eyes, began to explain the economic poverty she had suffered in Indonesia, the place where she was born. In Indonesia, the education system was not public and required tuition to even attend school. My mother was only able to receive a middle school education. In her final year of school, she decided to borrow money and began learning how to become a hair stylist. She opened her own hair salon and made a living as an entrepreneur hair stylist. She then explained to me the reason we moved to America was because she saw my potential, and knew that Indonesia would not be the best place to nurture my …show more content…
For others, like my mother, they simply had no choice but to walk away from their future, from their own aspirations, and their own goals. My mother, like thousands upon thousands of other men and women, all seemed to melt into one mass, a generation of men and women with the same thoughts, same desires and same dreams. Only Son, you must go to college so you don’t live as we do. And so her dream became working so that I could have better opportunities than she