Education is Key by Maxie

Education is Key by Maxie - November 2020 Scholarship Essay

I am most thankful for how formal and non-formal education has literally opened doors of opportunities to me while also teaching me how to seek those doors to open myself. As a child of Hmong immigrants, I was raised in a sheltered home where I was overprotected as the seventh out of eighth child. Fortunately, my mother instilled her beliefs in education on my siblings and me, and eventually, I saw education as the key to exploring the world outside of my small hometown of Fresno.

In high school, I graduated at the top of my class with valedictorian status, and I went off to major in English and minor in Creative Writing at UC Berkeley. After graduating from the university, I spent a couple years exploring different career fields and traveled to multiple countries despite my parents’ disapproval. Now, I am pursuing my Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), with the goal of publishing bestselling novels, representing the Southeast Asian and Hmong American experience in the literary field, and sharing the benefits of writing as a healing tool to navigate intergenerational trauma.

Since high school, I’ve been published in several anthologies, online journals, and newsmagazines. I’ve been awarded for my writing in local contests as well. Pursuing higher education has taught me how to become independent and self-sufficient, along with other values and self-knowledge that I’ve gained. All the ideas I have of what success looks like came to me through education. All the tools I’ve used to heal from intergenerational trauma came to me through education. As a curious individual who constantly strives to learn, formal and non-formal education has been extremely life changing for a Hmong American woman like me.