Education is Salvation by Nhi

Education is Salvation by Nhi - July 2019 Scholarship Essay

Education is salvation. A bold statement, but it is also a warranted one. In my house, education always meant brighter days to come. It meant awareness, both for the practical use of everyday life functions and for attaining a richer experience of life. When I was younger, my algebra class wasn't just another algebra class. The same goes for any other class for that matter. It was always more than the grade. My parents taught me that a number could never capture the depth of learning, only shallow understanding. My parents were never the tiger parents I'd heard about from my friends. In hindsight, even though my sister and I had always wished they would put more pressure on us, their disposition made for a suitable environment to make choices for ourselves. Sometimes, those choices would lead to mistakes. Still, it does good to remember that lessons were never learned without some mistakes made. Of course, since being in the United States, they had adopted other parents' expression of concern whenever our grades would slip to a lower grade. Even then, it was more like feigned concern because they would always be so understanding whenever we explained why a test was difficult or why we were not getting the right answer. The reason why they would respond this way is because they thought that learning to better understand the world was common sense. They acted like it was common sense and so their children did too. We knew that education would carry us into the future, just like it helped carry my parents when they were in the UN refugee camp in the Philippines. My parents, during their short time in the camp, studied at the temporary technical college. After being dispatched, they continued to use what they learned for the nineteen years they were in the Philippines to build a business and a life. Having been born in the Philippines, I did experience scarcity, but that memory has been long overshadowed by the comfort I am surrounded in now. I never experienced the toil of my parents' story that led them to their conviction that education meant opportunity. It was their story, but it was also a story that I decided to make a part of mine too. I have the convenience of comfort, but I know that if I live like I've always had comfort, then perhaps my algebra class would have just been an algebra class. It is easier to feel as though things, like continuing to the next grade level or getting an AP test provided for by the school district, are guaranteed. It perhaps may have also been easier to get lost in the more transitory yet immediately gratifying activities of the day. Everyone has a different conception of education. For me, my passion for education includes both wonder for what I am learning and the drive to use what I've learned. If I've learned one thing, it's that education is a worthwhile pursuit that takes patience. I see education for its opportunities, in helping me change the world around me and in helping me change my character for the better.