When Hope Became True

When I was young, I was happy about not having class, but my father used to say that was because I had never suffered the feeling of having no chance to go to school. My father started school when he was eleven years old, which was passed the right age of going to school. He grew up in a poor family and had seven siblings. The family couldn’t afford for all children to go to school. Moreover, people thought that solving eating problems was more important than education in 1960’s China. At that time, the government realized that the rate of kids went to school was too low, and then they declared that all kids needed to have a formal education. My grandfather wanted to respond this event, so my father got a chance to go to school. This chance changed my father’s whole life, even my brother’s, sister’s and mine.

When my father realized that he could go to school, he had happy tears in his eye and felt like he already saw his bright future. In the village, there were a few kids around seven years old that were going to school, and my father begrudged them because he needed to work at the farm every day. He just stood at the farm and watched students passed the road to school, and thought about that he may be a farmer for the rest of his life. On one of those unhappy days, my grandfather told him that he could go to school. He felt super happy. For my father, the hope of education was blocked, but at that moment it was open, and he could get on the way. Thus, when he started to have classes, he got up earlier every day and walked about one hour to reach school, but he never had the feeling of not wanting to go to school. He cherished the time of going to school.

After graduation, the bright future came true, my father got a job as a leader of our village. He stayed at home and handled some work for the village, or went to town to have meetings with other village leaders. Through his hard work, the life of our family had changed. One big change was that our family built a special house, which was different from traditional houses. Because of that, my father became famous in other villages. Some people came and visited our beautiful house. Another positive effect was that I didn’t have a hard life as my father. I didn’t need to work at the farm every day. Most of the time, I played with friends and went to school. My father’s graduation from school made him get a better life, and me too.

The experience of my father’s education led him to be an avid supporter of my siblings’ and my education. He started to teach us how to use a Chinese traditional calculator before we went to school. After he sold some fish, he would give all the change to us, and let us use Chinese traditional calculator to count the money and then tell him how much he had. The first person who learned how to do this was my brother. After he started to go to school, it would be my sister’s turn, and I was after her. Moreover, for our graduation, my father gave up one big thing was which a house in a city. When my brother and sister were in the university, I was in high school, and the total payment was expensive for our family. My father saved the down payment of a house to pay the payment of the rest of our graduation.

Chance exists everywhere at anytime. If you just meet it, it may change your whole life. My father took advantage of government promoted education, and then he got a chance to go to school. Then he had a job which he has never imagined before. If my father didn’t think education was important, I may not be sitting here right now. In this offering great educational society, the chance of education is always in front of us. I will never have a chance to suffer the feeling of having no chance to go to school. When I didn’t want to go to school, I would use my father’s education experience to warn myself.