Undergraduate / "Determination can help you achieve everything." - Describe the world you come from [4]

Describe the world you come from - for example, your family, community or school - and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations

"Determination can help you achieve everything." This is the philosophy that my father have been trying to teach me. All the achievements and happy life my parents get today are the results of their extraordinary efforts. The life experience of my father has encouraged me to be persistent and has fostered my sense of responsibility for my family.

My father came from a landlord family which had fallen into decay. Life was even harder when my father was young, because landlords were oppressed by the government as the enemy of the country. Famines and poverty were everywhere. There were no public transportation and my father can't afford a bike, so he had to walk for 10 miles everyday to go to primary school, which had no teacher had finished secondary school. Besides, at that time, most countrymen undervalue the importance of study and the chance to get into colleges was only about 1 percent. On that basis even my grandfather couldn't imagine that my father would be a scholar in the future.

But nothing is impossible. As the oldest son in the family, he expected to improve the life of the family and bring honors to it. Although facing various challenges, my father didn't give in: he manage all the knowledges he learned at class and seized every chance he got to expand his knowledge. All the obstacles on his way to success was crushed by his determination. The result was that my father became the only college student in his town and he had the ability and chance to make a change for the family.

In the summer break of 10th grade, I went to the hometown with my father. My father was popular at hometown, because as the first college student in the village, he was the proud of the community. Again and again, I was moved by the ambition and persistence of my father after learning the difficulty he had to become a college student from the stories told by the old people. Then my father took me to the grave of my grandfather and great-grandfather, which is beside a enormous field covered by rice and vegetables. "All the fields you can see now were belonged to our family." my father said to me. Although now we own none of these places, I could still felt the proud in his voice. His love of his family and the ambition to rejuvenate it touched me deeply. At that time, I found the origin of his strength to overcome so many challenges in his life. Standing at the grave, I swore to myself to continue the dream of my father.