Conversation 5: Palmira received THE letter!

Conversation 5: Palmira received THE letter!

There was no better way to start our fifth meeting with a great news - the news that we were both waiting for: Palmira just received her acceptance letter to Collins College - a small college in Plano, Dallas. Oh Lord, I was so happy and excited about her becoming a full-time college student this January. After all of those hard works and persevering through all of the tests, she has achieved her dream and she deserved it! We hugged in excitement and started to talk about her plan at Collins. She will move to Plano on December 20. Eyes full of hope and excitement, she told me that she will be able to live in a dorm, go to regular classes, and enjoy a life of a college student soon. I couldn't help but smile. In front of me is a hard-working, smart girl with all the goals and dreams in mind, waiting for the opportunity to achieve them.

Time flies so fast, and she will be in another place soon. I asked her if she has any plan for the upcoming winter break and this was when I learned a little bit more about her family. She would like to go to New York because she has uncle there. She could just call her uncle and he would buy her ticket to fly there. But she wanted to have her i-20 first before travelling anywhere (I-20 is a document for international student). Ugg, I can still recall that pain of going through the formalities. I'm glad that I am done with those paper works.

As we started to talk about what college is really like, I shared with Mira that we have to read a lot in college. I also advised her that she may want to started gearing up now in order to be fully prepared for the workload. So we talked about her English reading habit. Palmira told me that she has read 4 books in English so far, including Pocahontas (her favorite book) and the story about Marley the dog. Whenever she is alone no matter in her room or waiting for the bus, she always tries to read some English books. While reading, she usually takes note of difficult words as a way to learn new vocabularies. The way she studies English reminds me of the period of time when I first learned English at the age of seven till I was studying for SAT for college application. I would have a gigantic English-English dictionary by my side, and look up every single new word. It was a struggle at the beginning, since I didn't even understand some words within the explanation itself. Thus I had to keep looking up new words, and the definition for those new words brought up even more new vocabularies. It was like a chain of words. So whenever I set out to study one new word, I ended up studying five-seven more words. I shared how I studied English with her, in the hope that she would find that applicable and useful to her study method. Palmira smiled and said that she will follow that advice. I learned that before IEP, she would write essay by herself in her house and give that essay to her cousin for correction.
Then, Palmira excitedly told me that yesterday she finally finished a test at Collins. She had to write essay on paper and was not allowed to use automatic correction on the computer. It was so hard for her, she expressed, because she was used to having the computer doing most of the spelling and grammar. But she thought she did pretty well.

I told Palmira that within my Business major, I have to write a lot and do a great deal of group works. Palmira laughed and said that that was why she loves science: she just needed to take notes in class and write lab report. When she was in high school with petrol chemical major, she attended school from 7am-5pm, and from 2pm-5pm was lab time already. However, back in Angola, they didn’t have a rich source of material at their school for real hand-on practice. Talking about our classes, Palmira told me that last Friday, she had to give presentation about IPS cells (technology -biology). She did a lot of research since she didn't know anything about this topic, even in Portuguese. She told me that the IPS cell contributes greatly to the medical field. Before the discovery of IPS cells - doctors have to use ES cell to kill the egg and connect with the embryo to take the cell. But now with the IPS cell, they can take the cells directly from your skin to use in transplant. In the future, this technology can recreate human organs. If you have disease, you can use these healthy cells to replace the bad cell (cancer cell). The Japanese scientist who discovered this technology received the Nobel Prize in 2012. I admire her so much! I would never be able to talk about a specific scientific topic in a non-native language if I didn't know anything about it.

After that, we shifted our conversation to a more current challenge ahead: the final exams! We both shared our progress studying for finals and how sleepy, tired, and busy we both were. Palmira told me that her uncle changed the internet password in order to help her focus more on finals. She expressed her frustration towards this forbidden because she could still study even with connection; she didn't need any restriction or force in order to focus on her education. Looking at her facial expression, I could only feel sorry for her because I myself is a high self-esteem and independent child and my parents never used any kind of restrictions on me because they knew it would backfire and be counter-effective. Based on my personal experience, I think the best way to educate children/youngsters is by evoking the sense of self-reliance, honesty, and integrity within them, not by physical punishment or restrictions, so that they have trust in themselves that they can willingly do good things without other people having to urge them to. However, in order to make Palmira feel better about her uncle's decision, I tried to laugh it off in sympathy, acting like it's a tiny thing that we can easily overcome. I encouraged her that it was about to be over and that she would have the internet connection again soon.

Finally, we talked about our far future. When I knew that she wants to obtain a green card in order to work here and get married, I smiled and wish her good luck. I told her that if God has a plan for her stay her, it will happen. For non-US citizens, doesn't matter how smart you are or many companies willing to sponsor you, you will still have to go through a lottery to find out whether you can stay and work in the US or not - just like the Hunger Games. I shared with Palmira the stories about two of my Vietnamese Horned Frog friends who graduated 2 years ago. One of them has a master degree from TCU and one was sponsored by two US companies (As a matter of fact, it is hard to find a company who hire you if you are an international student, and even harder to find a company that put their values above profit as to spend some extra thousands of dollars to sponsor one international student). However, both of them managed to be hired and sponsored, yet they were not lucky enough in the lottery round, so both has to return to Vietnam.

As we departed, I congratulated her again with her admission and wished her good luck with her future education and life goals.