Full Narrative Draft

In Myanmar culture, there is a saying “Parents are the first and foremost teachers in life.” I believe, parents shape our childhoods which will later reflect our interest and talent in adulthood. Language is the first skill we must learn in order to communicate with our society from the moment we are born. We naturally learn our first language from our family at home. On the other hand, our second language is usually learned at school starting from kindergarten and it can be more challenging for us because it is not used as naturally in our daily life.

My first language is Burmese. I have to learn English as my second language because in my country, all public and private schools teach English as a compulsory subject. I was studying in public school from kindergarten to grade-9. Unfortunately, Linguistics is my weakness. As a developing country, we cannot invest enough budget in the education sector to provide proper teacher training, facilities, funding and updated curricula. I did not receive a high-quality education that could help me improve my weaknesses in school, so my mother arranged private tutoring at home to help me improve my English and learn alongside other children from around the world. Fortunately, I am strong in science, mathematics, and creative thinking.

We should accept that “everyone has their own strengths.” Some people are good at language, art, music, sports, science, leadership or creative thinking. When I was in Grade 5, I met an English teacher who did not believe in this idea. She told me that my English skills were below Grade-5 level and asked how I could ever pass the university entrance exam. In my country, students must take a national university entrance exam at the end of Grade 12, and their scores determine both the university they attend and the major they can study.

Life was a bed of roses until my father passed away in 2019 when I was just 13. As my father was the major breadwinner in our family, I noticed that my mom suffered a lot of stress from losing spouse and family business. To make the matter worse, our country, like other countries in the world, faced economic recession during and after the COVID 19 pandemic. Our family encountered a lot of hardships to keep running our business. My mom was so busy with her work that I had to try to tackle every problem about my education and daily life while helping my mother. From these incidents, I began to realize that hardships test our resilience and for those who see them as stepping stones to get higher, these hard times can even help us to go beyond the boundaries and to boost our potential.

After the COVID 19 pandemic, I started attending a private school, the teaching style of which is quite different from the government school I previously attended. I began to realize the importance of self-study and independent skill. This realization helped me to get scholarships – 15% at Education Creation Corner for grade 9 and 10 and 40% at Bromsgrove International School, Thailand for grade 11 and 12 to reduce the financial burden on my mom. Even with the bursary, attending Bromsgrove International School was a difficult decision because the school is expensive. In addition to tuition, my mother still had to pay for boarding fees, external examinations, residential trips, and other costs. I suggested finishing high school in my home country to reduce expenses, but my mother believed that studying abroad would provide me with better opportunities and insisted that I attend boarding school at BIST.

I traveled to Bangkok with other students who would also be studying at BIST and their parents. We arrived two days before school started. They kindly helped me buy a laundry bag, PE kit,tutor house shirt and formal clothes and also assisted me in opening a bank account. At that time, everything felt unfamiliar. I did not know where I was, what I should do or how to navigate Bangkok using public transportation. I still remember my first day in boarding school which was a Sunday afternoon. I did not know what time I needed to wake up, when roll call was or when dinner was served. I was so afraid of missing my first day of school that I did not sleep at all that night.The next morning, everything felt overwhelming. I did not know where my tutor room was, how to access my school email, how to check my schedule, where my classrooms were or even what “SIC” stood for. I noticed that the language barrier was the main reason for these. For the first two months, I struggled to understand what teachers, staff and classmates were saying. I tried my best to listen carefully to get the main ideas.

I remember crying in the bathroom everyday for the first two months after school because I felt unhappy and unfamiliar with my new environment. Fortunately, my teachers and friends were very friendly and helpful to me to improve my English skill. They shared every information from staff and teacher to me again.. Because of their help, my English improved and I became more confident in communication. We, coming from diverse backgrounds and geological information, also shared our personal background information, making us become closer to each other and to appreciate different cultures.

These challenges taught me confidence in communication, independence and management of time and money. Although my journey has been difficult, it has shaped me into a stronger, more determined student who is committed to using education to create a better future for myself and my family and who is ready to begin the next chapter of my life at a college in New York.