Today, as I congratulate my peers on graduation day, I want to contemplate what I should do in my final year at Fulbright, on what I have done, what I want to achieve, and the reasons that motivated me to learn.
Picture: Fulbright Commencement Ceremony 2023, Fulbright Facebook page
Sitting here in District 7, on a prestigious campus, and learning with talented students and teachers, I feel amazed by sheer luck because I am in the right place at the right time and have obtained the necessary information to apply to this university. I was fortunate that the admissions team believed in my story and Fulbright has the financial means to support students like me. Additionally, my mother and father, as labor workers, have sacrificed their youth to work and earn money in order to help me in every possible way, allowing me and my sister to fulfill their unfulfilled dreams.
At Fulbright, I have the space to think, time to learn and to become educated. But it does not make me better than others; it is simply because I got lucky.
If life had been slightly different, I could have had a very different life, one without education, filled with depression, addiction, and constant dissatisfaction. Perhaps I would be working as a laborer in a factory, struggling to make ends meet.
In the photo, those are the molds for my family's cakes. My parents have a small workshop producing various traditional Vietnamese cakes. The majority of these cakes are handmade, and the work is very labor-intensive.
Most of the people I have encountered in my work as a social worker and documentary filmmaker have never had the chance to thrive in life. Many street children I used to encounter in Hanoi had to deal with family abuse during their teenage years and faced significant risks of sexual exploitation while wandering the streets. Homeless individuals living on the streets have no families and receive no support from society. HIV-positive patients do not receive visits from their families during their final stages of AIDS. Or many high school students do not have the chance to attend specialized schools and lack self-confidence and the opportunity to adopt an active mindset to seek better educational environments. Others simply lack finance, like my mother, due to family difficulty, she get married early and never had a chance to have a proper education and had to endure difficult labor from a young age.
<aside> 📷 Photos for Humans of Hanoi project
The son and mother that I met in Hoan Kiem Lake, Hà Nội, 2015
"Sometimes after work, I take my time to browse through the bins on the sidewalks. There's a promotion campaign by Merino on at the moment. All I have to do is to collect all the winning sticks that people threw away. See, I have already scored 5 in no time. Guess whose boy is getting free ice-cream tomorrow!”
A girl I met at Chuong Duong Bridge, Hanoi., 2015
*"I've reached the end of my road so I came to Chuong Duong Bridge. I just want to jump off into the water so I don't have to think anymore. I know I don't react well to stress and situations. I just quit my job of 3 years; not only they didn't pay me, they also took my ID. Turns out the boss called home and talked to my mom after I'd been in several heated arguments at work with her. Mom texted me back, flat out telling me 'I don't want anything to do with a daughter like you'.
I am worthless. At work, I was treated like a lowlife servant and at home, I don't feel loved. My father's been drinking since I was little; I still remember he hit my mom every single time he drank. One time I tried to shield her from him and he gave me two deafening slaps. I grabbed all of my stuff and left home for a week. I was also told that 'girls don't need that much education' when I was transitioning from grade 9 to 10. I cried and locked myself inside the house for those two months. And that was when I decided to leave for good, moved here and started my working days."*
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When I reflect on my previous semester, I see a mismatch between what I want and what I actually do. Most of my time is spent building up my own image, striving for success, and showcasing myself as a talented individual. However, most of these efforts are not sustainable. If I only strive to study in order to achieve high grades or obtain an excellent degree and don't find ways to apply and share knowledge, those pieces of information will not be useful for myself or society, aside from satisfying my own personal ego. No matter how hard I work to build intimate relationships, there will be times when we have to say goodbye. No matter how much I care for my appearance, I will inevitably age and gradually lose vitality. Even this vibrant life will fades away when I lie on my deathbed.
Along with understanding the privileges I have and the limitations of everyday experiences, I genuinely want to become a monk, not in the traditional sense of shaving my head and living in a temple, but as a way of living. A regular person who strives to let go of personal ego, seeing the world not through selfish eyes, but with an expanded heart towards the community. Someone who cultivates inner stillness to calm desires, worries, and everyday discomforts to have the wisdom to look beyond the personal ego and embrace the love for all creatures. Someone empathizes with the world, with those less fortunate, and with creatures in pain, with a polluted nature.
I believe that my own life is insignificant. The desires for affection, wealth, and fame will never make me feel at peace. So my final year journey at Fulbright might be a bit different from what I imagined when I first arrived. What I find meaningful about studying is not just learning for myself but sharing knowledge with others, that is the reason why I want to try my best to study and learn how to study well. I want to help other students like me in high school who feel lost in education, in life, in the future, to give them a light of knowledge so they can find their own way to flourish in life.
Here are some pictures that remind me what is the meaning of learning.
My photo at high school.
The workshop that I have for students this year about learning in the community
Here is the story from a reader sent to me through the form, and I have also changed all the names in the story to protect the reader's identity.
I used to be one of those shy kids who were afraid of being noticed. After an embarrassing incident on the first day of first grade when I didn't ask the teacher where the bathroom was out of fear, my parents were quite concerned about my extreme timidity. While my friends were captivated by energetic sports and video games, I found solace in a book in a cozy corner of my room. In second grade, my mother enrolled me in a drama group at church to help me become more outgoing. Interestingly, being on stage felt like a second home to me. I enjoyed becoming someone entirely different, letting go completely, and the audience seemed to appreciate it even more. Most importantly, I loved seeing my character come alive through me and discovering parts of myself that I never knew existed. My dynamic on-stage persona gradually began to influence my off-stage shyness throughout elementary and middle school.