Chicken Soup for the College Soul Page 5

  "I want to go to an American university," she said with quiet confidence. Her idealistic dream made me want to cry.

  I agreed to work with her after school each day on a volunteer basis. For the next several months, Hani woke each morning at five and caught the city bus to her public high school. During the one-hour ride, she studied for

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  her regular classes and prepared the English lessons I had given her the day before. At four o'clock in the afternoon, she arrived at my classroom, exhausted but ready to work. With each passing day, as Hani struggled with college-level English, I grew more fond of her. She worked harder than most of my wealthy expatriate students.

  Hani lived in a two-room house with her parents and two brothers. Her father was a building custodian and her mother was a maid. When I went to their neighborhood to meet them, I learned that their combined yearly income was 750 U.S. dollars. It wasn't enough to meet the expenses of even one month in an American university. Hani's enthusiasm was increasing with her language ability, but I was becoming more and more discouraged.

  One morning in December 1998, I received the announcement of a scholarship opportunity for a major American university. I excitedly tore open the envelope and studied the requirements, but it wasn't long before I dropped the form in despair. There was just no way, I thought, for Hani to meet these qualifications. She had never led a club or an organization, because in her school these things simply did not exist. She had no guidance counselor and no impressive standardized test scores, because there were no such tests for her to take.

  She did, however, have more determination than any student I'd ever seen. When Hani came into the classroom that day, I told her of the scholarship. I also told her that I believed there was no way for her to apply. I encouraged her to be, as I put it, "realistic" about her future and not to plan so strongly on coming to America. Even after my somber lecture, Hani remained steadfast.

  "Will you send in my name?" she asked.

  I didn't have the heart to turn her down. I completed the application, filling in each blank with the painful truth about her academic life, but also with my praise of her

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  courage and her perseverance. I sealed up the envelope and told Hani her chances for acceptance ranged somewhere between slim and none.

  In the weeks that followed, Hani increased her study of English, and I arranged for her to take the Test of English Fluency in Jakarta. The entire computerized test would be an enormous challenge for someone who had never before touched a computer. For two weeks, we studied computer parts and how they worked. Then, just before Hani went to Jakarta, she received a letter from the scholarship association. What a cruel time for the rejection to arrive, I thought. Trying to prepare her for disappointment, I opened the letter and began to read it to her. She had been accepted.

  I leaped about the room ecstatically, shocked. Hani stood by, smiling quietly, but almost certainly bewildered by my surprise. The image of her face in that moment came back to me time and time again in the following week. I finally realized that it was I who had learned something Hani had known from the beginning: It is not intelligence alone that brings success, but also the drive to succeed, the commitment to work hard and the courage to believe in yourself.

  Jamie Winship

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  Inspiration Can Be Anywhere

  No one in Hannah Moore's family encouraged her to go to medical school. Her mother was a kind, loving woman, but she spent most of her time changing diapers, cooking and cleaning the two-bedroom New York City apartment where she was raising Hannah and her three siblings. Hannah's father loved her, too, but his way of showing it was by joking and telling stories about the days when he was in the circus, although everyone knew that he never had been. He worked for the city, fixing signs when they were vandalized or run over by reckless drivers. Not an educated man himself, Hannah's father thought that his kids would grow up, finish high school and find jobs as laborers, just as he had done.

  Hannah didn't resent her father's lack of higher education or her mother's life as a homemaker. But she told her mother that she wanted to become a physician. Her mom said, "Honey, you know that we don't have the money to send you to medical school. You need a more practical goal like becoming a teacher or a nurse."

  To twelve-year-old Hannah, this made no sense at all. She knew that if she went to college, her parents couldn't lend a dime to the endeavor regardless of what she chose

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  to do. She didn't say that to her mom, though. She also didn't say, "C'mon, Mom, this is the 1970s. Women can do whatever they want to do, and I want to be a doctor." Hannah simply withdrew and kept her dream inside. She never mentioned it to her mother again.

  She did mention it to her father, though. Two years later, as they walked home alone from the ice-cream parlor where he'd regaled her with stories about his triple somersault between flying trapezes, she said, "I'm going to go to medical school to become a doctor, Daddy."

  He chuckled. "You don't want to do that, Tiger. You know my cousin, Ronnie, the nurse's assistant in Brooklyn?"

  "Yeah . . ."

  "Well, she complains about working in the hospital all the time. Every time I talk to her, she tells me about how the doctors ain't got no respect for the nurses and how awful it is to see drunks in the emergency room. Why don't you become an animal doctor instead? I bet animals ain't so hard to deal with."

  An animal doctor? Hannah thought. Well, I do like animals . . . but I want to be a medical missionary and help sick children in India. She was just about to say this as she and her dad entered their apartment building, but he was already going up the steps four at a time, telling her that he used to climb the steps to the trapeze the same way. She sighed. Maybe her parents were right. Maybe medical school was an impossible dream for her or anyone in her family.

  No, neither of Hannah's parents encouraged her to go to medical school. But someone did. Dr. Hannah Moore likes to tell the story about that person to her favorite patients, especially those who are just about to go off to college and those who ask her about becoming a doctor.

  Mrs. Haverill was a peculiar lady. At least that's how Mrs. Moore and the other neighborhood mothers described her. All day she sang near the open window facing the street,

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  crooning love songs to her parrot. The women frowned as they heard Mrs. Haverill's voice singing off-key. But it wasn't like the heavy metal music that the young couple on the first floor played, so how could they complain? As for Hannah, she liked Mrs. Haverill's singing. In fact, it somehow drew her to Mrs. Haverill's door. What else was in the apartment with her? Would she let Hannah see that beautiful red and blue bird up close? Curious and compelled, Hannah thought of a reason to introduce herself.

  She climbed the stairs to Mrs. Haverill's landing and bravely knocked on the door. A heavyset woman about fifty years old, with her jet-black hair pulled into a bun on her head, answered the door. Her bright purple eye shadow and scarlet lipstick would have looked ridiculous on Hannah's mother, but on this woman it seemed fitting.

  "Mrs. Haverill," Hannah began, "I've noticed that you have a hard time getting up and down the stairs on icy days. Would you like me to go to the grocery store for you sometimes?"

  "Oh, dear child, that would be wonderful!"

  Hannah's neighbor invited her in for hot chocolate after the first trip to the store. Her apartment was just as peculiar as she was, full of vines, potted trees and even more birds than the one she always sang to at the window. Hannah was fourteen at the time, and this strange place became a welcome respite from her own apartment, the kind of place every teenager needs. As she sipped the hot chocolate and looked at a cockatiel on a perch, she said, "My dad thinks that I should become a vet."

  "Ah, yes, an animal doctor," Mrs. Haverill said in her singsong voice. "And what do you think?"

  "I want to be a doctor for kids in India and work wi
th Mother Teresa."

  "Ah, yes, a medical missionary!" exclaimed the woman, with even more enthusiasm. "A medical missionary indeed.

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  Ah, yes, I hardly know you, dear child, but I can see that in you. I have a cousin who was a doctor in Africa during the 1960s. Now she runs a mobile doctor's office on the streets of the city. Ah, yes, Hannah, can you stay a while for me to tell you about her?''

  That afternoon began a friendship with many visits during which a fifty-something woman told true stories to a fourteen-year-old who longed to hear them. Hannah had been raised on storytelling, but this time it was different. This time the stories were true. Hannah almost fell out of her seat when Mrs. Haverill began by saying, "Now, when we were growing up together in the Bronx, Shirley and I dreamed of running away with the circus as many children do. When she first told me that she was going to be a doctor, I thought it was just another silly dream. We were from the poorest family on the street. All of our neighbors owned the surrounding stores, but we had nothing but a few threadbare clothes. . . ."

  She showed Hannah photos of her cousin donning the black graduation gown of a new doctor, as well as snapshots of her cousin in Africa. When she knew that Hannah was sincerely interested, she introduced her to Shirley, who took her to lunch at an uptown diner one afternoon in March.

  When Hannah recalls the appointment with the quiet woman about whom she had learned so much, she remembers feeling unusually excited and finally encouraged.

  "My mom says it costs too much to go to medical school," she said to Shirley.

  The woman's voice was so soft that it was hard to believe she was Mrs. Haverill's cousin. "Are your grades good?"

  "All As," Hannah answered.

  "Then if it's meant to be, you'll find a way."

  Hannah Moore, M.D., received a full scholarship to

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  Columbia. She remembers a sunny graduation day in May as one of the happiest days of her life. She recalls her first day of travel in India with similar joy. Only the births of her children were more exciting.

  She returned from India with her husband just before her first child was born. ''We'll all go back again when they are older," she says. Now she enjoys working as an infectious-disease specialist in a city hospital, watching her kids grow and letting them get to know their grandparentsas well as Mrs. Haverill, who still sings to her parrot near an open street-front window and offers hope when it's needed.

  Cerie L. Couture

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  A Proposal to Myself

  I am writing this the day before I know my fatethe day before I know the answer to what will happen in my life. I am writing this with my mind set that I will carry on and not let life pass me by. I am determined that I will see the world in every aspect that may be possible for me. I am sure that I will become something, even if the envelope that carries my life inside it gives me bad news.

  I will not listen to those who insist that a university degree is the only way you will find a means of living these days. I will ignore those who tell me that I am a dreamer without a dream. I will tell myself that although I may not be accepted to college, I have seen the northern lights curtain themselves in front of me. I have tasted the wine in Paris and swum in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. I have been to an Irish pub, and I have watched the sun rise from the Roman Forum. I have climbed the Swiss Alps and counted the stars in the sky until I could see no more.

  I have experienced what it is like to live, and I will tell myself that even if that envelope is small and exudes rejection, the person that they have rejected will carry on and go on to see more mountains and swim in more

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  waters and keep on counting the stars, because somewhere it is written that I must continue to live my life the way I know how to.

  The envelope that will reach my mailbox tomorrow will bring an answer that I am ready to bear with courage and self-respect. I will not cry, unless they be tears of joy for bidding good-bye to my childhood and welcoming in a new lifeone that is mysterious and unknown. One that will teach me to grow and understand why things are the way they are. One that will filter out all my regrets and let my self-worth multiply.

  I will be strong in my battle and not let little things bring me down. I will tell myself that it is okay to be scatterbrained once in a while and that sometimes the kindness you show will balance out your faults. I will know that I am a good person and that being smart doesn't necessarily mean that you are accepted into college. I know who I am and there are brain surgeons who would be challenged sorting through my multi-faceted psyche.

  I am independent by nature and a proud woman. I accept who I am. And whether or not I am accepted into college, I will be true to myself and to others around me. I will learn to carry on with every good-bye I say at school this week. I will remember my friends and acquaintances and idols, and I will wish them the best of luck in life.

  The envelope that has yet to reach my house will not be a letter, but rather a decision that I will make with my life. I am confused, as are most people my age around this time, but I will not look back. I will only look toward tomorrow and greet each day, wherever I am, with a smile.

  Sarah Lockyer

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  2

  TRANSITION

  Out of respect for things that I was never destined to do, I have learned that my strengths are a result of my weaknesses, my success is due to my failures and my style is directly related to my limitations.

  Billy Joel

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  Good-Bye, Mr. Blib

  Mr. Blib is graduating from high school next week.

  Mr. Blib is my boy. The school thinks he's ready to go away to college. He and the other members of his class also think they're ready to leave home.

  But I'm here to say he's not the least bit ready.

  I have taught my boy many things in eighteen years. He knows to put the knife on the right, blade in. He knows I will eventually find out what long-distance phone calls he's made because they get listed on the bill. He knows not to lie.

  But as the weeks tick by before he leaves for college, it's the things I haven't yet taught him that plague me.

  I don't think, for example, that he fully understands about checking accounts. I think he believes there's a check heaven, and that no one will ever be the wiser if he overdraws his account.

  I'm afraid he won't keep track of the oil in his car or make sure there's air in the spare.

  He still doesn't know how to line up his pant seams properly on the rare occasions that he hangs them up.

  He has no instinct for shopping. When he runs out of shaving cream at school, I'm not sure it will occur to him

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  to go buy more. Instead, I think he'll call me collect and ask me to put it on the list.

  He still puts metal in the microwave once in a while, and he's never in his life managed to unwad a pair of socks before putting them in the hamper.

  I also haven't taught him about the motor vehicle department. How can he possibly go away to college when he doesn't even know enough to fill out the correct forms before standing in line?

  He's just not ready. No way.

  On the other hand, I'm ready for him to leave. Jeez, I doubt I'll hardly miss him once he's gone.

  I'm sure not going to miss the fact that he uses up all the hot water in the house. I haven't had a hot shower since he was five and started taking charge of his own hygiene.

  I'm sure not going to miss his crisis-management style of living, either. Everything is an emergency in that boy's life, whether it's a missing tape cassette or hunger.