Chronicle of Higher Education - Essay Example

Relationships 16 November 2009 Introduction I came from the Chinese mainland to study in the United s for a business degree. Incidentally, I am also the first in our family to do so and I have been a working student for the past five years. Being a woman has also made me realize I need to work harder to get ahead in whatever I plan to do. My young career started at the tender age of sixteen when I applied and got accepted as receptionist and cashier at the Chinese Teaching Center due to my facility with numbers and of course my familiarity with the Chinese language. After that stint, I went on to jobs as service crew at two ice cream parlors and later on transferred to a travel agency as an accounting assistant and travel agent at the same time. I did all this to help my mother who is the only close family member with me here in America. My father passed away some years ago and all my determined efforts are both to help out my mother and prove to myself and perhaps to my late father that I can make it out on my own. My job at the travel company entailed a lot of accounting work and was happy this is so because it closely correlated with my college degree. My fluency with both Chinese and English together with a third language was really a big help in my job with this casino-related travel company where I got to meet lots of people, greatly improved my marketing and selling abilities, enhanced my people skills and most importantly, gave the needed practice to boost my self-confidence. This job also gave me the much-needed work experience which was all more valuable as it related to what I am pursuing in college. Hardships I had encountered made me a stronger person and I hope this will help make me realize my full potentials. I am ambitious and totally focused on my life goals; probably also because I am a woman. Discussion If a person will ask me why I strive so hard, I will perhaps answer it is because I am a woman and I need to prove to myself and everybody that I can do the same job even better; that I can also accomplish great things when given the chance. I consider this opportunity to study in the United States as a rare once-in-a-lifetime chance which I will obviously not just squander away doing inconsequential things. I dream big and aspire for bigger things to come. At the moment, I had temporarily given up my job to concentrate on my studies and I intend to fully achieve my dreams by totally focusing on it for the time being. I also know that sometimes it is harder for a woman to get ahead in this society despite some progress towards gender equality. There is still some form of gender discrimination in the workplace as shown by some studies indicating women are paid lower compensation as compared to men doing essentially the same job functions (Coontz, 229). I do not want to fall into this trap like other women and especially not get into unwed motherhood. Much of the decline in women’s economic well-being had been attributed to divorce and also to broken marriages but all these seem to be overly simplistic explanations. Sociologists often put the blame on the family structure but it is deeper than that. The reasons for this inequality are still due to race, religion, class, education or gender (ibid. 229). I am not going to allow my race, education or gender to have anything to do with perceived notions about prejudice and discrimination, overt or otherwise. Towards this end, I am being a conscientious or meticulous student, the very reason I left my temporary job to focus myself. Another reason I am trying so hard is to help my widowed mother cope better with life’s challenges. It is hard for her to be left alone during the day when I was still working and she is alone when I go to attend my classes. I want to provide her with material comforts so she will enjoy her golden years and to not have regrets when she is gone. I have been touched by that story of girls becoming grown-up women only after their mothers had died. In my case, I am determined not to let that happen, meaning not wait until my mom is gone before I will grow up. I am going to do it while she is still alive and well and able to see and can still appreciate my accomplishments (Quindlen, 220). In other words, I am more than just alive and happy to be alive; I have set my priorities in life straight and correctly, I think. I know that sometimes in the daily struggles of life, we tend to forget the more important things in our lives. What I think is that family is the most important and a loving relationship with my mother is topmost priority. Her welfare and happiness precedes everything else. Asians are very family oriented peoples and more so with the Chinese who regard the family paramount as preached by Confucian ethics. Many historians attribute the longevity of the Chinese culture (the oldest existing continuous civilization in the world today) due to the strong influence of filial piety (roughly translated as xiao). Social experts believe this is a fundamental power that had allowed the Chinese nation to persist until today (Roetz, p. 53). In many ways, this social aspect together with ancestor worship and character-based writings make the Chinese culture unique and strong in many ways, able to survive to the present. Filial piety is considered the paragon of Chinese virtues and it is the basic or primary social duty that precedes all other virtues in case of conflict with other desirable virtues. This concept has three components rarely discussed in academic literature and these three are care, obedience and moral vigilance. The word care here refers to respectful care for the physical, emotional and spiritual well-being of one’s parents. This involves being mindful of their age, happy at their long years in life and anxious of their health. Obedience pertains to following the parents’ wishes, especially of the father. In my case, it is just my mother whom I will have to follow. The third component is moral vigilance that is exercised as a grown up child. This means being responsible as an adult and not bring shame to the family honor. In my personal situation, this is even more crucial due to concerns about marriage and family ethics. The importance of filial piety was emphasized in ancient China by the inclusion of two books by Confucius – The Analects and the Classic of Filial Piety. The importance of family ties is also closely associated with the priority of getting a good education. This is why as part of my culture, I am giving priority to my education as a rare chance to better myself. Confucian ethics evolved to become ethical culture to govern not only families but the whole society as well. The entire educational process is geared towards regulating social relations of the whole society to include appropriate manners and etiquette (Ko, Haboush & Piggott, 124). The Confucian culture is also characterized by the value given to hard work. It shaped the habits of the East Asian peoples for centuries and is adapted widely primarily because of its reasonableness in practical living for ordinary people, a guide to social praxis (Bell, 13). In my case, a willing acceptance of the necessity of hard work is shown in the very determined way I am studying to succeed in my chosen career later on. Most research studies had shown Asian-Americans are the most diligent in school that results in high academic achievements which are the net effect of the Confucian culture’s emphasis on education (Rothstein, 151). Conclusion I know that success will not come easy. It requires patience and hard work until the aim is attained but it is not impossible to do despite the obstacles I encounter. I know I have what it takes to accomplish these things in life. To succeed in life requires both exhaustive and meticulous preparation (Gladwell, 85) and I will create a mental blueprint of my later success. In the words of this author, I will employ the technique of visualization to reinforce my belief that I will eventually succeed. My intense focus will let me through. I will not be distracted by seeking the creature comforts but live a simple life by doing away with luxuries not necessary anyway in my quest for a good education but I still live life to the fullest (Thoreau, 188). And most of all, I will be creative and see the world differently in fresh ways (Andreasen, b2). Works Cited Andreasen, Nancy C. “The Creative Mind.” Chronicle of Higher Education, 52 (23). Bell, Daniel A. Confucian Political Ethics. Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press, 2008. Print. Coontz, Stephanie. “Blaming the Family for Economic Decline.” The Arlington Reader: Contexts and Connections. Ed. Lynn Z. Bloom and Louise Z. Smith. Irving Place, NY, USA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. pp. 228-231. Print. Gladwell, Malcolm. “The Invisible Hand: Sports Performance as Physical Genius.” Sporting Lives: Metaphor and Myth in American Sports Autobiographies. Ed. James W. Pipkin. Columbia, MO, USA: University of Missouri Press, 2008. pp. 78-86. Print. Ko, Dorothy, Haboush, Ja Hyun Kim & Piggott, Joan R. Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea and Japan. Berkeley, CA, USA: University of California Press, 2003. Print. Quindlen, Anna. “Anniversary.” The Arlington Reader: Contexts and Connections. Ed. Lynn Z. Bloom and Louise Z. Smith. Irving Place, NY, USA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. 219-220. Print. Roetz, Heiner. Confucian Ethics of the Axial Age: A Reconstruction under the Aspect of the Breakthrough Towards Post-conventional Thinking. Albany, NY, USA: SUNY Press, 1993. Print. Rothstein, Stanley William. Class, Culture and Race in American Schools: A Handbook. Santa Barbara, CA, USA: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1995. Thoreau, Henry David. “Where I Lived, and What I Lived for.” The Arlington Reader: Contexts and Connections. Ed. Lynn Z. Bloom and Louise Z. Smith. Irving Place, NY, USA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. pp. 187-192. Print. Read More