A Blessing in Disguise
The past ten years of my life have served a drastic change of dynamic, contributed by the affable peers around me. Waking up one morning and receiving positive feedback for my ability to speak a second language utterly served as a cultural shock. Growing up in a Vietnamese household as a second-generation Vietnamese-American, my first language wasn’t English, and I’m grateful for that fact — now. Despite being appreciative of my family, native language, and winsome culture, it wasn’t as effortless as it is today to say that I am thankful to have Vietnamese as my first learned language.
To step into an entirely new environment brings all signs of discomfort and apprehension. Add the inability of comprehending an alien language — English — in such surroundings, and you’ve got a five-year old girl crying for her mom on her first day of kindergarten. I vividly remember going into my first class ever, feeling lost as I couldn’t decipher the sounds that were coming out of others’ mouths. To the five year old me, besides the few words that I recognized as types of food, everything else I recollected was close to gibberish. The fact that I couldn’t comprehend what was being said stayed with me for the majority of my elementary school years, and essentially, for the rest of my life. I remember feeling foolish when I was coloring in an animal as blue and a fellow classmate pointed out that the instructions had clearly stated to color in brown instead. Between the inability to understand others and the limitation of my creativity, it would be an understatement to say that my first day of school was difficult, let alone the rest of my school years.
As day after day passed, extra flashcards and verbal lessons helped me find my way, but it wasn’t until midway through my elementary school journey that I finally felt confident in my second language. To my surprise, I was eventually given the opportunity to become a mentor for others that shared a similar experience, which extended to the role of being their translator.
Such progress would not be capable without the support and help of my parents. From immigrating to the states as teenagers, learning a foreign language and culture on their own, setting the foundation for the rest of their families, and subsequently having to educate their child about their learned lessons, it astounds me everyday that they were able to become the successful businessmen that they are today.
Perhaps such influences set the basis for my own aspiration in the business field. In spite of the initial hardships of learning to effectively communicate with others, I have grown to appreciate interpersonal relationships and its challenges, while finding myself following in the similar footsteps of my parents.
As it took years of practice and application to process this kind of change, I have realized that patience and perseverance gave me the strength to overcome this challenge and those that follow. Although the difficulty of learning and understanding English was set to be an obstacle at one point in my life, such initial adversity turned into an especial gift.
