I've been at Central all four years. Next year I'm going to Suffolk College in Boston. I'm hoping to study business. I really like working with friends on business-related stuff, it's fun. It's not only dealing with math or English, but sort of everything at once. I have older siblings who have gone to college, but neither of my parents did. We came from Thailand and they couldn't go to school. I was born in Thailand but my family came to the States when I was five. I grew up in a refugee camp after the Vietnam War, located on the Thai-Vietnam border. I've grown up listening to my parents tell stories about the war, about education especially. Back then, girls didn't have to go to school if they didn't want to.
So I went straight from the refugee camp to Providence. I was really young, didn't know any English, didn't know anybody. There were other kids that came over from the refugee camp, so I had some people around me who knew sort of what it was like.
The good thing about Central is that you get to know a lot people. All in all it's a really good school. After a little while I felt like I really fit in. Its weaknesses are that we don't have the money that we need to get some of the things we want. Sometimes the classes need more materials and we don't have the money to get them. Basically, it's all money.
I used to work at Seven-Eleven but I got laid off before school started this year. I was happy actually, because I wanted to concentrate more on having fun my senior year. Senior year is definitely the most stressful year, with all the college stuff, so I wanted to make more time for it.
I wanted to better my life, that's why I decided to go to college. My parents never had the chance to educate themselves or learn how other people live their lives. It's pretty hard to live in a family that doesn't have any education. It's hard to not have parents who can help you get into college, or help you pay for college. I want to better my life and I want to make sure that my children can have a better life too.
I have a friend who goes to Boston College and we talked a lot about it. She really likes it, and she's glad that she got away from home a little bit. So I starting thinking that maybe I should go a little farther away from my parents, since I didn't want to be home all the time. So I looked for colleges in Boston and found Suffolk. I like it a lot. I can really imagine myself there. It's a big school, so there's a lot of opportunities, but they have small classes like high school. My parents don't really want me to go to Boston. They want me to go to URI, which is right here. But I don't really like the school.
In a way, I'm nervous for college. But in another way it's not scary at all. It's just life, and you have to take the risk. I'm happy, I just can't wait.
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