For+a+Better+Life

For a Better Life

It was a normal day. She stepped off the car, and walked briskly toward the gate. She already had her ticket, printed in English, the language that seemed vague to her, it read, "Departing from: Singapore, Arriving to: Honolulu." The young girl arrived at the gate earlier then she expected. Quickly glancing across of the room that thronged with people, and she spied a seat in the corner. She took without any hesitation in fear of waiting standing up. The announcement to board the plane blasted on the loudspeaker, but she waited until the last second to stand up. Her hesitation to leave the land that she had lived for all of her life showered the room with sadness. And right before she went onto the plane, she looked back, not at anything in particular, but at everything. Once on the plane, she left her friends, family, and everything she knew, behind. When she arrived on the islands, she walked off the plane and took her luggage. Once outside, she took a deep breath, and looked around, not a single face looked familiar. The young girl, coming to the great United States for a better education, and perhaps, a better life, appeared scared. Her short hair danced with the wind as she waited for a yellow taxi, to take her to the University of Hawaii dormitories. When one finally arrived, she sent a waving motion across the street. "Where to?" the taxi driver asked. "The-" she paused trying to remember the language that seemed so frightening "-University of Hawaii," she said in a Chinese accent. While she on the taxi, her mind started to race. She didn't know what she was going to when she actually reached the campus of the Manoa University of Hawaii. She didn't know where to report to when she got there, she didn't know whom her roommate would be, and she didn't know what learning things in college would be like. When the taxi started to slow down, she knew that the time to face her fears loomed right around the corner. She walked into the front of the dormitory, and the rest was history. The next years appeared like the hardest years of her life. She met my father during college, and they both worked to support themselves. Both of my mother and father had to take classes during the day, and work at night and on the weekends. On Sundays, my father had to come to Aloha Stadium very early to be able to get a good spot selling things in the flea markets. He had to wait in long lines, and in the morning my mother would come and help him sell things. My mother, pregnant with my brother at the time, made things even harder for her. They felt very tired during those times, and called it the most tiring years of their lives. However hard those years appeared, they eventually got better as my parents had become more successful. But, something that would happen over a decade in the future would truly live in her heart forever. The silver Toyota Camery drove by. It cruised steadily until it came halting to a stop in front of my brother and I. It seemed like a normal day, nothing special had occurred. I knew something appeared wrong when I first perceived my mother, and it showed when her expressionless face told us the news, and shattered the peace; our grandfather had just passed away. He had been diagnosed with nose cancer a few years before. Our whole family loved him, but none of us could have like him more than my mother. Her father favored her when she grew up beginning as a small child, and all of his hopes and dreams lay on her shoulders. He spoiled her; he would give her a plethora of candy, and the best he could offer. When we were young, we would take the plane to visit him every year, and his face shined with radiance every single time we arrived. I couldn’t understand how my mother could be so heroic, so intrepid. She didn’t shed a single tear on the soundless drive home. The news shocked my brother and I, and I blankly stared at the window for the longest period of time, never focusing on one thing. I acted like a mindless automaton. Washing the dishes, cleaning the house, cooking dinner, my mother continued her normal routine, trying to pretend nothing had happened. I could tell that it had bothered her deeply because of the furtive actions that she had been showing. She sacrificed her emotions for us; she knew well that if she began to show sadness, we would all show sadness. We were young at the time, and looked up to her, she couldn’t have risked for us to become depressed. She quickly ran to the computer and booked a flight Singapore, waiting to attend the funeral. She would join her sisters and her brothers at the ceremony. She mourned for her father for a while, but she knew deep inside herself, that her father would have preferred this to the suffering that he had been going through when he had the cancer. To this day, I still do not know what had occurred during the funeral, or what she had done there. But, I can be certain that she let out all of the anguish she had contained for us, her children. This may seem small to many people, but she sacrificed much to benefit us, she knew that her father wouldn’t have liked it if this news depressed us terribly because of him.

2. What elements of quality are present in this piece? How did you achieve them? How do they add to the effectiveness of the work?

In this piece, I decided to play around with dialogue, and to work on precision. I did a lot of editing, and tried to work on meaning too. I tried to make it so that the reader would feel like my mother, going through all of the challenges that she saved in her life so far. Also, I tried to use as many vocab words as possible. This piece was written by me during the first semester, and my teacher, Ms. Davis, liked it when we used these vocab words. I achieved precision and meaning by making it as thorough, and descriptive as possible. I tried to make it so that someone would be able to generate a picture of what I am describing in their head. This added a lot of quality, and professionalism to my work. It made it so that my work was clearer, and easier to understand. It also made it so people would feel how my mother was feeling at the time. It also made the piece flow, without these little descriptions here and there, it just didn't sound right.

3. How did you complete this piece of work? What was the assignment? What did you want to create? What were the steps you took to complete it? And did it come out the way you intended?

Originally, this piece was two stories. The first story was created for a free write, and the second part was the hero story. To begin to create this work, I just decided to think about what was most important, and what guided my life thus far in my lifetime. The answer was simple. My mother. In the beginning, after I grasped the idea, I just sat and brainstormed for a while. I would even think in the shower. It seems like I wrote most of the story in my head while I was in the shower. After I finish thinking about what I want to write about, and how I am going to start the story, I just sit down and write. It just seems like when I am writing, what I am thinking just pours out like a fountain, and afterwards, it is just up to me to sort out what I want, and what I don't want. This story came out really well. I liked it a lot because of the clarity, and precision.