Get your handkerchiefs and tissues ready.
If you are not moved by the words of this student then you are far more
hard-hearted than you should be. Jupar’s narrative of her journey in life could
be the beginning of a great film. But don’t believe me, just read her words and
see. And tune back in a few years from now. The major motion picture of her
life might just be hitting the Cineplex near you.
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From the Prairie to the U.S.
If someone asks me what is the one thing
that I am most proud of, I would say, being a Kazakh. Kazakh is not really a
famous nation here in the U.S. There are always people asking me what I am: “Kazakh"
is generally used to refer to people of ethnic
Kazakh descent, including those living in Kazakhstan, China, Afghanistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan and other neighboring
countries. The name “Kazakh” came from the popular Kazakh legend of
a white goose that turned into a princess and gave birth to the first Kazakh. Kazakh people are believed to be good at
dancing and singing. Many of us are also
skilled in the performance of Kazakh traditional instruments: the dombra and kobyz. Kazakh
people have always kept their nomadic
pastoral lifestyle. Moving to new Prairies all the time. Kazakhs
kept an epic tradition of an oral nation.
The nation, which amalgamated nomadic
tribes of various Kazakh origins, managed to preserve the distant memory of the
original founding clans. It is important for us to know our
genealogical tree for no less than seven generations back and it is still common
for Kazakh people to ask which tribe they belong to when they meet each other.
Nowadays, however, it is more of a tradition than a necessity. Many Kazakhs in
China are not fluent in Mandarin. Instead of speaking Chinese, they choose to speak the Kazakh
language. The Kazakh nation has beautiful poems and songs
and all of these things brought it a great history and set of traditions.
The family
of my grandpa was a really typical family on a prairie where all Kazakh people
lived together. They didn’t have electricity in that time and all my grandpa
did in his childhood was helping the livestock with grazing. Later, when he was
a teenager, the prairie established its very first primary school. The school
was quite simple and took place in was in a yurt. During the day, it was a
school and during the night it turned back into someone’s home. My grandpa was
a really hard-working student and was always the top one among all of the
students. So the mother of my grandpa decided to send him to the nearest town
to go to a real middle school. It was then the history of my grandpa’s life changed.
He studied even harder after he attended the middle school and participated in
the College Entrance Examination. He did such a great job that he became the
first college student in that tiny town. As a result of his academic success,
he said goodbye to the great prairie and started a brand new life. He majored
in Law; after he graduated, he became the President of the Court in the city
where my mom was born and later I was born.
All of these
changes would never have happened without his desire to get an education. We still
go back to the prairie sometimes. We ride horses, sleep in the yurts, help with
grazing, and eat the most natural food. There is always this strong feeling of
belonging. We belong to the prairies.
My grandpa
believed that the only way to change one’s life was by getting higher education
so he was really strict with all of his children and the fact that all of his
children went to college and all get really good jobs approved that he was
right. So education had always been a topic that he was always discussing with
my mom.
And now, my
mom followed the road that my grandpa first travelled and decided to send me
abroad to study. I know it was not an easy decision. Because for Kazakh people one
of the most important traditions is to live together with all of the family’s
children and offspring. My grandma was really against this decision at first,
and was tried to stop me. I was under great pressure when I was applying for
schools here in U.S. Half of the family said no and half them were supportive.
The pressure
not only came from them but also from me myself. I didn’t know how this
completely new world was going to be and how should I start it. I remember one
time when we were having a big family dinner together and my parents started
talking about this topic again. All of a sudden my grandpa said, “Somebody has
to take this step and I believe Jupar is the best”. I was really surprised when
I heard this. Right after that dinner I made up my mind and started studying
really hard and getting ready for all of the tests. I had a tough time studying
for TOEFL and SAT. We didn’t have any international schools in my city and all
I did was just teach myself. My current university in the US was my dream
school. I didn’t expect it to accept me because I didn’t have really high SAT
scores as all other Chinese students did. But I was so lucky that at that time
I was looked at as more than just scores and as a typical Chinese applicant.
But I also know that I deserved it if hard work and determination mean anything.
 |
| Jupar with her family |
My greatest
motivation to study at that time was this dream in which I would take my
grandpa to visit America one day. I would take him to the Washington, D.C. to
see the great capital. I would take him to see the beautiful beaches in Miami. And I would take him to see fabulous New York
City. But now, these places will only remain a dream for him. My grandpa passed
away before this could happen. But he said he was so happy to see me grow up,
and, more importantly, to have finally accomplished my dream which had also
always been his dream too. In the end, his dream of education is the one we
shared and the one that made him proud of me.
Since coming
to university in the US, I have changed so much that I can’t even believe it
myself sometimes. I have become more outgoing, more confident, and more
determined. I have learned so much from amazing professors and my great
friends. I gained not only from classes and teachers, but also from experiences
that I could never learn from a book. Now my grandpa has become a greater
motivation than ever before. He and I accomplished the road from the prairie to
the U.S. together. And now, although I still have a long way to go, our journey
has already taken me places that will prepare me to contribute significantly to
my family, my culture, and my beloved country.
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What used to
be called the American Dream has now gone global. A family from modest means
from a place few in the US have heard of, has come to partake I the opportunities
to move ahead in life in the way that does not happen much in the US itself
anymore. Most selective schools in the US have great students, but few of them
come from modest means. Only those schools with huge endowments and a
commitment to educational access for many can afford to provide aid even to US
citizens. The result is a widening chasm between those who can afford a
transformative education and those who cannot. Luckily, the advent of free
on-line education and innovators like Salman Khan and others, those who cannot
afford to travel to schools or are not willing to go into triple digit debt for
the privilege can offer some useful alternatives.
Jupar’s
journey also underscores another important issue in education. All too often I
hear administrators and educators in schools and colleges refer to Chinese
students as if they consisted of monolithic line of copies on a conveyor belt.
Yesterday’s entry from another student from China, who is majoring in
philosophy and comes from one of the best schools in China, represents a very
different journey to the US. And yet people group students from China into a
simple data point on a profile and are under pressure not too enroll too many
of them. To categorize students who come from a nation with over a billion
people, it strikes me as willful blindness on the part of some to focus on a
single number (the number of Chinese students enrolled) instead of taking the
time to see that the voices of each of these students will add significant
diversity to any campus in the world. The focus on percentages and groups rather
than individuals sounds like what Americans used to critique other countries of
doing. Back then it was said this treatment went against the American grain. I
wonder what happened to the American narrative of promoting the dreams of
people like Jupar here in our own country.
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