Vietnam - Mother, daughter enter university together

A Ho Chi Minh City woman has proven it is never too late to learn as long as one still wants to.

Truong Thi Thuy Nam, 44, has been admitted to the history faculty at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities after cramming for six months for its admission exam.

“My children jumped for joy at the news of my admission,” she said.

A mother of three, Nam graduated from high school in 1984 in the central province of Thanh Hoa and had to abandon her dream of getting into university due to her family’s poverty.

She got married and moved to Ho Chi Minh City in 2003.

She worked very hard to send the three children to school, but never abandoned her university dream.

She often spent time reading her children’s history and literature textbooks after work at a company near her house in Binh Tan District where she is a maid.

In her small house, she has a little shelf that contains various books, including Vietnamese translations of “Gone with the Wind,” “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” and “The Gadfly.”

Thanks to her reading, she developed extensive knowledge of history and literature.

One day she told her children that she wanted to take the university admission exam and they supported her wholeheartedly.

Nam enrolled in a class at Nguyen Thuong Hien High School earlier this year to prepare for the exam.

“My classmates thought I was their teacher when I first came in,” she recalls.

After gradually getting to know her story, they all gave her a lot of help.

Nam tried very hard in class because she believes “getting a formal higher education will let [her] opinions be listened to in daily life.”

What she is concerned about now is changing her work schedule so that she can have time for studies.

But it should not be a big problem, she says: “I’ll improvise.”

Nam’s youngest daughter has been admitted to Pham Ngoc Thach University of Medicine and the Banking University of Ho Chi Minh City this year. 

Her other two children study at the Banking University of Ho Chi Minh City and the Ho Chi Minh City University of Pedagogy.

“Many people ask me why she went to college at such an age instead of focusing on taking care of the children,” Van Dung, her husband says. “I just said ‘why not study when we have a chance?’ I encouraged my wife to continue pursuing her dream. She had given it a try at least.”

Dung works for a company in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong and comes home for four days a month.

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