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I’m applying for 7th grade at Stoneleigh-Burnham School. The topic was: Describe a living person you admire or who has significantly influenced your life, and explain why this person is important to you. Here goes:

The person I admire most is my mom. She is kind and loving, responsible and hardworking. My mom is my role model and she has played an important role in my life. Some nights before bed, my mother would talk to me about her past, stories encourage me to try new things and work hard.

My mother grew up a couple years after the Cultural Revolution in China. When she was about eight, she started doing the family’s important chores. Though she had two older brothers, they were at least nine years older than her, and they didn’t live with my mother and her parents. Every day after school, she would go buy drinking water and bring it home on a yoke. Next, she would start making dinner, which was usually soup consisting of a variety of vegetables and rice. My mother would then wait for her parents to get home and eat together. Before Chinese New Year, my mother would do all the laundry. She would wash all the family’s clothes, the bed sheets, and the curtains by hand and clean their house from ceiling to floor. It was a tradition in China to have everything clean during the New Year. Gradually, my mother grew up and went to college, which was a difficult thing to achieve at that time in China.

In about 1992, my mother traveled from China to the U.S. with my father to seek better education for both of them. For that, my parents escaped from China’s easy life to Pennsylvania, a place where they had no money, family, or friends. They both had dreams of getting a master’s degree and possibly a PhD., but my parents soon realized that they needed to have money—one of them had to work. So my mother worked full time as a waitress, and my father went to Edinboro University in order to get a master’s degree. My mother never had a day off, because, she says, if she did, she would feel horrible about not earning some extra money to support my father. My mother hated being a waitress. She used to teach at a college in China, and becoming a Chinese restaurant waitress who worked with immigrants from Mexico and China was not something she wanted to do. Still, she worked hard and soon earned enough for my older sister to come to America.

Soon my mother became interested in business, and bought a restaurant. Now she had to go to work at nine a.m. and came back at ten p.m. She only had three days of rest, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the New Year. In addition, the restaurant they bought never had a good reputation, so my mother had to tell everyone that new people owned the restaurant and that they would do better. At first, there weren’t many customers. After a couple of months though, the business became better and better. My mother always tells me that coming to America was a battle. If they lost, they would be walking in debt. I f they won, they would have a happy life in the free world. She chose to strive for the second choice.

My mother appreciates all her experiences. She is glad about the busy childhood in China and the hard start in America. My mother sold her restaurant a couple of years ago. She is now assisting my father in running his schools in China and taking care of my sisters and I. If my mother weren’t here with me, how would I survive? Every day, she gives me food, shelter and transportation. My mother encourages me to set goals and reach for them. Before I audition for a part in a musical or play, she gives me a thumbs up and tells me that no matter what part I get, I’ll always be her star. When the class bully taunted me, my mother talked to me about ignoring her and doing what is right. Her encouragement and care helps me become brave and confident. So now you see why my mother inspires me and why she is important to me. My mother is the North Star in my night sky, guiding me over all the obstacles and hardships life has to offer.
Sorry for having you read this much!!