Precious example of up from the humble origin/Carlos Pueblo

 Precious example of up from the humble origin/Carlos Pueblo

Recently I met a distinguished alumnus of my Taiwan Normal University during a global alumni conference. She is a precious example of a person from humble origin. There were many such examples at my alma mater, an institution which provided tuition and fee free for training secondary school teachers in Taiwan. I always stop everything and write a piece of prose to compliment such a story to show my admiration.

She was introduced to us as a smart graduate student who converted her graduate study from Chemistry to Electrical Engineering  and made it. After the conference, I correspond with her and she introduces herself and briefly explains her story which reminds me to another two identical stories occurred in the past yet still in my mind. She was the only graduate from San Chong Junior High School to pass the Entrance Examination to enter Taipei First Girls Senior High. Her grandparents who brought her up at that time couldn't afford her to study at the most prestigious high school in Taiwan. Luckily, a kind teacher from her junior high stepped in to convince her grandparents with three years of tuition and fees prepared for her to spend. She entered that senior high and made it into Taiwan Normal with the governmental support to finish Chemistry study and got her bachelor science degree.

She was at the top of her class; therefore, she was invited to be a teaching assistant at the Chemistry Department after her graduation. She had worked for that position for four years and saved some money for her grandparents in order to study abroad in the United States in 1986. She briefly stayed at our Texas A&M University with a scholarship at College Station. She then transferred to the University of California at Irvine with her new Advisor in Electrical Engineering. After graduation, she has worked in several famous high tech corporations until recently.

When I was a high school student in Taipei, I loved to read Booker Washington's inspirational book, Up from Slavery. I firmly believe that her story and Cora Chou, my fellow 1971 NTNU graduate in the English Department, and another girl student at Huwei Senior High of all whom I described on my Blog with similar achievement as Booker Washington.