You know when you enter kindergarten and you're given your very first (among many to come) homework assignment and the teacher asks to you "Write about your hero." Many of us were like, "Psh... easy Superman." or "My daddy, duh." But looking retrospectively on the past (my original answer was my grandmother, even though I barely knew the woman), I realize that kids aren't just being naive when they state that their parents are their heroes. Even though I may despise my mother, she is my hero and my role-model. I realized that loving someone doesn't necessarily mean you have to like them. I may think that my mother is bat-shit crazy sometimes and that she is a psychopath... sometimes she can be the most influential person in my life in that moment.
At first I thought my mom was the stereotypical Asian mother who seemed to channel the dictatorial spirit of Hitler when it came to raising her children. Sure, there are times when I still see her that way but now I see her in a completely different light. My mother is the most selfless person I know. She doesn't care for her own appearance and her own happiness so long as she knows that she is working towards the good of our family. While most Korean mothers have this weird obsession with buying several, exorbitantly priced name-brand purses my mom would rather buy two things 1) Good food and 2) Good books. She has never once bought anything special for herself when she knew that there might be something that my brother or I might need. She would rather keep wearing the same clothes she had since her college years if that meant that she could but books that my brother and I could study from.
She herself values a few things in her life. Education, enlightenment, family, and justice. My mother had really big aspirations when she was younger but was prevented by her gender and her financial status from pursuing those dreams. So instead she immigrated to the US in order to get the chance at some other form of education and regardless of the field of study, she was the top of her class. She never got the chance to continue her professional field after the birth of my brother but she still continues to educate herself. You can never catch my mother without a book on her person. Even if she steps out of the house for ten minutes, she carries a book with her. And these books aren't your stereotypical "mother in her 40's" fiction, these are books like "The Best Science Literature 2012" or "Justice". My mother might be physically aging but her mind is still as sharp and as keen as it ever was. She's still receptive to new ideas and to new ways of thinking when most people her age are stuck in the mindset that they have maintained since their 30s.
My mother also loves to teach and she loves to teach mathematics. To this day, she will still various math textbooks at various hours of the day just because she wants to be able to teach others. Now that she's realized that her passion lies with teaching, she's done everything she can to be able to teach in my school district as a substitute. When most foreign adults don't bother to correct their English after a certain period of time, my mother still studies her old TOEFL vocab books from college and works everyday to improve her pronunciation.
When math teachers are asked by their students "When will we ever use this in real life?" their response is generally "In order to use it to calculate angles in a building or to derive such and such for engineering.... Blah, blah, blah." Kids learn to quickly dismiss math because they think "well, I'm going to pursue art or literature so I have no need for math." When my mother is asked this same question, her face lights up and she speaks in such an animated fashion, I have a hard time keeping a smile off my own face. "Mathematics is the very basis for everything in life. Math is the only way you learn this way of logical thinking and processes that you can't learn in any other discipline. These methods of thinking can then be applied to every other subject. Lawyers have to have some sort of logic and common sense that can be learned through mathematics. Math is the very key to learning how to think."
I admire my mother so much for being someone who may not necessarily be maternal or warm but for being someone who is so driven by her passion. The way that she views life and the way that she values education is something that I think is genuinely cool about my mother.
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