Learning Medicine in France

The following is another guest post by Yveline Van Anh 

You have the power to change your future. Sure, some things are meant to be and fate does have play a role in it, but we only have so much luck. You have to go and grab those chances.

My mother left Vietnam at the age of 19, eight years after the end of the Vietnam War. Her family had attempted to escape via the sea mere days after the end of the war, but the ship's engine broke down just miles away from international seas where her family could be rescued from foreign ships. It took the next eight years for them to get a visa and be allowed to leave. She arrived in France in 1983 and was sent to Rennes where she lived in a refugee camp with the rest of her family for a year. Refugees from all over the world were there. Meanwhile, she was in a country whose language she did not know.

She spent a year learning French after which she was expected to start working. However, she refused to do so. She wanted to become a doctor. Despite her family’s lack of finances, she entered medical school. She struggled her first year with her limited knowledge of the French language and with a case of tuberculosis, but she didn't give up. She borrowed notes that she was then unable to take, she bought more books; she studied day and night. Her first year of testing, she did not make the cut. Still, she persevered. Her passion was medicine and she would not settle for anything else. Other refugees had started working, but she continued with her studies. The hard work paid off: she passed.

She soon realized, however, that Rennes did not present her with the same opportunities that Paris did. Furthermore, she needed a paying job. She had used a scholarship to go to school, but the rest of her family needed more than her father's small income to live off of. She left Rennes alone to pursue her medical studies in Paris meanwhile working to help support both her and the rest of her family. Yet again it was hard, both physically and mentally. Her grasp of French, a language she had learned not three years ago at the already ripe age of 19, was still not firm. She spent long hours studying and working, she was alone in a big city entirely different from the home she was used to in Vietnam, but she persevered. Paris was her one chance of success, and she wasn't about to let it get away.

It didn't matter that she was already older than all her classmates. It didn't matter that she was living away from her family. It didn't matter that she could barely keep up with the language. It didn't matter how long it took. It didn't matter the hundreds, thousands of hours she had to put into studying. None of it mattered, just her and what she wanted. She was determined. She had a dream and a way to achieve it. She received her medical degree in 1995, a year after I was born.

My mom has inspired not only me, but also her younger siblings to work hard for what they want. As the oldest of four children, she was the one her family depended on. She had a hard life, but she made something out of it. She didn't just accept the situation she was put into; she went ahead and grasped opportunities. She wasn't afraid to take a risk and she wasn't afraid to fight for what she wanted. My mom has taught me never to give up. She has taught me to persevere, to have faith in myself. If she could fight the circumstances and achieve her dreams, then I believe that so can I.