4. Can I make it happen?

Is it for my children, for myself, or for both?

It was October 2002 when I  started to check out how to study abroad with my children according to the Korean mom friend’s suggestion.　One of the other mothers I know who is Korean told me to do so.

It seemed she was talking about that only from the perspective of children’s education, more specifically, of raising them to be bilingual. She told me that the easiest way was that I went to university-based English school that didn’t require complicated application processes like preparing academic transcripts or asking references letters to others.

Raising children to be bilingual

Raising my children to be bilingual? It sounded very attractive to me at that point. But the truth which I realized later was not that simple. Children learn languages very quickly but also forget very easily. It depends on your child’s motivation whether he/she keep the acquired skill and make use it for future career. As the proverb says you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. It literally depends on personality of each child. 

If I make this bold idea happen, I should focus on my own goal, I thought.

My potential for achievement

However, I could never imagine I could do the academic work on a specific subject because it had been 14 years since I finished my undergraduate, and additionally, I was never very studious in my college years.

Well, I can say now I had the potential for any achievement, but at that time I had assumed I was too old to do something new, which was totally wrong.

It was a kind of lessons to realize nothing was too late in most cases once you decide to initiate. 80 year old me in the future may be thinking that current me who is 54 is still very young.

Anyway, 10 months later, I was on a flight with my children to study in the graduate program in Pittsburgh. Why was that? What gave me a kick in the backWho encouraged me to do that? There were mainly three factors.