Makin’ Mama proud

Angela Guiao
MSMU Class of 2021

(9/2019) I grew up surrounded by hard work. My mother is a single mother who worked as a nanny. Her day started every day at 5 in the morning. She would make me breakfast, pack my lunch, ready my clothes and school things, then drive me to school because I was too scared to take the school bus. Then she would go to work and clean, cook, and care for someone else’s kids. This meant that she never got a break unless the kids were asleep, and she could only eat whenever the kids were preoccupied with doing something else. Then afterwards, she would come home and clean, cook, and care for me.

Ironically, I grew up not knowing what hard work was. I took everything for granted. The house we lived in, the food I ate. The clothes I wore. I never realized that when I asked for the newest Skechers and my mother bought them for me, it meant that she would have to wear her holed up, breaking-apart, target sneakers for another year. I didn’t realize that when I wanted a new backpack and new clothes for the new school year even though I didn’t need them, it meant that she would have to wear her faded, raggedy t-shirts until she had enough money to buy maybe one or two more pairs.

I grew up not having to work hard for anything. Everything I wanted; I was given. Everything I tried, I succeeded at. Although it may have seemed like I was living the ideal life, when I entered college and my mother was no longer by my side, it really hurt me when I realized that I would actually have to put efforts into things if I wanted to succeed. When things got even a little difficult, I would give up or stop trying. I began to focus on things that didn’t require much effort, like hanging out with friends or going to parties. My grades slipped. My personal life got messy.

And now I am entering Junior year with a new mindset. Nothing is going to be given to me. I have to work for it, and I have to work hard. A job isn’t going to magically fall into my lap. There are objectives that I have to fulfill, goals I have to achieve. And none of that is going to happen if I don’t try. If I don’t sacrifice the time, the effort it takes to do well and prove myself, I am not going to achieve the future that I am striving for.

The first goal I have this year is to do better at school. I need to, to put things plainly, get my life together. Lately, it’s been quite a mess. I want to get good grades. Ideally that would mean straight A’s, but I am in Intermediate Accounting so a B would be achievement enough. The next goal I have is to be more involved. There are so many job fairs, opportunities for me to put myself out there. The Mount hosts all these events that allow you to introduce yourself to others, to meet people with the same interests, with the same goals. I want to take advantage of those and secure my future. Nothing is going to happen to me if I’m sitting at home all day.

And a very important goal, not only for this year but for my time here at the Mount, is to strive to become someone I would be proud of on graduation day. I don’t want to sit there in the auditorium during graduation thinking to myself that I could have done so much more. I want to be able to walk proudly across the stage knowing that I did my absolute best.

And, to be completely honest, to achieve all these goals I have to start with one thing: hard work. I have to work hard and understand what working hard means. It does not mean just completing all the assignments on time. It does not mean just being able to answer any questions asked. It means understanding the content, it means being able to carry a whole conversation. It means being insightful and building new ideas. It means becoming an expert in my major, and it means knowing I will pass my CPA without a doubt.

What I realize today is that hard work is not only about working hard. It is about sacrificing the things that do not fulfill you for the things that will make you truly happy. It is about learning to prioritize, learning to focus intensely on a goal. I was lucky and blessed enough of a kid to have a mother whose sole happiness was providing for her daughter.

For me, when I think about hard work, I think about my mother. I think about setting something above all else and doing everything possible to achieve that goal. My mother wanted me to succeed. She never wanted me to think I was at a disadvantage. She wanted to level the playing field despite our situation. The most important thing for her was making sure I never had to work hard just to survive. She gave me the gift of believing that I can become anything I want to be. This is a thought that, surprisingly, a large number of students are not lucky enough to believe.

So hard work for me is whatever it takes for me to succeed. It is all the sleepless night, skipped hangouts, study groups spent for me to graduate university with flying colors. Hard work, for me, is whatever it takes so that when I walk across the stage during graduation, my mother will think to herself that ‘she did it’. So that she understands that all her hard work and sacrifice was not all for nothing, that she produced a child that she could be proud of.

For me, hard work means making my mama proud.

Read other articles by Angela Tongohan