At the 2017 high school finals, Le Ngoc Tan Anh, born in 1998, in Dinh Quan district in Dong Nai province, held his mother’s hands tightly when approaching the exam room.

Anh then applied to study journalism at a university. However, after some consideration, he decided to change his mind. 

“I love this career very much. However, my circumstances and health conditions did not allow me to follow my passion. I finally chose to study history at the HCM City University of Social Sciences and Humanities,” he said.

Anh had to spend six years to obtain a bachelor’s degree, or two years longer than his classmates. It was a difficult period with many hardships.

Well cared for by his mother, Anh’s conditions got better gradually. She encouraged him to go to high school. To his surprise, his friends did not sneer at him but helped him to study. When he was in the 12th grade, the monitor teacher encouraged him to continue studying at university.

Passing the exam to university, Anh felt very happy. The school created favorable conditions for him to study. He was able to live with his father in a dorm.

“In the first two years, my father brought me to school before leaving for work. In the last two years, I could go to school myself on my wheelchair which was a gift of a benefactor,” he recalled. 

The path to obtain higher education was thorny. When he was a third-year student, He often had to be hospitalized because of unstable health conditions. He thought of dropping out when Covid-19 broke out. But he did not give up.

His father told him: “I don’t expect you to do something really great. I just hope that you can find a job after you finish school." He always remembered his father’s words.

Anh hopes he can become a history teacher at a secondary or high school, and believes that he will do it well. He cherishes the ambition of teaching history with a new teaching method that includes teachers acting as mentors who guide students to find documents and materials. History lessons will no longer be boring as knowledge will now be transmitted through presentations and dramas.

Nguyen Lai