To graduate from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, every student must master a foreign language, and I choose Mandarin. I’m also catching up on requirements in history, and taking political philosophy, which is the only class I actually loathe. I start out eagerly reading the writings of each philosopher, only to be told the following week why that philosopher got it wrong—Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Smith. Why are they teaching us about all these guys who got it wrong? Why don’t they jump to the end and educate us about the ones who got it right? This is a stretch for a mind trained from birth to think in absolutes, where the authority figure gave me the “right” answer. It takes a while to appreciate the ability to analyze and attack each theory.
But the real shock comes in a required class called “The Problem of God.” Growing up, I’d always been taught that the Bible was the inspired and perfectly accurate Word of God, literally true in every aspect. Now, I read that multiple councils of churchmen and politicians, who historians admit were more interested in political power than spirituality, decided which writings were the “inspired Word of God” and should be included in the official version of the Bible, and which books, including any written by women, should not.
Grandpa said that God protected His Word so it could come down to us unchanged throughout the last few thousand years. But that didn’t fit with what I knew of human nature and reality. So supposedly another group of men in power, priests, were able to translate the Bible perfectly from multiple languages into English, without getting a single word implication wrong? What about the guys who translated the Aramaic into Greek before the English translation?! Even the English translations of the Bible are different! Grandpa claimed the King James Bible was the most accurate, translated by hundreds of priests in 1604 for the new political Church of England. But how do we know they got that one right?
Was there never a time when King James might have put his oar in or made a suggestion about how a tricky phrase should be interpreted? Did the misogynist culture or the will of the church in the Middle Ages never affect interpretation?
I also learn that the Bible was written long after the actual events occurred, sometimes hundreds of years, and the stories were initially passed on orally. I’ve played the game Telephone; I know how much a story can change in just one pass around the circle. My logical mind is at war with my deepest, most foundational beliefs—I feel the internal stress of these contradictions ripping me apart. The familiar comfort of certainty is suddenly gone. What is true? I wonder desperately. How can I know?
I do my best to ignore my uncertainty. To compartmentalize it. I can’t afford to have a spiritual crisis. I have another paper to write, another class to finish. Community college was a vacation cruise compared to the workload at Georgetown. I shelve these questions about my beliefs to think about later.
To keep up with the challenging classes, I pull many long nights in the library and spend a lot of extra time rereading the course materials carefully. My commitment and razor-focus pay off. That first semester, I receive all but one A–, the one B+ coming from political philosophy—I guess the professor didn’t like the Star Trek reference in my final paper, or perhaps it’s because I wrote the final exam paper all night long, bookended by final exams in two other classes. I didn’t realize I could move an exam if I have more than two in forty-eight hours.
My routine continues through my sophomore year and into the next. Halfway through my junior year, one of my deans calls me into her office to tell me I have a shot at graduating summa cum laude. I just have to pull off straight A’s for the next year and a half. My jaw drops. I never thought I’d be able to compete with kids who’d gone to top-tier high schools and had years of formal education. As soon as I see what’s possible, I double down and work even harder. I attend every class, taking detailed notes. When it’s time for a test or a paper, instead of spending sleepless nights in the library reviewing all the reading, I regurgitate what the professor talked about in class, which, it turns out, is exactly what they want to hear, just like in my brief grade-school experience. They give you the answers, you learn them, and then they grade you on how well you can recite them with a slightly different flavor.
I have precious little time for fun, and there are times I resent how much harder I must work than many of my peers. I see them driving new cars their parents bought for them and I wish I had that support. But I quickly catch myself. I have something they don’t. I know why I’m here, and I appreciate this opportunity in a way they can’t understand. I’m going to college not because it is expected of me but because I fought for it. I realize that my parents gave me an important gift. I don’t have a prep school education or even a cafeteria card, but I can work my butt off. If I could sweep the village streets until I had blisters on my hands when I was eight years old, I can certainly work long into the night rewriting an assignment until I get it right. Those blisters, too, have worked out to be for my own good.
Studying by myself at my dented metal office desk each morning as a young teen in Macau developed self-discipline. I might not be smarter or have their advantages, but I know I can outwork them, and I will. It’s going that last step, when you are already exhausted, that makes the difference. “Stubborn bull,” my mom called me; I preferred “determined.”
Like many things in life, it just depends on the context.