My mother could of been anything in her life instead she chose to be an English teacher. This is a story not only about her courage and self-confidence as a young teenager, but also about a woman who saw far into her future.

In the 1950s under Stalin's regime the majority of Russian people lived in a time of starvation and poverty. The only joy and excitement for the younger generation was going to school, getting knowledge, wanting to be educated in order to escape the misery of life.

My mother was the seventh of eight children in her family. She had to wait her term to start school but once she was there she loved it. All of a sudden she had the ability to read books where her mother couldn't, she could count how many kopeks bread costs, she could study human discoveries and test chemical reactions in the chemistry lab. Every class she took grabbed her attention; she absorbed all this new information until she was confronted with the subject that became her nightmare. In her fourth grade the Educational Committee of the Soviet party introduced a new class that would become a requirement for all secondary education - a foreign language. My mother picked English. It was the hardest class for her: the pronunciations that sounded strange to her ear like "ship" and "sheep", the conjugation of verbs (go, went, gone), the difference in tenses, the difference in words.. .THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE.

Throughout the secondary education my mother received her lowest grades in English. She was a bright and smart young lady and could become anything that didn't require the English language. There was a vast range of professions but that's when a young girl became a grown up woman. She thought about herself and her parents, she knew that she was more advanced and educated and, therefore, she was going to have a good life. She knew that unlike her parents she could help her children with school when they would have questions or be confused about something. She could help them with any subject except English. And that was the turning point in deciding what to become. She had to go out there and conquer the hardest so that in the future her children would be prepared for anything, become whoever they want to be and have all the choices that exist in the world. She went to college and became an English teacher.

Unlike my mother I was not struggling with English at school. I had her at my side showing me how to spell and pronounce, how to be confident and try to succeed in life. I became a regional champion in the English Olympiad in my eighth grade and was granted a chance to go to the US where I completed my high school and first two years of college. Upon my return I completed college in Russia majoring in International Business and while working on a business assignment I met my husband. I live and work in the United States now and the person that deserves the appreciation and "thank you" for what I have become is my mother.

If it wasn't for her strengths I would never have graduated Summa Cum Laude in my class, won a chess championship in junior high and an English Olympiad in high school. I couldn't have majored in International Business since it required English knowledge. I wouldn't have understood my husband since he is an American and I wouldn't be where I am now. Everything I have I owe because of my true hero, MY MOTHER.