57 years old still taking university entrance exams

(Baonghean.vn) -At the Hung Binh Secondary School (Vinh City) exam site, candidates, supervisors and parents were quite surprised to see a candidate with gray hair and an old age entering the exam room. That candidate was Nguyen Thi Phong (Phong Thinh, Thanh Chuong), a retired cadre taking the exam for the Linguistics Department, Hanoi University of Social Sciences and Humanities.

Having received information about this special candidate, we stayed at the school gate all morning to “meet” the nearly 60-year-old woman who was still taking the university entrance exam. Two-thirds of the time had passed, when many candidates had left the exam room, but there was still no sign of this candidate. It was not until the last minute, about 10 minutes after the drum beat to collect the papers, that we saw her come out of the school gate.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Phong (striped shirt, sitting) is 57 years old and still taking the university entrance exam.

Born in 1956 in a studious family in Thanh Chuong, her grandfather was a teacher, her father was a military doctor. After finishing high school, Nguyen Thi Phong passed the entrance exam to Thai Binh University of Fisheries but later lost her admission notice so she could not enroll. After that, she worked as a worker for Quy Hop 3/2 farm, studied intermediate accounting and worked as an accountant for the farm. In the late 80s, due to family circumstances, she moved to Dak Lak to live. Her only son, Nguyen Tu Ngoc Anh, is a very good student, a national excellent student in grade 9 and grade 12, valedictorian of Thang Long High School, graduated from Law University and is currently the director of the Center for Training and Human Resource Development, Hoa Sen Group.

Alone in a foreign land, struggling to raise his children, but he always yearned for the day he would sit in a university lecture hall, the dream of being 20 years old still never faded. After a year of retirement, taking care of his grandchildren who were now strong, he applied for the university entrance exam. His son and daughter-in-law were quite surprised but did not stop him, but instead encouraged him to take the exam. He did not have much time to review, only reviewing with the exam sets sent by his daughter-in-law, but he was very confident in his knowledge. “Honestly, I just wanted to take the exam to test myself, partly because I wanted to fulfill my unfinished dream from my youth, and partly to see if my knowledge was behind or not. In the Literature exam this morning, I was very confident with question 2, which required real life experience and knowledge. I gave myself about 6 points. I have high hopes for history, because this is my forte. I have loved history since I was young, learning about Vietnamese history and world history from ancient to modern times.”

Ms. Phong said that if she is lucky enough to pass the university entrance exam, she will pack up and go to Hanoi to study, because that is her last wish. “I am retired, studying more is not for the purpose of increasing my salary, getting promoted, or upgrading my position. I just want to test myself, to set an example for my grandchildren...”

And her example of overcoming her age and her passion for pursuing her dream has become a motivation for other candidates to follow. Nguyen Xuan Huy, a candidate in the same exam room as her, said: "I really admire her, her confidence, her will and her courage to pursue her dream to the end..."

Thanh Phuc