"Fly up, dreams start from here"

"Nhi, you study Humanities? Why study Humanities? It will be difficult to find a job after graduation. Nowadays, people study economics, finance, medicine to find jobs easily and have high salaries..??? “

I don't know how many times I have heard similar sentences like the above from my close friends when they found out I was applying to the University of Social Sciences and Humanities.

I am a stubborn, difficult to like, cute girl but not easy to love. I love to explore, like new things but also get bored with old things quickly. A girl who is frivolous, passionate and hasty like summer rain. I am not a gentle and soft, fragile and weak Humanities girl... as people think. Perhaps from my personality, I am not and do not fit the style of a typical Humanities girl. However, I have been a Humanities girl for three years now and more specifically, I am a girl of Anthropology - the field of study I am pursuing and passionately love.

Honestly, at first when I went out with my friends, I was very shy to say that I studied at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities. I didn’t want anyone to ask about the school I was attending, I hid and concealed to avoid hearing things like: “Humanities! It’s hard to find a job”, “The future is bleak”, “What can I do after graduating”… I was fed up with those things that at that time I didn’t know were completely baseless. I just wanted to hide and shout: “I don’t want to hear, I don’t want to know”.

Then one day, the day I felt happiest, most proud to be studying in this beloved school. It was an early summer day when the first weak rays of sunlight crept through my fingers, the first cool breezes of the season caressed my hair. This was the summer of my second year of university life.

That day, I met a group of foreign students, mainly from the US and France, at a conference on Anthropology and Community Research. When it was my turn to introduce myself, I felt nervous and didn’t know if I should introduce the school I was attending. But whatever, I closed my eyes and said: “Hi, everyone. My name is Nhi. I am a third student of university of social science and humanities. I am learning anthropology…

For some reason, the whole group of young people exclaimed and looked at me with eyes full of admiration. In particular, a French student leaned in and whispered in my ear: “Wow!!! Social science and humanities. Wonderful…”

That day I was very proud and I was also very surprised to know that humanities students are also very valuable?

From then on, I no longer felt embarrassed when someone asked me about the school I was attending. Whenever I was asked where I was studying, I held my head high and answered: “I am studying at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi”.

I have realized that our life is not only measured by how much money we make each month, how many floors we live in, whether we drive a Lamborghini Murcielago, Mercedes or simply a legendary Honda Dream. We wear Victoria's Seeret, Louis Vuitton fashion... or simply unbranded, unnamed items bought at the market. Our life is also measured by what we have done, what we have built, what we feel and what we have traveled...

As a student of Humanities, I have been to many parts of the country. Each trip, each journey brings me thousands of new things, touching stories of people in remote areas, local knowledge, feelings about a new and worth living life or simply the warm embrace of a Mother in the mountainous region with her child of Humanities in the faraway Hanoi is enough to make me strong and steady on the path I have chosen.

Humanities - where I learned lessons that perhaps numbers and large sums of money are not enough to buy. Just tomorrow when all my close friends and I graduate, I may not have a stable job like them, a salary more than enough to cover our living expenses, a big house or a luxury car... But I do not feel regretful, at least until now, for choosing to study at this school. The school with dedicated teachers has taught me what Humanities is, what a humane person is, a humane lifestyle. A humane person is not someone who is strong enough to stand on the shoulders of others, trampling on others to live. Humanities is to love, to connect people from far away places closer together. Humanities is simply to send a warm greeting, a lovely smile or a tight handshake.

Humanity in me is a small sky that nurtures a great dream, which is to make the lives of the less fortunate in society more beautiful and worth living. Every day, around us, there are so many people who are losing faith in life, they are still lacking a lot, not having enough food, clothes, enduring the cold in the alleys, the dark corners of the streets filled with light but lacking humanity. They are the consequence of the process of industrialization and modernization of the country when high-rise buildings are built higher and higher, the deep gaps between the rich and the poor are randomly built higher. Should we just sit still and let those people walk silently in the "medieval night"? I will have to do something for them, just a small thing. Perhaps you will say I am too dreamy, too unrealistic because "one small swallow does not make a spring" but for me that is enough to signal a new spring is coming.

If children are the pride of their parents, then students are also the pride of this beloved school. From this school, many talented leaders of the country have been born (…..), people holding key positions in the National Assembly such as Nguyen Phu Trong.., excellent teachers such as Phan Huu Dat.... So perhaps it is not too much to say that Nhan Van has been and is the place to nurture the national spirit (talent)? What could be more proud than studying at this proud school.

Goodbye to the naive feelings of the first years of entering school. Now I am filled with pride, faith and hope in life. Gently, fly away with the dreams that were initiated, nurtured and nurtured at this beloved school of Humanities.