Economics class: Poor and Rich

He grew up in Africa.

He is an American and moved to Africa because of his father's job.

He was surprised that things were different from US.

He wonders,

"why some people are poor and why some people are rich."

That's why he got interested in economics.

Now he is a professor of economist, teaching at a college somewhere in US.

In junior high, I loved English. I clearly remember I was excited about memorizing new words and phrases, imagining I would be giving a presentation in English in a building surrounded by skyscrapers. I had a close friend who also liked English. We picked up new words or phrases from my textbook of English class on the radio or the workbook she had, and gave quiz each other. Although we went to different high schools, we had kept contact with each other until we graduated high school.

After the graduation, I went to Tokyo to go to college and she started to work, and since then we didn't keep in touch anymore. I wonder if the situation was the other way around. What if I couldn't go to college because of the finance. I don't know if she wanted to study English at college. The only thing I know is that she liked English as much as I do.

In high school, I didn't like English anymore because it became boring to me. Memorizing new words and phrases was not fun anymore. I didn't know what I wanted to study at college, but I applied for it because everybody around me did so. My teachers recommended me to study English because I was better at it than other subjects, but I decided to major sociology because I thought I can devote myself to the society in some way if I study sociology. How shallow I was.

(I changed my major to linguistics later, but that's another story.)

I had a friend whose family was not so rich. She had made up her mind she wouldn't go to college but work, though she didn't say it aloud. When the students started to fill out the applications,

she mumbled to me,
"You can go anywhere you want to, can't you?

It was true. I could go anywhere I wanted to go if I studied hard enough. I vividly remember I was sorry for her and didn't know what to say. I didn't say anything. I wish I could do something, but nothing came to my mind.

I moved from Hokkaido (the northern countryside in Japan) to Tokyo to go to college. Since then, the situation has changed. Until then, I have taken for granted the fact that I have a home to go back to without thinking about rent or that I have things to eat, but not anymore: I got poor.　I had to make money enough to pay the cost of living. In other countries, it might be usual for college students to make money for tuition or rent, but in Japan, usually parents pay for it because the system of scholarship is not good enough, I think.

I study linguistics at college. Many students go abroad to study English for a long or short period of time. To me, it was a dream within a dream. In the second grade, many of the classmates go to Australia or New Zealand to study English. I didn't even want to hear the classmates saying host family or sheep or koala, whatever about the country where they're going to stay. I also hated to be asked whether I have studied abroad or I like traveling abroad.

If I had got scholarship, the situation might have been different, but my parents and I decided not to because it would have been debts for a long time, and if something happened to me like if I died, my parents got debt, and we'd like to avoid it. In Japan, scholarship (shougakukin) refers to a loan in English. There are some scholarships which you don't have to pay back, but basically if you get scholarship, you have to pay back after the graduation.

(Here, I say "scholarship" in Japanese sense.)

Many people give up scholarship because they are afraid they couldn't pay back for some reason. So, people who seriously need money to go to college or high school have to give up on it, and people who can afford to go to college get scholarship after all. I have heard my friend's friend who got "a car" with scholarship, which irritates me because there are so many people who seriously need money to go to school. I wish Japan will fulfill the system of scholarship. I hope children who want to study can go to school without concerning about the finance.

My graduation is coming soon.

Looking back on my school life till college,

the question the professor gave us occurs to my mind:

"Why some people are poor and why some people are rich"

I'm going to start to work from April.

I want to find what I can do for children,

like my friends, who wanted to study..