She left school to earn money, then entered university after studying through her father’s illness

For Ca Thị Phương Thảo, studying often meant returning to her desk after her father’s cries interrupted the night.

The family lives in a cramped home behind a small grocery stall near Bình Điền wholesale market in Ho Chi Minh City. Her father, Ca Hồng Phú, suffers from mental illness and the effects of a stroke. He can sit silently for hours, then become confused or cry out. When that happened, Thảo would leave her books, go to him and wait until the episode passed before resuming her work.

After completing grade 11 at Mạc Đĩnh Chi High School, Thảo decided to stop studying for a year. Her mother was supporting a household of five, and Thảo believed she needed to work. She packaged orders for a bag shop more than seven kilometers from home, earning 2 million to 3 million Vietnamese dong a month. During the summer, she also worked at a warehouse, checking clothes and shoes before they were packed, for 280,000 dong a day.

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I know about my father’s illness, and the more I see my mother suffer, the harder I have to study. The noise from my father gives me the motivation to keep going. I know I have to study to change my life.

She kept her costs low, bringing rice prepared by her mother or eating instant noodles for lunch. At night, usually from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., she studied despite the exhaustion and the interruptions at home.

Thảo later returned to school through the Tân Bình Vocational and Continuing Education Center. This year, she earned admission to Ho Chi Minh City University of Science, scoring 9.5 in mathematics and 960 on the aptitude test. “I know about my father’s illness, and the more I see my mother suffer, the harder I have to study,” she said. “I know I have to study to change my life.”

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A case of beer earns 10,000 dong, while each kilogram of coal, sugar or monosodium glutamate brings in 1,000 to 2,000 dong.