Head First Rather Than Follow His Heart, His Friends And The Money, Serhiy Zhykharev Followed The Advice Of His Parents, Who Encouraged Him To Go To School. Today, The Ukrainian Student Couldn’T Be More Thankful.

I vividly remember the day when my mother and I had our biggest life-changing fight. It was in 1993. I was 15. We lived in Shepetivka, a small provincial town in western Ukraine, a former republic of the USSR. The Soviet Union broke up two years before and the whole infrastructure was disrupted. Industry almost stopped, people were laid off and state employees did not receive any money. The slow changes and immense corruption left dishonesty as the primary way to get wealthy.

There was one other option, though. Since the country was in an economic depression, most of the consumer goods needed to be imported. Because of the inefficient state system, private individuals went to Poland, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Turkey and brought back everything, from raisins to furniture. They then hired young people and paid them commissions to sell these goods.

Several of my friends did that and I wanted to do the same. Money was good but the work took a couple of hours daily and all weekend, so it would interfere with my studies. My parents were opposed.

“You have to study,” they said, “and once you’re done with university, you’ll make a lot more and your job will be much more interesting. Don’t waste your chance for education.”

At this time, Western consumer goods started to appear in my town. Foreign cars, far better than the ones produced at home, really attracted me. I dreamed about owning one. The only way I saw that happening was by starting my entrepreneurial career. One day my mother and I did some shopping at the market place and on our way home we passed a beautiful black Honda. I just wanted to get in and chase the wind. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.

“Why don’t you let me sell stuff?” I whined again. My mom repeated “Son, you have to study now. Times are going to change and you will see that education will mean more than just standing in the marketplace. Mark my words. You will earn more than you can dream of. Your head will take you farther than your hands. Trust me on this.”

I kept whining. Slowly, this turned into a full-blown fight. We didn’t speak to each other for three days. Finally, when neither of us could bear it any longer, we sat down to talk. We spent seven or eight hours in the kitchen talking. I can still see the low hanging lamp that lighted the table and faces around it. This coziness soothed the initial edgy tone of our conversation. So did my favorite peppermint tea that my mother makes like no one else. That conversation with my parents completely changed me.

They told me the stories of their lives. Both of them grew up in villages and if not for higher education (my mother is an economist and my father is an infantry colonel) they would still be there, with no money and no future. My father worked as a carpenter, a tractor driver and a miner before he got into the academy.

“Just look back in history,” my parents said. “Remember Lomonosov? The guy walked all the way to Moscow from the White Sea just hoping to study. He wasn’t even sure if he’d get in. He had nothing to eat for days; the system did not even allow people of his class to receive education. He almost went to jail for lying on his application. Just think, what he did to get the chance you are trying to throw away!

“And what happened? He became one of the best scientists in the world, one of the most influential people in the Russian Empire. Do you think he would have ended up there if he remained a merchant in Holmogory?

“What about Gagarin? He was the first person to fly into space! He came from a provincial town like ours. Only his desire to learn and incredible persistence took him to such heights. He spent his whole vacations studying math and physics. He kept himself in top physical shape. He never wasted a minute on something that didn’t get him closer to his dream! He completely subdued his life to the dream of becoming an astronaut. And he became one. Isn’t that a proof that you can do anything if you put your mind to it?”

I tried to come up with some counter arguments. I asked, “How come then that all the crooks are happy and travel all over the world and we can’t even afford a kiwi more than once a month? Your education doesn’t matter! All you have to know is how to lie!”

“Well,” my father told me, “I kept my dignity and your mother did as well. If honesty and hard work mean poverty, I’d rather be poor.”

Then came the family stories. My great-grandmother was of noble descent, and although she and her husband gave up a comfortable position of power in a nice town to organize village schools, she had trouble with the KGB all her life because of her roots. In the early 1920s, my father’s family had to burn all the money they were saving up for a piece of land to avoid being sent to Siberia.

But none of my family ever gave up. They fought against all odds and for that people still remember and respect them. My grandmother is now very poor. Her state pension is minuscule so she must seek help to survive. My mother and her siblings help a lot, but students that she and my grandfather taught 30 years ago still come and offer help. I think that speaks for itself. I hear great stories about my grandfather every time I visit grandma. He died 25 years ago, but people still remember and appreciate him. The art school that my great-grandfather organized in the 1920s still exists and now bears his name.

That night talking to my parents was unbelievable. My world view was crushed and rebuilt again. I could not believe how many things my family kept from me, how many things our history hid from all of us, how terrible life was and how well my parents hid it all from me. I was scared. I was astonished. I wanted to change it. So I decided to act on it.

I read all the books that my parents mentioned in our conversation. I read new, more honest history books. I talked to my grandparents and found out about my family.

I started studying hard. I transferred to another school where I could learn better English. This opened up a lot of opportunities for me in the West. I was able to win a scholarship and come to the United States, in a high school exchange program. At 18, I became a translator and made my own living. I entered a university at home without paying any bribes. I then got a scholarship to go to college in the United States and I support myself without any help from my parents. I have visited places in the world that my peers only dream of.

That night, my parents taught me to dream, to dare, to challenge myself and things around me. They taught me the greatest lesson of life: Education is a road to a better future. I will stick to it for as long as I live. And I will pass this lesson on to my children.