Some people can only fantasize about living the American Dream. Migrating from their home country to a country who claims they provide freedom and equality. Except, for my mother, it became a reality for her. The one thing that she wanted the most came true because she worked hard to get here.
For a very long time, my mom knew that America was one of the best countries to live in. She had heard this from so many people, and decided she wanted to come to America.
When she was in China, she applied to many universities in America but a university in Japan accepted her first. So, she chose to attend Dong Jing Da Xue (Translated to University of Tokyo) and studied for her Ph.D. there.
At the time that she was studying for her Ph.D., she was actually working with a professor in graduate school. She studied and performed beyond expectations so her professor asked her, “What would you like to receive as a gift from me? As in, after you graduate, where do you want to work?” He asked her if she wanted to go back to China or stay in Japan to work.
She told him she wanted to go to America.
He said, “It’s so easy to go to America!” At that time, she thought going to America was one of the hardest things to do. But her professor said that it was very simple and that if she wanted to go, he would send her next month!
She was so surprised and elated but was also very confused. How was she supposed to get to America? He told her, “You can go to America if you apply for the PAC (Physics Accelerator Conference) in New York during the month of May.”
If she wanted to apply, she had to submit a paper in order to attend this conference.. To my mom’s surprise, the paper she had turned in, was chosen by the committee to do an oral presentation of it at the conference. Since there were more than 1,000 participants at this conference, it was very difficult to be chosen for an oral presentation as it was so limited. So when her professor found out, he was thrilled and he said that it was a very good opportunity to show off her skills. So, he arranged a budget that he would completely cover, which included the fee for an application for a VISA and her travel expenses to New York.
However, even as she applied three months before the conference in New York for her VISA at the United States Embassy in Tokyo, she received her VISA on May 20th, ten days after the PAC. So when she received her VISA, the conference was already over, which meant she couldn’t go to New York and give her oral presentation anymore. Her professor had great feelings of regret at this time and he felt truly sorry for her.
On May 20th, the American Embassy requested her to go receive her VISA. However, before she could legally receive it, she needed to answer two of their questions with a legitimate response, or else they wouldn’t give her the VISA. One of the questions was Will you be traveling to the United States in the near future? This reason has to be related to scientific purposes.
She asked her professor what she should say and he said, “For sure! I will have you go to the US in the near future! How about this? In July, go to America.”
He sent her to BNL (Brookhaven National Laboratory) to participate in the collaboration between RIKEN, a lab institution in Japan, and BNL. Her Ph.D. thesis was based on the accelerator in Brookhaven so she came to America for the first time. Right when she stepped off her plane at the Kennedy International Airport in New York, she quickly discovered that America seemed like trash compared to Japan. The country appeared to be so much older than Japan was. The doors at the airport were making irregular noises and the streets were not as developed as those in Japan. Compared to Japan, America can’t even compete.
However, the one thing that made her the happiest was that the food in America was so cheap. The beef in America was one to two dollars per pound while in Japan, the beef was one to two dollars per 100 grams. The difference is astonishing. Even the fruit in America was cheap. In the US, apples are approximately 49 cents per pound while in Japan, a single apple is 100 yen (which is equivalent to 1 USD). There were so many different types of fruit in America, she’d never seen anything like it. The meat, the fish, everything was cheap. She stayed at the Brookhaven National Lab for around three months. During that time, she had gained ten pounds in weight. Because she was at BNL for three months, she got to experience how great America really is, even if some places looked really old and worn down.
She still wanted to stay in America so she decided after graduating with a Ph.D., she would apply for any Post Doctoral Position in the US. She applied for four positions and she was offered every single job. The four locations were Brookhaven National Lab, Berkeley National Lab, Cornell, and Fermilab. However, in the end, she decided to accept the position at Fermilab.
Ever since then, she has been working at Fermilab for almost 20 years.