My Role Model

A role model is somebody that changes one’s life, or has a huge impact on one’s life. The role model, in my life, is my cousin Du. He wears a pair of black glasses, has a bit of stubble on his chin, has wide black eyes and an honest look. He is now already 23, but has yet to start dating, for he wants to put his whole life and soul into his studies. With a persevering, meticulous and methodical attitude, he strives to excel and to achieve and to overcome his physical barriers. I am proud to have such a cousin, and will try to be act like him.

Cousin Du is very persevering. He only has one thumb on his right hand, but he never (allowed this physical difference to stop him from learning more) stopped trying to learn more, to achieve good grades and to excel in his academic studies. He studies in England, and when he first arrived, when he was 14, he had absolute no idea of English. Cousin Du stayed up until one or two o’clock in the morning, poring over English books for beginners. Clearly, his hard work paid off, because he could speak English fluently only after six months, an impossible feat even for me when I started learning English! He once said, “Chances and good luck only come for people who are patient with their work and use a trial-and-error method for dealing with life.” These words of wisdom gave me a very good idea of life and I was deeply motivated by him.

If Du was only persevering or meticulous, he wouldn’t be my role model. He always handles things carefully, from doing actuary problems at school or as homework, to dealing with delicate matters like love. When it was time to start selecting a university, Du went and listed all the advantages and disadvantages of each school. He started at ten o’ clock, for it was then extremely quiet. He finished at around four in the morning. During that time, he never once got up to go to the toilet, or have a cup of tea. Instead, he just sat at his desk and pored over his list. Also, he liked to edit his essays at least a dozen times, then read and reread them for five times to check for any mistakes while his friends went off to the pub to drink, to a nightclub or to the cinema. When I was very busy selecting schools to attend after kindergarten, I had to organize a lot of files to hand in to the schools and letters to write. Du gave me an idea, “You know, you could actually plan your day ahead, so you don’t get behind on anything and waste any time on useless things like eating and sleeping.” I got really curious and asked my aunt how he actually survived without leisure time, and eating, drinking and sleeping for relief. My aunt said, “He is usually very busy studying, so he writes out the plan of each day the night before. He wakes at five and he eats breakfast while getting out the books that he has to study and stack them in order on his desk. I’ve seen him do it.” I cannot believe how organized he is. When a person is like this, pushing oneself to work, it is hard not to succeed. This is one of reasons why he is my role model.

If Du was only persevering or meticulous, he wouldn’t be my role model. However, he is also methodical. He enjoys doing complicated mathematical problems, step by step, written out neatly with little lines to make life easier. He does division problems precisely, up to six digits. He says, “Doing things carefully and accurately is the joy of my life. I like to see decimals being calculated to the ten thousandth place, tables being listed when needed to make reading easier, finding out the difference between two words…” Once, I wanted him to teach me a really hard math problem about circle geometry. I could see that he didn’t know the answer, but he continued writing all his ways of breaking the problem up in his neat writing on the page. At last, he finally found the perfect solution to the question. I really like this about him, for he finds time to do things that normal people don’t. For example, some people, like me, just simply round the decimal to the nearest digit. I really have to be proud of having such a wonderful cousin, and he has motivated me to strive to do my best no matter on anything.

Having such a hard-working, logical and precise cousin with such rare qualities, I should really count my luck and learn more from him, so to improve my academic studies and my own personality. My role model, Du, has given me so much that I should be thankful for!