My daughter-in-law was a dropout from Beijing University, who came here after a couple of years of running a restaurant in China to get her degree from Ole Miss (University of Mississippi, to yankees.) My son was on his third attempt to earn a degree there, and she was clearly Mensa material - I know that because she achieved a Mensa qualifying score on her GMAT a couple of years later, and I am a Mensa test proctor.
But the two of them somehow clicked. They moved in together, and she really got him on track - made him change his major to business, do his homework, and tutored when needed. After over 20 years with IBM I had been taking some business courses myself - all “A” grades - and had been invited into the startup graduate program at Christian Bros. College (later, university) in Memphis. She came to my graduation, and decided that she would seek a MBA after her Bachelors in journalism. To do so, she had to cram all of the undergrad prereqs into her senior year.
Also, she had brought a major homework assignment with her. As I first saw it, the paper was about a “C”. Her vocabulary was good, but she needed a lot of guidance on organizing her paper. We talked about it for over an hour before she rewrote it - and it earned an A. She did not ask for my help again for several years - after her MBA, and a year on a PhD in Economics, while my son finished his BBA.
But then David convinced her that if she could get into one of the top ten law schools, a law degree would ensure their future. And she asked me for help with her personal statement that was required with her application. Again, she had the dates and places, but no real narrative, and she needed help putting it together.
She was turned down by Harvard, Columbia, and Yale, but accepted by the others on her list. Boston offered a full ride, but she settled on Georgetown, where she graduated Cum Laude. And I found out later that she was regularly helping the young royalty - sons and daughters of high ranking Chinese officials - with their own personal statements as they applied to prestigious American universities!
Unfortunately, my son never matched her success. His epilepsy lost him one job after another, and he never was able to support her at Georgetown. Even after he came back here and she moved into a dormitory, she earned more as a part-time legal intern than he ever earned. The divorce was unavoidable, but they remained friends and in contact with each other, even after she married an English lawyer in Hong Kong. David died in 2005, smothering after a seizure on his bed here at home. She and I exchange notes or phone calls occasionally.
Great story!