The parents' evening I remember best was when I was about fourteen, at my school in Ho Chi Minh City. Normally only my mother came to these meetings, but that year my father insisted on coming too, which already made me nervous because he was quite strict about grades.
We went from classroom to classroom, sitting on tiny plastic chairs while each teacher talked about me. Most of it was fine. My English teacher said I was talkative but hard-working, which my mother seemed to accept as a compliment. The real moment came in the science classroom. I'd done badly in a recent chemistry test and I was expecting a lecture. Instead, my teacher, Mr Long, told my parents that I asked the best questions in the class and that he thought I had a scientific mind, even if my marks didn't show it yet. He suggested they buy me a simple microscope.
I still remember it because it completely changed the way my father saw me. On the way home on the motorbike he didn't mention the low mark at all; he asked me what I wanted to study at university. A few weeks later the microscope appeared on my desk. I think that evening taught me how much one adult's opinion can shape a teenager's confidence. I ended up studying biology, and I'm now working as a lab technician, so in a way that ten-minute conversation set the direction of my life. I've often thought about writing to Mr Long to thank him, and I really should.