Source A: The story beneath my graduation photograph

An original contemporary non-fiction-style practice text, written for this question.

In the graduation photograph, my mother is holding my arm with both hands. I look as though I am about to say something, though I cannot remember what it was. Beneath the picture online, she had written that every sacrifice had been worth it and that I had always known exactly where I was going. I read the caption on the train home, with three unsuccessful job applications open on my phone.

The first sentence moved me. I remembered the extra shifts, the envelopes in which she had set aside travel money and the evenings when she had pretended not to be tired while asking about my work. The second sentence made me angry. I had changed courses once, nearly left in the second year and spent most of the final term frightened that I had chosen badly. Always knew was a bridge built over the part of the journey I still needed to understand.

At home, I began with the caption rather than the photograph. I said that it made my life sound like a plan which had worked exactly as intended. She asked whether I wanted people to know every difficult thing. I said no. Then I stopped, because I had been preparing an argument about honesty and she had asked a question about privacy. Those were related, but they were not the same question.

We sat at the kitchen table. She said she had wanted to tell people she was proud. I said I wanted that too, but I did not want pride to require certainty about the next stage. She looked at the photograph again. In it, her hands held my sleeve with a strength I had barely noticed on the day. She said that when she was my age, leaving one job without knowing the next would have been impossible. Perhaps knowing where I was going had sounded, to her, like the safest kind of success.

We changed the sentence. The new caption said that I had worked hard, changed direction and finished. It was less elegant. It also left tomorrow unwritten. She kept the line about sacrifice, and I asked her to keep it, because uncertainty about my future did not erase what her help had made possible.

A week later, another rejection arrived. I told her before she asked. She made tea and wanted to read the application with me. I let her. The photograph remained online, the same caught expression on my face, the same hands on my arm. This time the words beneath it left enough space for the conversation we were still having.

Source B: From Chinese Cinderella — Adeline Yen Mah

Read Source B in the official Pearson anthology (printed pages 21–23).

Compare how the writers present their ideas and perspectives about how a personal achievement can acquire a different meaning within a family.

Support your answer with detailed examples from both texts, including brief quotations.