Hi, you’re probably already aggravated by this… abnormally large cluster of text, but I just feel like I have to put it out somewhere. Something similar like this was posted somewhere else, but that was to a specific individual.
I’m your typical acne-ridden, very Asian, Northern Virginia residing Freshman!
Another one in thousands of “arguments”, or most known as lectures were happening between me and my mother. A month ago, I asked her if she would be against the possibility of Law School, in which she replied to say yes. Today, I had learned that I would only be allowed (although technically, at that time, I would not be a minor) to go to Law School on ONE condition, which was to graduate from Harvard’s Law School. Now, if that discussion would happen a few months earlier, I would unknowingly comply, considering I knew barely anything of Law School, especially that it was not an undergraduate school. This, still does not say that I know alot about Law School, even to a smaller percentage, considering I haven’t even graduated High School. But with all that being said, I would only hope to assume that the conditional statement was only triggered under anger, thus being exaggerated. But this still worries me considering the colossal amount of costs and student debt any college would cost, especially law school, in which the authority to pay all of this traces back to my parents and grandparents, which as said above, would only pay for college if I majored in computer science.
Now, I acknowledge that my parents are just worried about my future and salary and is “advising” me in this manner for my own good, but coming from a generation and a very specific geographical location where everything is way too competitive compared to the rest of the world. The unimaginably expensive housing costs of Northern Virginia, the Ivy League hungry 1600/2400 Korean community and it’s expectations, and the urging to teenagers like me to lead a successful life, is unfortunately, seeping in inevitable and genuinely frightening pressure.
I would not describe my mother as malign, as I do not see any evil intention. No sane parent would never want to stress their child to the brink of insanity, but at certain times when things are at an all time rock bottom low, it feels like life and the future is just a dark blur. The Nacarat Jester from Boris’ animation best describes my situation as,
“I just feel like we’re living in a society that’s constantly telling us to pursue our passion, if you don’t live your life to it’s fullest, you’re squandering it, which makes sense to me but… then you go out to pursue those passions and stuff like the economy and other forces outside of your control control constantly beat you back down so you ultimately have to live your life choosing between choosing making ends meet or self realization and so you’re in this place where you’re in this constant existential purgatory where you can’t win.”
In addition to this melancholy mess, my mother’s slowly and steadily growing pressure to stop me from pursuing political science and to make me major in Computer Science is frightening, I predict that during my junior/senior year, I will probably have no choice but to comply with what my parents say, because they’re the ones with college money.
But one might argue to go to community college, but I wouldn’t be able to live with the shame that I went to a community college. In certain worst case scenarios like these, my mother said that it would be a 100% chance that she would die from shock if she learned I wasn’t up to her college expectations, and I take that as genuine, considering the past things she’s done and her capabilities of staying true to her word.
As dark as this all sounds, to me, life right now is just a black-and-white monochrome setting where one studies, works, and dies. I’m not implying that I’m suicidal nor am I suicidal (please don’t report this if this topic is not allowed here, I’m just trying to express this), I’m just confused and want to find my own identity, and purpose in life.
With all this being said, I question myself. How can I do and question all this, but I’m just a meekly freshman in high school? Just like all other users above me generously assured me, I still have an unprecedented amount of opportunities and time to change my life around, which I do. But the anti-handicapping lifestyle and expectations hold my future hostage. The beginning of Chapter 4 from The Professor best describes this situation:
“No man likes to acknowledge that he has made a mistake in the choice of his profession, and every man, worthy of the name, will row long against wind and tide before he allows himself to cry out, “I am baffled!” and submits to be floated passively back to land. From the first week of my residence in X—— I felt my occupation irksome. The thing itself—the work of copying and translating business-letters—was a dry and tedious task enough, but had that been all, I should long have borne with the nuisance; I am not of an impatient nature, and influenced by the double desire of getting my living and justifying to myself and others the resolution I had taken to become a tradesman, I should have endured in silence the rust and cramp of my best faculties; I should not have whispered, even inwardly, that I longed for liberty; I should have pent in every sigh by which my heart might have ventured to intimate its distress under the closeness, smoke, monotony and joyless tumult of Bigben Close, and its panting desire for freer and fresher scenes; I should have set up the image of Duty, the fetish of Perseverance, in my small bedroom at Mrs. King’s lodgings, and they two should have been my household gods, from which my darling, my cherished-in-secret, Imagination, the tender and the mighty, should never, either by softness or strength, have severed me. But this was not all; the antipathy which had sprung up between myself and my employer striking deeper root and spreading denser shade daily, excluded me from every glimpse of the sunshine of life; and I began to feel like a plant growing in humid darkness out of the slimy walls of a well.”
The United States of America was powered by “The American Dream”, which triggered an influx of immigrants, including my parents. While the dream proved to be right, as my father has a well over self sustaining and stable income, I sometimes doubt my American Dream, considering the circumstances above. Several moderators, veteran members, and parents give the harsh, but true reality to several chance me ivy league hoping individuals. The process isn’t that easy, but this shouldn’t extinguish a dream.
