<p>This is the most impressive thread I have read about/from Asian students in the US. I’m in tears. I’m convinced that all of you will finally come to terms with the dilemma and that none of you will be passing on this insanity to your children. I wish I could say the same about all those Asian students who also did not get the childhood they deserve, but who are uncritically following in their parent’s footsteps when it concerns the education of their own children. Most western students could do with a compulsary class in appropriate behavior. Maybe Asian students will be helped by a compulsary class in psychology.</p>
<p>I honestly do feel that as an Asian you get extra societal pressures AND pressure from your parents. Yet at the same time, first gen college kids also have a LOT of pressure to fulfilll their parents dreams.</p>
<p>You guys need to narrow down Asia. Asia is a very very big area. This Asia is specifically talking about South Korea and China I think…Coz Japan certainly isn’t. I went to a top ranked private high school in Japan and also a cram school after school but it wasn’t like crazy. I could handle it and I’m studying more right now (back in the US at college) lol And my parents or any other Japanese parents that I know from HS didn’t force their children to study. (except this one student…ppl said that his parents are crazy) They encourage but not force.
And come to think of it, I know a couple Asian internationals at my college, and some are failing their classes. (Korean, Japanese, Indian, and etc…we have pretty much no chinese on campus)
Seriously I don’t like when ppl generalize things about Asians. Smart, study every day, wearing glasses, good at math, parents are strict, and so on. I don’t know about other Asian countries but not Japan</p>
<p>Rub-A-Dub, an Asian-American friend of mine who read your post suggested some questions to ask yourself:</p>
<p>“What truly matters to you? Try to get to the root motivations of your parents’ desires for you: Is it all for their pride and glory, or does your happiness and well-being have any place in their thinking? What is the worst-case scenario if you change course? What is the worst-case scenario if you DON’T change course? Are you willing to live with the consequences of your choice?”</p>
<p>My friend also believes that despite initial grief and disappointment, most parents will eventually come to realize the importance of their child’s happiness. “It may take them years, but my feeling is that they will come around,” she says. </p>
<p>I agree with my friend. Furthermore, I also challenge Asian Americans to consider what PARENTS owe their CHILDREN. Yes, it’s almost a subversive notion because we’re raised to always think about our parents’ wishes and what we owe them for their sacrifices. Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s a noble thing to acknowledge and to honor all that your parents have done for you. But does that entitle them to make major life decisions for you that might ultimately ruin your happiness?</p>
<p>For a startling and thought-provoking take on this, watch an old movie called, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” Sidney Poitier plays an impeccable, young African-American doctor who falls in love with a white woman and proposes marriage to her. Just one problem: It’s the 1960s, interracial marriage is still illegal in some states, and his father, a mail carrier, is incensed. He doesn’t object to the young woman, who also possesses fine character. But he flies into town to try to talk his son out of the marriage.</p>
<p>The father starts by telling his son that he isn’t trying to tell him how to live his life, but he strongly wants the engagement broken. “Have you thought about what people would say about you?” the father asks. “You’re way out of line, boy.”</p>
<p>“That’s for me to decide, Dad,” the doctor begins. But his father cuts him short with a guilt trip. </p>
<p>“I worked my ass off to get the money to buy you all the chances you had. You know how far I carried that mailbag in thirty years? Seventy-five-thousand miles and mowing lawns in the dark so you wouldn’t have to be stoking furnaces and could bear down on the books,” the irate father says. “Are you going to tell me now that that means nothing to you?”</p>
<p>The young doctor loves his father–in fact, he tells the old man that he always will–but he realizes that he must stand up to his father over such a monumental decision.</p>
<p>"You say you don’t want to tell me how to live my life? So what do you think you’ve been doing? You tell me what rights I’ve got or haven’t got and what I owe you for what you’ve done for me?</p>
<p>“Let me tell you something,” the son says. “I owe you nothing if you had carried that bag for a million miles. You did what you were SUPPOSED to do because you brought me into this world and from that day, YOU owed ME everything you could ever do for me, like I will owe my son someday if I ever have one. But you don’t own me. You can’t tell me when or where I’m out of line, or try to get me to live my life according to your rules. You don’t even know what I am, Dad. You don’t know who I am. You don’t know how I feel or what I think.”</p>
<p>The old man is thunderstruck. His son is right. The father has never considered his son’s feelings, nor has he considered that he owes his son a measure of freedom and genuine happiness. </p>
<p>So yes, obligations can flow upstream, but also downstream. When your parents gave you life, what did they owe you from that point on?</p>