17 Apr 2009 | To my poor Asian saps
In my conversations with various classmates regarding their college choices and ambitions, I've often heard repeated the phrases:
"My parents are forcing me to major in…"
"My parents want me to attend…"
"I applied to this school/major only because my parents…"
"My parents told me there'd be no money in that career… so they want me to major in…"
The frequency of this type of response (accompanied by a look of supreme glumness/disgruntlement) was astounding. In addition, I noted two things:
- The people who responded this way were all (I suppose not surprisingly) ethnic Asians, and
- Even though they were clearly displeased/unenthusiastic, they're actually following their parents' orders.
Having already freed myself from the tyranny of that person, the second item now seemed incomprehensible (though not unfamiliar). So I was shocked. Why are these people's decisions so wholly dependent on their parents'? And don't they know it's their own future? I mean, since when do these immigrant parents (who, chances are, have never attended a college in the U.S.) know what's best for their children?
So, ladies and germs. As a public service, I would like to make the following announcements.
To my Asian peers:
YOU'RE EFFING RETARDS. GROW A SPINE ALREADY AND STAND UP FOR YOURSELF.
And to their honorable mothers and fathers:
BUCK OFF. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO BE PLANNING YOUR OFFSPRING'S LIVES.
Seriously. A college education is not something to be pursued mainly for profit. In addition, college students have to like their school/major in order to be happy during college and later on in life. I know that's a radical concept, parents. But think about it. Even if a career in finance brings in a whole lotta dough, your children, if they're forced into it, will despise their coursework and therefore lack the motivation to do well. And, trust me, the subsequent damage to their GPA will not be attractive to employers.
So what if your children want to go to this school (which might not be an Ivy) or if they want to major in history or English (which you lament as useless and emblematic of a life of poverty)? Get over yourselves, eejits. This is their life, not yours. If history is the one thing that makes them excited, why the hell would you have them become a mechanical engineer instead? If they're happy with their own choice, why would you condemn them to a life of tedium and discontent?
So, kids,
DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO.
And parents,
SUPPORT YOUR KIDS NO MATTER WHAT THEY DO.
Because that's the way you care for people you love.
By the way, a shout-out to my own dad, a Chinese immigrant, who — unlike all the other Asian parents I've met — values my happiness and wants me to do whatever brings me the most joy. Because of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, he couldn't attend either high school or college, and was forced to work on a farm for seven years. After he returned to the city, he studied engineering by himself, passed the necessary exams (after failing a few times), and managed to secure a position as a graduate research assistant at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He's the kindest, mellowest, and biggest pushover I've ever known. And to this day, he works hard to support me and my brother, listens to me whenever I feel weepy, washes the dishes whenever I'm too lazy, drives me to wherever I need to go, and buys whatever fruit juice string/nuggets I might fancy. Not to mention he protects me from that person, all without a single complaint.
Do I need to make this clear? He pwns all of you, your moms and dads, and their mom and dads frickin' combined.
I'm crying. Fuck this. Stop crying.
Tags: colleges
Luufie says:
My Dad is like that whenever I mention something about majoring in art or writing, he lectures me about majoring in something more profitable like Psychology. Psychology is interesting, but I don't know if I'll be happy with that. I'm sick of getting lectured though so I just don't talk to him about what I major in anymore. The funny part is, I'm not even Asian. They're trying to do the same thing for my sister too. :/
3:45 am | Saturday, April 18, 2009
Jenny-fa says:
Your parents probably have your best interests at heart. However, I firmly believe that parents should honor their children's college/career aspirations. You should do whatever interests and captivates you the most. There's no satisfaction to be gained from doing something that you dislike.
11:55 pm | Saturday, April 18, 2009
Yingna says:
Hm…I think that down the road, as a parent, you might think differently. Although parents should support their children, they also have to guide their children. Obviously, pressuring a child to go into finance when they don't like it or become a doctor when they definitely don't want to is not a good thing to do, but wanting their children to get into top colleges is not a call for "get off my back! You're just being annoying!"
At a top college, you can explore any subject you would like and have greater opportunities in each respective subject. Of course, if you're looking to go into sports or entertainment, certain schools suited to those sectors are better than top liberal arts colleges/universities. However, the probability of someone doing really well in those fields are so slim.
My mom really wanted my sister to go into finance and talked a lot about how finance is good. Did this get annoying? Yes. But my sister could see that my mom just had good intentions. My sister did eventually get into finance and now she loves it. How does she show does? Even in these tough times, she still wants to do finance.
Me? My parents want me to become a doctor. Even though I don't really want to become a doctor that badly, I'm going that way because I can't make a decision by myself yet.
At the end of the day, I think when it comes to many Asian immigrants, the parents will want their children to go down certain paths. However, if the child diverges from this path, even though the parent might be mad, he or she might be mad but eventually will cope. Through this all, the parents will love the child. Asian families are based around families, and I doubt that the majority of parents are going to disown their child because they chose to become a newspaper editor instead of a Wallstreet stockbroker.
9:23 pm | Sunday, April 19, 2009
Jenny-fa says:
Congratulations to the longest comment writer in the history of this blog (apart from me, which I'll demonstrate shortly).
Yes, this is mostly true, but with all due respect, I think you missed some crucial guidance counseling. In the context of the rest of your comment, do you mean to say that attending something other than a "top college" will mean reduced opportunities and therefore a life of mediocrity? Do you mean to say that someone attending middling state school X will never measure up to the super student attending Ivy school Y? Please. These misconceptions hearken back to the old country rhetoric of immigrants accustomed to worshiping science and engineering, where the staid markers of test scores and school rankings, unfortunately, determined everything. Here in America (which, in case you forgot, is where we live), we have a variety of high-caliber schools of every shape and persuasion. A concept that might be unfamiliar to our former commies is that creativity and self-exploration are the hallmarks of American ingenuity. In addition, the U.S. boasts the no. 1 higher education ranking in the world. In light of these considerations, as well as those concerning personal interests outlined in my post above, there is no shame in attending a non-Ivy or non-elite school if it will be the most conducive to your happiness.
In short, one's college pedigree does not guarantee success. A case in point is Harlan Ellison, the internationally renowned American science-fiction writer. He attended the Ohio State University, a place which, I'm sure, you and many like-minded Asians would turn their noses up at. The thing is, he was expelled after eighteen months and never graduated, but later became an enormously prolific and successful writer despite his "failure," garnering numerous literary awards with his novels, short stories, Hollywood screenplays (including episodes of Star Trek), and essays. To this day, Ellison is one of the most recognizable figures of science-fiction and one of the most brilliant minds I have ever known in the entirety of my life.
That is not to say that I discourage going for a "top college." Like most people, I applaud those that seek to challenge themselves at a more rigorous and prestigious institution. However, I am frustrated by those who consider that pedigree alone to be tantamount to success, as well as those passive enough to consent to be directed by narrow-minded adults primarily influenced by the will-o'-the-wisp allure of storied institutions such as Harvard and Yale. In addition, the conception that "soft" career options such as entertainment and writing will lead to a miserable, destitute existence is supremely prejudiced. As long as one's happy, no one has the right to take that away from anyone else.
10:38 pm | Sunday, April 19, 2009
Amy says:
I totally agree that your dad is amazing. I really, really wish I could talk about my parents in the same way, that they were as kind and nurturing.
However, don't be so quick to generalize about other Asian parents. I don't want to make excuses for these stereotypical Asian parents, even more so because I don't really get along with my own. I just don't want you to hold a vendetta against them, and instead realize that the Asian parents that you've met here in America are not necessarily representative of the ones actually in Asia. You shared a personal example, so let me share one as well.
I have a Chinese friend, whom I've known since the beginning of high school, so I've been with her and met her parents numerous times. My friend is smart, but she doesn't challenge herself academically. She takes zero AP classes, doesn't maintain a perfect or nearly perfect GPA, and is not against going out on weekdays. She will be attending culinary school after graduation. And her parents? Totally support her. They never discourage her from anything, but do think up alternative plans, all of which she finds acceptable, in case her initial one doesn't fall through. In addition, my cousin back in China is studying social studies along with many of his peers. I realize that you're not targeting the pressure to study well so much as the pressure to study a specific field, but my point is that Asian parents are perfectly capable of compromising.
I have to disagree with this. Many Asian, and I think particularly Chinese (naturally the group I'm most familiar with), parents attend graduate school in the U.S. because the reason they immigrated in the first place was to seek an American degree (and later make more money, etc.). Many others immigrate so their children won't be as pressured. And many of them, like my own parents, come with little or no money and live with very little income for many years. Can you really blame them for wanting their kids to go into something lucrative? So their kids won't have to worry about having to wait tables or bag groceries for cash while living in a crummy apartment trying to make what they can out of a degree, out of a career, not in popular demand, i.e. they may love it now, for a few short years in that safe-for-experimentation environment, but will probably regret it later, for the rest of their life (of course a person going into a math/science field may also regret, but at least he'll be doing it with food on the table…btw I do not personally feel this way, but I'm guessing this may be the reasoning of many Asian parents, and it certainly is faulty, but not untrue).
Of course, I have absolutely no doubt that you do not need to attend a prestigious university to be successful. I do believe that all of the hype about attending a top college is excessive and inaccurate. My own parents have actually admitted this many times. But hey, Asian parents need their bragging rights (maybe to compensate for their deficiency in other rights…).
4:00 pm | Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Jenny-fa says:
Amy, thank you very much for your comment. It was the one bright spot in a very trying day. You don't know how much I appreciate it. What's more, all of your points are completely valid. Again, thank you very much for your comment.
To explain my point of view, I also need to make a few clarifications. Firstly, my town is full of upper middle-class to upper class lawyers and businessmen, and the Asian community here is predominantly comprised of the type exemplified in my post (that is, high-achieving and domineering of their children). Secondly, when I said that immigrant parents are unlikely to have attended college in the U.S., I specifically meant as an undergraduate, not as a graduate (since I know that my dad and others have gone this route). The reason many Asians don't go to U.S. colleges as undergraduates is because they're required to demonstrate an English language proficiency that very few of them will ever attain even in their lifetimes. Since they've never had the undergraduate experience here, their advice is likely to be biased, once again, towards the brand name colleges.
And lastly, I do not have a vendetta against Asian parents, despite the fact that a psycho member of that contingent abused me for nearly sixteen years (and to that regard I have to say that I've never encountered any other being so worthy of contempt, and that her existence is a major fluke in the evolutionary sense, anyway). I simply dislike all Asians collectively, as a group. Some of my reasons include their conformity, lack of personality, the culture that encourages obedience and demureness (especially in women), the relative ignorance of FOBs, their entertainment tastes, etc. Once again, I know that these generalizations don't apply to every Asian in the U.S., but they do hold true for the majority, which is reason enough to dislike them.
10:18 pm | Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Yingna says:
I never said not going to an Ivy League or elite college would eliminate your chances of being successful in life. I stated that they can only increase your opportunities. That's the reason why parents want their children to go to top colleges. It's not a guarantee that you will earn billions of dollars and live an elite life, but it increases the probability of finding a stable and high-paying job. That's all humans can really do in guiding. We can't command the future.
Also, I have my own theory about drop-outs. Really, I think most brilliant people are drop-outs (although this cannot be used the other way around). Take Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. They were both drop-outs.
But again, they had their intellect to fuel them on. In top colleges, it's still a case that intellect can only get you so far. Though, this can be taken with a grain of salt depending on which concentrations you're going into. It's the connections and networking that really gives you an advantage against all others.
Even if you have the best book in the world, it might still be very hard to find the right publisher. Whereas, if you have the best book in the world and you went to a top college, you can go to a professor who has published dozens of books and request a contact.
2:23 pm | Wednesday, May 6, 2009