[Jamie]

In my life, I have met Asian friends through school from a variety of ethnic and religious origins: Chinese, Laotian, Korean, Japanese, Sikh/East Indian, Pakistani/Muslim, Filipino/Catholic. The common denominator in every one, including myself, was that since childhood, their parents put an amazing amount of pressure on them to ‘be the best’ in school, with the purpose of eventually gaining a parentally-approved career that would be financially-lucrative. Many of us bought into the pressure when we were younger, since just like anyone else, we desperately wanted signs of parental approval (which is considered the same as love, when you’re young and any kind of disapproval felt like they hated you). As a result, we did extremely well in school. It didn’t mean that we all did well; the majority of us did, but as we got older, our motivations changed and thus so did our grades. For some of us, parental control extended far beyond academic pressure. Even in high school, (and for some college) as long as we lived at home, it pervaded into our social lives to the extent of trying to prevent us from dating, extra-curricular activities, or staying out past 10pm since these they figured would interfere with our scholastic achievement. When we became adults, our reactions to this pressure at home were one of two: some of us, fed up with having to sacrifice our own happiness and growing identities (as well as not being treated as adults despite always being responsible) for pleasing our parents, decided to move out; others decided to tow the line in exchange for staying at home, either convinced that their parents were always right or that they simply had to play the game in order to get respect. To this day, the parents of my Asian friends continue to exercise control over their careers —the result of which has been that many of them have had to set aside artistic or musical talents for the sake of ‘real jobs’ in Pharmacy or Dentistry. In constrast, throughout my life I have had just as many, if not more, Caucasian friends, whose parents — luckily for them — put less pressure on their children and were more apt to say, ‘As long as you do your best, that’s all that matters.’

User Detail :  

Name : Jamie, Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : Asian, Religion : Humanist, Age : 24, City : Winnipeg, State : NA, Country : Canada, Occupation : Student, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, 

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