#aplangexpectations

My parents have never put too much pressure on me. All they ever expect me to do is have good grades in school, but to me that's a lot. School to them comes before anything else. If I can't have good grades is school, to them I won't be successful in life. They give me all their help and wish for me to some day finish a good career. My parents expect me to put up a good example for my little sister although she has always been better than me in school. I will do my best to be at their expectations.

#aplangexpectations

Ever since I was little, my parents (mainly my dad) have told me to always stick up for myself; don't let people walk all over you. My father has told my brothers and I countless times, "If someone is giving you a problem, punch them in the nose." While this might be taken lightly and with a certain amount of humor, there was a definite serious tone to it whenever he said it. He might not literally mean to punch them in the nose, (even though that might be an effective solution) but he means that you shouldn't back down and have people take advantage of you. My dad has woven this message into my life since I can remember, he expects me to stick up for myself and that is what I do.

Now, I understand that the point of this assignment was to express when my parents had pressured me, but honestly, I have never felt pressured by them. I've become such a perfectionist in my life through learning from my mistakes. Having grown up with parents who backed off and let me make my own faults in life, without ever giving me something to fall back on, has made me such a better person. I know that they will always be there for me when the day comes that I will ask for their help.  

Throughout my educational career, I never had a problem with my grades. I breezed through all of elementary and middle school without breaking a sweat. My parents, like most parents, want me to do the best I could possibly accomplish. Not like typical and stereotypical Asian parents, my parents did not get upset me if I got an A- on a test, or even in a class. School was not an issue up until last year. Sophomore year did not start off the way I planned it. For the first time, I was taking honors classes, and two of them! Honors Algebra II and Honors English 10. Honors English 10 was great, had all my assignments in, was ready for class every day. Perfect. Honors Algebra II on the other hand, was the opposite of great. I hated going to class, did not understand what we were learning and I procrastinated on homework. Not a good idea. At all. In this class, we did not have to turn in our homework the next day, we would have until the day of the test/quiz. I wouldn’t want to think about the homework as if they never existed, but in reality it would keep adding up until the night before I would scramble to get everything done. I would wait for some mysterious miracle to happen to let me off the hook, but that miracle, I would soon find out, would never come. I would freak out just by the thought of failing. I could not even comprehend the idea of me failing. My parents never had to be concerned with my grades, and going from an A student all the way down to having an E in a subject, they just didn’t know what to do. My parents decide that breathing down my neck, thinking that if they put more and more pressure, I might just succeed. Too bad that did not help me. And I never wanted to disappoint my parents, that’s definitely not a goal I want to accomplish I just want my life to run as smoothly as possible. As soon as the semester came to an end, my grade, still a big E in the grade book  I was pulled out of my prestigious honor class and put into regular algebra II, where I seemed to fit in quite nicely.

Ever since classes gave actual letter grades, I have been pushed by my parents to get an A. I never needed to respond to these expectations because my classes were too easy and I never struggled, no matter how hard I worked, to get an A. Since high school started, the workload increased but my general effort did not. As a result, I got two B's my freshman year. This isn't really a tragedy but it was much worse compared to what I had been doing. I've had to push myself to listen to my parents' advice and get that A. Once again this year I have several B's, but I am listening to my parents' advice and striving for the A still. If I lower my own expectations and do not listen to my parents' expectations I will not excel.

A time in my life when I felt that I was letting down the expectations of my family the most would be when I told my mom that I didn't believe in God. My mom went to a Catholic school as a young girl in South Africa and was raised in the Catholic church. She tried to motivate me to want to go to mass and catechism, but I always saw it as a joke and I never cared. My parents even made me get my first holy communion, which was a total waste of time that meant absolutely nothing to me. After going through some of the ceremonial stages of joining the Catholic church in order to make my mom happy, I realized that I had to break the news to her or else I would end up exploding with guilt or screaming and having a mental breakdown during the next session of mass I attended. The day I told my mom that I didn't believe and God and that I never really did (even when I was really young, I sat in church and realized that I had no faith whatsoever) she cried, and was very upset with me for lying to her; she also went into a pretty big state of denial. Even to this day, she still asks me every now and then on a Sunday to go to mass with her even though she is completely aware of my views on religion.

My parents expect me to go to UofM and nowhere else. I've been born and breed to go to UofM. And now that it's Junior year and everything is coming, I'm freaking out that I won't get in.