Blog Post: Family Story

When my mother was young, she went to an “advanced” math class at her school. She was an extremely studious and hardworking student that never slacked off or screwed around in class, (according to her anyway). She was apparently so hardworking that she was a well respected person in her village. They respected her as a student and as a hardworking member of society. One day, there was a competition or a test between all of the people in her school district. It was somewhat like an Advanced Placement test, as it was only for people that had a certain class placement, which were the “high achievers” at the school, and the test had everyone in the Chinese equivalent of a school district taking it. She was excited because she was one of the only people in her school that were chosen to compete in that contest and/or test. She felt special and honored that she was one of the few people that were chosen to be able to participate in such an activity that was only available to certain people. She had scored second out of everyone who had competed in the contest / test, and everyone cheered for her. Apparently, the school principal had personally given her an award and had announced to the whole school that she had scored the second highest out of all the people on the school district that were allowed to take the test. They had celebrated a lot because she had achieved such a “high position”, second out of all the people who had competed. The whole school had cheered her on and had a huge celebration because of her “grand” achievement/s. She told me however, that even though she was the second highest scoring person, she had only scored sixty out of a hundred, and the person that was in first place had scored only seventy out of a hundred. She said that even though she had scored so low on the test / exam, she had still felt extremely proud because it was still an extremely hard test on an extremely high level math course that few people were allowed to take.
To me, she had sounded somewhat conceited and / or extremely proud of the fact that she could achieve such a thing. However, I can understand where her pride comes from, and why she wanted to tell me about this kind of story. It was an exciting and memorable event that happened in her childhood, and she wanted to share it with me because, experiences are to be shared, and if you do not share your experiences with someone else, then what it the point of having that experience? It becomes something meaningless, because you cannot talk to any one else about it, and the only person that will know it happened would be you.

She told me this because she was proud of her past school experiences and wanted to motivate me to do better. I was complaining of how school was stressful and how it was a lot of work, and she told me about her past school experiences. She told me about how she used to be a very good student and home work she was a very studious person that was excelled at a lot of the things that she attempted to do. Either she was bragging about her past scholastic achievements, or she was very proud of what she had done and wanted to motivate me to do just as well or even better than what she had previously achieved.

I had a feeling that it was a story told to help encourage me to have a better work ethic in school. They might have also been telling me that you should make your best effort at everything, because you never know what might end up happening. They could have been telling me to try be best at everything, because even if I fail, then they will still feel proud of me. It might relate to how she was praised and admired even though she scored a D- on the “test”. However, it might have been the fact that she had scored second place that made everyone respect and praise her, so that may not have been one of the messages that she was trying to get across to me.

It seemed to highlight my laziness and tendency to procrastinate things. She may have been comparing her studious habits with my procrastination, and wanted to make me see how different I am and what I had to change about my life in order to be more like someone that she admire more. It was either that or she wanted to shame me into doing well in class, as if she were saying “If I can do it, then so can you!”. It is a story that is used to motivate family members to go and put more effort into the things that are going on in their lives. It is significant to my family because my family really values hard work and personal success. Because they value personal success and hard work so much, they have a lot of stories that inspire my family members to go and put a lot of effort into things like jobs, education, etc. They also want us (the children) to go and make something of ourselves, even while we are still minors and cannot achieve many things that adults could achieve.

I learned that my parents had expected that my role in the family was to do whatever they told me to do because it was “good for me” and that it was my duty as a son. I had to be obedient, and I had to be a studious person, just like how my mom was in her story, and overachiever, not an under achiever. Sadly, that has not happened so far in my life, and I am still a procrastinator that does not put a lot of effort into the work that I do unless I feel that it is something so extremely important that I could not afford to avoid doing it. I believe that my parents have already realized how much of a lazy person I am and are trying to motivate to procrastinate less, to be more hardworking, and to manage my time better, especially since I am already in my sophomore year of high school. It may be a last ditch attempt for her to try and motivate me, or it may be the beginning of a long series of talks and lectures telling me to get my life together and to plan out what I want to do in my future, because my future is near, and I have to get my life together before it is too late.

My parents have also talked about the American schooling / education system and how unfamiliar they are with it, and so they have to rely on outside information from relatives and friends in order to plan out “my” future. They cannot rely on their own personal educational experiences to help them, because with my mom’s experience, her being able to compete district wide and being ranked for it, is not that similar to the American educational system. Because of that, they have tried to use their own educational experiences to go and motivate me to learn more and to focus on my future.

In my mother’s case, she tells me about all the things that she has done and how I should do just as good as her or even better, while my dad talks about how he never really got a higher education. He then goes onto talking about how he would have probably had a better life if he did, and how he would have an easier job. He then tells me about all of the hardships that he has to face in his life, and how he hopes that I would avoid a lot of them since I would have more educational opportunities than he ever did.

This may be why my parents tell my family and I  “educational stories”, and why they have so many hopes and dreams for us, because they have both lived a hard life, know how / what it feels like, and never want their children to go through the same things that they have gone through.

They sometimes act as if they have a moral obligation the tell me about their lives since it is so different from mine. They used to be farmers and villagers, and so education was different for them. It was optional, and it was full of other kids that were also farmers. Here in American however, we have people from all different types of backgrounds, mandatory schooling, and it is always emphasized that you can not achieve anything in life if you do not first have a good education as the foundation of your “life”. The change from optional schooling in China to the mandatory schooling here may have been a huge change for my parents and they did not know how to address it.