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Yes, living up to someone else's expectations is a difficult challenge. It becomes more acute when you are a single child, or come from an immigrant family who
by jtzhou 11y ago
Yes, living up to someone else's expectations is a difficult challenge. It becomes more acute when you are a single child, or come from an immigrant family who sacrificed a lot for you to be there, because you have to live up to both of your parents expectations and carry on the family lineage. Simply going to Davis and becoming a nurse or teacher in Fremont, while your friends are celebrating at frat parties at Princeton or Yale, feels like you are letting people down.
- ScottBurson 11y agoEven some who seem to have made it have the same problem. I am reminded of the suicide of Stanford grad student May Zhou [0]. I read some of the statements her father made after her death and was struck by how he was convinced that he knew exactly how she was feeling about her life -- but never said anything about having asked her. My take is that he never gave her any space to be her own person with her own feelings, her own desires, her own dreams -- and though she was outwardly as successful as anyone could want, it wasn't what she wanted to be doing, and she saw no way out of the life her father had designed for her other than killing herself. [0] http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/Stanford-student-committed-suicide-with-pills-2545462.php http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/Stanford-student-com...