[adastra22]

The way you phrase it sounds like you’re either not American or a first generation immigrant. If so, what’s your home culture? Just curious.

My family goes back to the 1830’s on one side, and the 1600’s on the other, so I’m pretty integrated. I don’t think any of that is really in the radar for people in my family. We are relatively well off middle class, and most of my aunts, uncles, and cousins went to university. But not Yale, Harvard, or MIT. We didn’t do cram schools, but did band or soccer or theatre instead. Whatever our interests were.

Cram schools and intense stress related to academic achievement is more typical of recent immigrants, and/or particularly though not exclusively East Asian and South Asian families. When I sat for the SAT I was shocked that some of the people I sat next to had been attending study schools for months to prepare. Me and my friends just sat for it and took it cold, lol. There is a much stronger drive in that culture for academic achievement and living up to your parent’s expectations. In many-generational American families, not so much (not just white, but anyone whose family has been here for a while).

[personjerry]

I'm Chinese-Canadian, but went to university in Caliornia.

I really appreciate your anecdote, I felt like a lot of the students I went to school with had worked pretty hard (i.e. college prep, extracurriculars, way more than most Canadians at my high school, although I went to a public high school). But it makes sense if I had a biased sample!

[adastra22]

My wife is Taiwanese, so I see a bit into both cultures. Thankfully on this though, we're in agreement. Part of why we're in the US rather than Taiwan, and in the public school system is that there isn't that insane academic pressure here.

Time for another, longer anecdote. One of our friends from college, another Chinese heritage guy of Singapore & Taiwan descent, had a rather stressful upbringing with a lot of parent pressure. He's was an electrical engineer at Xilinx at the time, but he didn't have any say in it. His dad was an EE, and damn it every one of his kids was going to be an EE too. They all went through engineering school. The "Tiger Mom" book had just come out, and out friend was ranting about it with his cube mate at work, talking about how messed up it was that they (both Chinese) had to deal with this pressure, but most of the rest of the kids out there don't. How it's apparently so uncommon in America that this lady is getting speaking tours to explain what everyone in East Asian communities take for granted. How American kids won't put up with this shit.

What happened next I wouldn't believe, except I saw the later emails and pictures. My friend's cube mate, who was in his late 20's and he'd known for a couple of years, just gets up and walks out. They never see him in person again. He just ghosted the company, bought the cheapest plane ticket to anywhere, and started backpacking around the world. About six months later they got email replies from him in South East Asia, where he'd been living in a temple for a month to learn Yoga or something. Apparently he never wanted to be an engineer, hated engineering, had no idea what he really wanted to do, and outside of his job at Xilinx he just stayed at home, alone, depressed, and hating his life, but feeling obligated to keep it all up to make his parents proud.

When I heard this story (and saw his pictures from Thailand), I just felt sorry for the kid. And he was a kid, even if he was in his late 20's at the time. Because he never had a chance to figure out who he was, what he wanted, or to choose for himself. He did work it out in the end, but only after accumulating tons of student debt, setting up all sorts of expectations from his family, and wasting away most of his youth. Everything was setup for him, and he utterly lacked agency, like a child. Most of us spend our teens and early twenties trying new things and figuring out who we are. He didn't even get to start that until he was almost 30.

I do not want that for my kids. Money helps, but it not sufficient to make one happy. Far more important is how you treat and value yourself, your confidence and self-assurance, and the company you keep. I spend far more time worrying about whether my kids are fitting in at their new school, whether they're making friends or being bullied, or whether they got an invitation to that upcoming party their friends are talking about, than I do worrying over their math scores or standardized tests. And most of our peer group feel similarly.