A few days ago I was talking to an ex-classmate and ongoing good friend, HYan. She’ll be packing off to Beijing come August, and as the rest of us did, she tussled quite some time over the dilemma of ‘What To Study’; or more appropriately in her case, ‘What to Major In’.
And so we talked about her choices, and we sighed over the reality of those choices, and we found that parents really are the same.
They keep saying ‘Choose what you like’, and ‘It’s your future so you decide’. But is that what they’re really saying? All’s fine if you go the way they want. Yet choose something that you yourself want as opposed to what they feel is best for you, and they’ll start asking ‘Why?’ ‘Why?’ ‘Why are you choosing that course/major/subject?’
For her it was just a toss-up between actuarial studies and finance.
For me it was a play-off between first Arts&Design, Arts, Science and Commerce; then when the ‘unpreferred by the elders‘ faculties were eliminated from the list, it became a tug-of-war between wills as I campaigned for Japanese as my Arts Major while Papa dearest looked predatorily at Chinese Studies and Mummy beloved insisted that I take Journalism.
Of course, all along what they said was: “We’re not trying to pressurise you into anything… just study what you like.” Then when the times came along at nights when they’d brooded long enough over it, they’d ‘casually’ pose statements at me: “I really think that you should take Chinese because it’s a very interesting subject and China will become a very important player in the commercial world”; “you’re good at English and Writing so you should just take Journalism and perhaps Creative Writing”; “you haven’t done Japanese before so you shouldn’t risk it”; “don’t take subjects that will be useless to you”.
Wth?? The only reasons why I have never taken up Japanese before this are: one, my interest in it popped up just before I went into Year 10–but that was transition year. Hello? Should I have risked my grades? Then in Year 11–wow SPM year!! Mmmm take up a new language at this adrenaline-pumped year? Lol; you’re kidding. Fast-forward to Year 12–new country, new finals. Nuh-uh; don’t take a subject that you don’t know.
If even uni life is dictated by this sort of judgemental sequestering, I’ll never ever be able to step out and actually start towards what I want.
I don’t want to major in accounting. I can of course take it up, but I don’t want to. It’s just not me… and hell, it’s not me that they’re seeing in that job either. Maybe no one wants to admit it, but well, that’s how I’m seeing it. They need someone to be in commerce, and I am the sacrificial lamb: brought up for the altar and about to be presented to the same god as she serves.
What choice have I, though?
Yes, I don’t want to be pushed into a mould that I can’t fit into, to be put on a pedestal that I can’t live up to. I don’t want to be forced to become someone that I am not, that I in my current state will never be capable of being.
But I also don’t want to let them down. I don’t want to let them to fail in this again; I don’t want them to become as disappointed again as they were those years ago when sis dropped out of business and dashed their hopes.
Call it a matter of pride, of conditioning, of I dunno, love? I want to strike out on my own, but… perhaps underlying all of my inner conflicts now is that even now, even at this moment when I can finally start walking the path that I want and have only to answer to myself, I still don’t want to fail them in their eyes.
Family is all that I have, and pride—lots and lots of pride.
If I had more confidence in what I am, who I am, what I want, and where I want to be… I would engineer more events to turn out with the results that I want. I would orchestrate events so that I have ‘no choice’ but to do the subject/course that I originally wanted to. Like setting an impossible course as first choice in Mel U so that I’d end up in Monash. Like giving half-facts about certain subjects so that the elders were convinced that I couldn’t take them and ended up compromising.
As things stand, well, they still aren’t happy about where I am and what I’m doing. But in comfort, they think that they’ll have the final say in what I major in. They still think that in the end I’ll follow through their plans all the way, and that… I’ll not fail them.
And the sad thing is, I don’t want to fail them, either.
When all you have to hold onto is the knowledge that you owe them this duty and this obligation and this much for all that they’ve ever given you and all that they have sacrificed for you, you don’t just walk away and dash their hopes on the ground. Maybe someone else could do that, but not me, not yet. I’m still too weak to just throw the past behind me in spite of what negativity I may remember; I’m still not cold enough that I forget all the warmth that they have showered on me.
Yet what can I do about my own wishes, then?
Thus continue do I to ponder, and continue do I to fret. The subjects I myself will have to undertake next semester must needs be settled upon soon… but have I the confidence to choose them, and choose them wisely, and choose them now?
…When personal needs and wants and yearnings and personal duty and pride and honour clash, the world as you know it shatters.
My world is shuddering now; when will it explode?
