It has gotten so cold all of a sudden here in Boston. Walking outside is no longer a pleasant experience, especially with the chilly wind eating away at your face. Sweatshirts no long look so threatening and I ask no questions or think no more beyond how to protect my still wet hair and scalp from catching the chill. The thrill of going to classes have settled and what's left is simply the battle of passing the class, dealing with the professors and TAs as well as keeping a balanced life and sane mind.
Yesterday, I led a high school tour. There were juniors and seniors there and all of them were eager to know more about the culture of MIT. I so wanted to share with them my positive experiences and love of what I have for the campus, but as the words came out of my mouth, I realized how hollow they have become. Do I really love MIT the way I make my words come out as? A tourist asked me, "why did you chose MIT over all of the other schools?" I wonder too. The answer has now become vague and I no longer know for sure. All I know is, I am here and I have been here for more than 50% of my college years and the least I can do is to finish college education with a bang!
Even though I have a negative perspective on soap operas, I have grown to like them for the simple lessons and the ideal world of people the plot wants to convey. The characters are to ideal to believe and the situation is too hard to beat, but these stories often replace the emptiness in my life and heart so that I dont feel so lonely or sad. Soap operas gave me a chance to exercise my imagination, a chance to pretend that I can, too, achieve what the characters will achieve.
At this step of my life, all I can do is to keep going. To dream a lot, to think a lot and then to cross my fingers and work hard. I've heard all the time that a hard working person may not become a great person, but a great person cannot become great unless he was hard working. When I applied to colleges, I remembered some colleges would ask for adjectives that best describe your personality, and I distinctly remember the advice of upperclassmen that "hard working" should not appear on the application? And why is that? It's because the term hard working gives off a negative image--one that portrays a book worm who knows nothing except to study, someone who is driven by doing work, another feasible term would be the word, "workaholic". It's strange how the definition and image of this term made me think less of "working hard". For two years now since I have been in college, I have always downplayed "working hard". If someone was to ask me whether I worked hard, I would say, "of course not". If I achieved some result, I would never say that it was because I worked hard. And I think the consequence of this denial was the fact that I no longer even know what working hard meant. At MIT, the terms "efficiency" and "productive" comes up a lot. But if someone who is efficient and productive a hardworking person? The more I think about it, the more I realize that there is no way for one to be efficient and productive if that person is not driven by a deeper desire to achieve and work hard. By working hard, it's the strong desire to exercise discipline even during times that could be spent on having fun. I guess it's the sacrifices that one would make in order to achieve. And if one was to put a name to desribe that act of sacrifice, it would be "working hard".
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To be controlled by others or not? Is it your life that you are living or are you responsible for the thoughts and feelings of others? As a Chinese-American, it's so hard to answer that question without either hurting self pride or hurting the feelings of someone who loves you so much that they are willing to die for you. Parents are a huge problems to children's growth and development. Chinese parents have a tendency to help their children make decisions for them, no matter how small or how important the decision is. They think that children are too young to think for themselves and that beacuse they are older and wiser, they would have a better chance of finding and making the right decision. Somtimes it's also beacuse they don't want their children to suffer throught hte mistakes that they have made as a child. They don't understand that it's the mistakes that children make that makes them grow as an adult. It's this mistake that's making this generation of ABCs (American Born Chinese) so selfish and dependent on parents. In a way, I think it's also the parents who are depend on their children. In a world that has only began a influx of Chinese immigrants, most chinese families are small with only a few branches of the family tree who are actually in the States. And if they are, it's a small chance that they would be living close to each other. Therefore, holidays were often spent with one another, usually with only 3 or 4 people, depending on the size of the immediate family. As a result, parents have also come to depend on their children. After all, children are their immediate family members and the next available relation might be located across the ocean in another country or continent.
Honestly, it's hard to live on the wings of parents. Sometimes, I just want to take a chance, make a decision and run with it. If I fall down, I want to be able to get up from the ground and keep going. I want to be able to make decisions and be able to be ok with the consequences. More importantly, I want to make deicsions without feeling guilty or feeling like a failure when things don't work out. Parents are hard to deal with, because they don't understand my needs to become more independent. And it's not just a communication matter either, it's a cultural and power problem. Who gets to make the calls? I have htought long and hard about how to deal with problems like these and I was unable to come up with any great answers. All I know is if I just let my parents or anyone else make all the decisions for me, I might come to one day to resent them or even to hate them for the decisions they made that I didn't agree with. So how can I reconcile? Should I fight with them on every small thing? Or should I just go along but enjoy the life the way I want to? I think the second one is a better choice, afterall, I am what people might consider "a good daughter". The answer is that I have to be strong and work hard, because in order to have both things in my life (what I want and what my parents want from me), I must make time and give energy so that I can do both and achieve both goals. And hopefully somewhere down the line, my parents will see through what their daughter wants, and maybe they will give up. In the meantime, I think it's imperative to maintain family happiness and harmony. After all, that's where one will find the most support and most love.
