Being Asian American is a huge piece of my identity that I am extremely proud of. However, as grateful as I feel to be American born Chinese, it sometimes is just as much of a curse as it is a blessing. Oftentimes, I find myself thinking that if I were any other race, almost all of the internalized and externalized pressure in my life would be released from me, especially at school. Being an Asian American comes with endless mental burdens and lofty expectations to constantly live up to. These standards set by my family, school, and even myself, have taken a toll on my self-image and confidence over the years.
Firstly, both of my parents grew up in a completely different setting, generation, and culture than mine. As a result, they were educated differently than me. When they were teenagers, the weekly class ranks of the hundreds of students in each grade were posted publicly at school. Students stepped on each other and fought their way to the top. My parents’ cutthroat childhood environment is likely the reason for why my parents have always compared me to my friends. At 16 years old, my parents took the Gaokao and finally left their impoverished hometown for the first time to attend college in the capital city of Beijing. They continued to work hard, and years later they made their way over to the states, where they had me. My parents’ story is the paradigm of the phrase “rags to riches”. Because of this, they have a set belief that hard work is the panacea to all of life’s problems. The harder you work, the more success you will find. While that may be true in places where your entire future depends on how well you score on a standardized test, it is certainly not the case for the American college admissions process.
My mother hates crying. I used to cry a lot when I was a little kid, and she would reprimand me every time, enough so that eventually I learned to hate crying myself. One of the greatest challenges I have faced growing up is how dismissive my parents are of my mental health. Their upbringing in China was objectively more difficult and not as privileged as mine, so they have trouble sympathizing with my issues. I became apprehensive about communicating with my parents because their words only made me feel worse about myself. As I grew older, I developed a deep sense of shame every time I felt overwhelmed from school and academic pressures because I was not as mentally tough as my parents wanted me to be.
As much as I hate to admit it, I am the type of person who seeks out and thrives on external validation. As a senior with college applications approaching, I can feel, more than ever, the sky-high expectations weighing down on me. I feel ten times the pressure as an Asian American. After reflecting for some time, there was only one thought that ate away at me, and it was that I have not done enough in these past few years. I felt guilty for not being as intelligent or talented as my friends. With the mentality I was raised to have in my Asian household, I could not help but be reminded of the fact that all of my friends would be attending prestigious Ivy Leagues and my grades qualified me for a mid-tier school at best. I feared that once decisions came out, I would be attending a college that was far less respectable than those of my Asian American peers. People, including my own parents, would judge me silently for being Asian American and not attending one of the top 10 schools.
All my life has been a struggle to meet expectations. I have received a lot of “tough love” from my family members regarding academics. The attitude I have about school has been shaped by my family, schoolmates, and social stereotypes. At the end of the day, I would not trade my Asian American identity to be anyone else, even if it means having to overcome mental hurdles.