“YOU’RE KIDDING RIGHT?”
For every Asian child, learning is a word that starts with an “f”. No, not fun. It was a four-letter word that spelt F-E-A-R. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the best tool of motivation for a child to learn would be the effective use of fear.
Growing up, the thing that comes to mind would be my mother’s wooden ruler. Every mark away from scoring a perfect 100 (the symbol of perfection) earned me one smack across the palm of my hand. By the time I was a teenager, the fear of pain was replaced with the fear of not being at the top. I was the annoying person in class who would go around comparing exam results. I had to make sure that my reputation would not be tarnished by anyone around me. People tried reminding me that this wasn’t what learning was about but I paid no heed to it.
Fast forward to waiting for my high school results I was hit with another “F”. I Failed. I didn’t actually fail in my subjects, but I did not receive the exemplary results I usually did. I now had to explain to my mother that her dreams of me being a doctor were gone.
“You’re kidding right? Is this a joke? You can’t be serious!”
Her week-long silent treatment was clear — I had failed her, myself and whatever bright future the whole family had dreamt for me. This was the cue for the fear of expectations to take centre stage. Despite my heart dying just a little more, I decided to sign up for a double major in Biology and Chemistry for my degree because hey, if you can’t be a doctor, you can work and excel in a lab and go onto being a professor, right?
That decision sealed my fate of not becoming the perfect Asian child. During my final year in college I had to retake a paper to move onto the next semester. On the day of my paper, I balked and just hid at my internship workplace pretending to sort files and did not attend the examination thinking I’d be able to take it in the next semester. Little did I know that I would have to wait until the next year to retake that paper which would mean delaying my degree by a year. The same words greeted me,
“You’re kidding right? Is this a joke? You can’t be serious!”
But this time I didn’t take it in silence. I spoke up. I told her what I really wanted to do which was miles away from biology and chemistry and even when she threatened not to pay for my final year, I took a student loan and completed my degree and went on to pursue my real passions in life.
This time it was the fear of the “what-ifs” that made me change my course in life. It was the fear of finally wanting to do something for myself and not trying to please the world.
