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Dear Teamliquid,
So I'm an everyday high school kid (I might need to mention I'm asian), whose parents have been pretty chill with what I do, in school since my marks are decent low 80's to low 90's usually. I chose to do IB because I was in some pre AP programs before and thought it wouldn't be a big deal. Well first year with some IB stuff and hey, its going all good and I'm doing decently. 2nd Year hits I hit the ground running I'm doing fine in the first semester.
Then boom.
I don't know what happened. I got my interim report card just like awhile ago and all my marks are pretty bad. I mean they're okay... 70's to 80's for the most part (IB courses cept 1 which I'm doing well in) and then English IB where my mark is like 67, but the class average is around there too since our teacher marks extremely hard, and no one knew what he expected of our assignments or anything. The other English class has like a mid 80's average. Why? Probably because their teacher is so much easier on marks etc. Well even worse was at parent teacher interviews, I felt really pressured, because every teacher said they expected more out of me and some say I'll do fine and have time to improve and I believe that. At the same time that really broke me down and as an emotional person well yeah... you get the point!
Well guess what? My dad goes berserk... and I know they won't beat me since I seriously am not afraid to rebel against them, but he goes off telling me how he let me do things my way (I was quite the avid gamer, etc... all that) and now that my marks are slipping, he wants to cut everything. Maybe I'm just overwhelmed by the fact that he's gonna take away about everything that I cherish, he's probably going to cut my internet (except when I'm doing hw he expects me to come up with a schedule in which I need internet), and he's cutting all gaming period. Maybe I'm just overwhelmed by this and everything, but I really feel like I'm about to lose the joys and happiness in my life. I mean I adore my friends and family but I feel like that's just gonna fall away from me. To be honest I see his point and I know he's trying to get it across but I feel this is really over the top...
I know he means well and he wants me to do well in school so that I can get a job and be a doctor or w/e (I don't mind becoming a doctor or anything I can fit that stereotype), but he's really breaking me down, comparing me to family friends who don't go to university and what not all because their marks were too low and all that and I honestly must say that that pressures me even more... What's worse is probably the fact about my brother... I mean he's like the hard working one, and he's in university and doing quite well... he doesn't bring my brother up but even though he's not in this household (he's living in dorms) I feel pressured to do as well as he did.
Well he wants me to come up w/ arguments as what I'm going to do in my life... and he wants them by tomorrow. He said he wouldn't mind me quitting school and getting a job and I know he really doesn't want me to do that and neither do I, but I really feel demolished... I need a little help getting back on my feet and I feel helpless. Venting is helping but its making me see the scope of my situation.
Well anyone got words or their own experiences? I definitely don't want to quit school and maybe I just feel that cutting everything is too drastic (he says if you don't do things 100% don't do them), but I really need to think if there's anything I can do. If anyone really read this long rant about me thanks in advanced, even if you don't have anything to share, I feel this has helped me calm down a bit... Sorry for the long post and thanks again to everyone!
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I don't think eliminating things that make you happy is going to improve your situation
from experience, man
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Yeah some parents respond to this situation with hostility, which always makes matters worse. Even though your parents probably frustrate you a lot, just accept it and don't let it get you down.
If you really want to "be a doctor or w/e" then you are going to have to work really hard. Period.
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Hm i think you need to enjoy your free time to enjoy your hard work. just because one teacher marks harder then the others dosent seem to be a good reason to worry about it imo. your dad is right in the way that if your going to do something do it 100% and not half ass. so if you tryed as hard as you could and are only getting 70-80s and thats the class avg. i think its understandable. pushing through school and getting a education is going to pay off a lot more then dropping out and getting a job. i think you need to find a better way with dealing with stress and pressure because worrying about it isn't going to help you now or when your older and say your a ER doctor. as for coming up with a argument with your dad i dont know what to tell you but good luck :D
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You can work hard and enjoy games at the same time. work as hard as you need to, don't need to overdo it.
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Yeah there's probably a large amount of the problem is me being quite lazy/procrastinating, I mean, work gets done, but maybe I feel like I'm not all there... I feel the exact opposite of what he wants me to do... I mean I don't do things 1/2 assed and maybe it is just time management... I do lack a balance of when I should take a break and how long. I don't think stress is a problem, because I'm pretty calm in almost all situations, but maybe it will become a factor as this and pressure just crashing down at once will make me succumb to it. I'm working on fixing my procrastination but I don't think that will cut it.
I realize you guys are right, I do need to work harder but I sometimes really wish I didn't take IB... I mean (in junior high and some high school courses (done in grade 9)) I was still hitting 90's in almost all courses (cept SS possibly), and I think I could still do that if I wasn't doing IB... but you guys are right, I shouldn't blame my situation, I just need to deal with it... thanks for your input... if I can't come up with an argument... well this might be one of last posts on TL for awhile... thanks again!
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Hm np and good luck hope things work out for you!
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Hey man I'm Asian too and I can understand where you're coming from. My parents are pretty anal about grades but I'm in college and it's different now.
You're not 18 yet. You can rebel but it's not going to work in your favor in the long run. Your parents are right; you should focus on getting better grades for now, still have a bit of fun on the side but realize that getting into college comes first. I know it's hard to always stay focused, so chill with buddies when you're tired of studying, but no matter what you gotta get ahead far enough while you're still young so you can get a good job. Fuck being a doctor or whatever your parents want you to do, just excel at life, study hard and be excellent at what you love to do.
Don't quit school, please  If you give up now you'll have wasted all this time in school, plus it's really avoiding the problem. Study hard and try to understand what your teachers want of you, and try to learn things their way. No matter what, don't give up on yourself. You have your whole life ahead of you and you're going to let a few old teachers break you down? Bro hang in there, push yourself harder to do well. IB classes are overrated imo, it's only crazy classmates that make things hard. Don't fall behind and catch up when needed, and you'll make it through eventually.
My dad told me the exact same thing: cut gaming, cut everything unnecessary from your life. Asian parents have this idea that when they deal with something immediately, they can get easy results. I agree with this somewhat, because it's true that running from your problems will only weaken you, especially if they're problems that you have the ability to deal with. I know it sounds somewhat like he doesn't care about what you want to do with your life, as long as you fit into his "ideal career" and such, but realize that he's only worried about you. He wants you to be happy and the Asian idea of happiness is making money with a stable job. It's too early to ask you what your ideal career is, but just keep in mind that this is your life. Study hard to get ahead and one day when you find something that's interesting or important to you, you'll have the achievements and experience to pursue your dream and make it a reality.
As for what your dad's ultimatum, just tell your dad you'll find something you love (that's not gaming) and you'll excel at it. Convince him that you'll work hard to be good at whatever you like and he'll trust you to work hard. Maybe gaming is out of the question for a few months, but playing a few games less isn't going to hurt your future, not studying is.
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lol IB sucks ass it wont be worth anything later on. It really doesn't matter later on in college. Dont quit school and don't be dumb try harder. The IB is pretty easy i got a 25 doing almost nothing. Take your lazy ass and do something right stop procrastinating, I got a 6/7 in English (my second language). So get off your ass and to the things you have to do man. I went to school from 8 to 5 5 days a week, I played rugby, Sunday was game day I only played rugby and studied, I played a lot of guitar, and I went out partying the last 2 years a lot so you have time to do everything get off your ass and do that shit. When you get to college you will get your ass handed to you worse than the Fucking IB´s so stop complaining.
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Lol HeadhunteR, way to tell him straight up that college is hard ...
But you're right; there's a point where you realize that studying is a part of being young, and unless you're Mark Zuckerberg with a brilliant idea, you better bunker down and cram your ass off so you can get a good job. To the OP: when you're not out of the house you don't know how much your parents support you, but trust me if you had to pay for everything yourself, you'd cherish the opportunity to study without worrying about tuition. Good luck man and remember, it's not hard if you just do it.
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On March 12 2011 16:16 Blastblue22 wrote:Hm i think you need to enjoy your R4 3DS free time to enjoy your hard work. just because one teacher marks harder then the others dosent seem to be a good reason to worry about it imo. your dad is right in the way that if your going to do something do it 100% and not half ass. so if you tryed as hard as you could and are only getting 70-80s Nintendo 3DS R4 and thats the class avg. i think its understandable. pushing through school and getting a education is going to pay off a lot more then dropping out and getting a job. i think you need to find a better way with dealing with stress and pressure because DS3 worrying about it isn't going to help you now or when your older and say your a ER doctor. as for coming up with a argument with your dad i dont know what to tell you but good luck :D
I know he means well and he wants me to do well in school so that I can get a job and be a doctor or w/e (I don't mind becoming a doctor or anything I can fit that stereotype), but he's really breaking me down, comparing me to family friends who don't go to university and what not all because their marks were too low and all that and I honestly must say that that pressures me even more... What's worse is probably the fact about my brother... I mean he's like the hard working one, and he's in university and doing quite well... he doesn't bring my brother up but even though he's not in this household (he's living in dorms) I feel pressured to do as well as he did.
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I think you're not happy with your father's pressure because you feel that he's not appreciating your efforts for yourself: if you work hard, you're still just another shadow in your brother's footsteps. There's no reward, only a nod of "hghnnnn good job son, you're just like your brother."
Why are you trying so hard to please him? Work hard for yourself, succeed so you can be happy, so you don't have to care about his approval - one day, he'll have to work for yours.
Btw, being a doctor is hard as fuck shit, don't get me started on how long it takes and the ridiculous amount of sacrifice you have to do to get there, it makes IB look like first grade all over again. Do CS or something that makes money and lets you spend countless hours on the computer =D
Anyways, figure out what you want, realize that you're a free being who has great potential but only needs to want to realize this potential, and you'll end up successful in the end. Best of luck and hang in there, you're not alone in your Asian struggles ><
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Well firstly, when I read your post, I feel like you are trying to shift some of the blame on to the teacher with the harsher marking. You sound like a typical person who have above average intelligence and hence did well historically doing minimal work, but is now struggling as courses become harder. You need to first admit that you did not do well this semester and its not the teacher's fault, since your grade overall for most courses slipped from 80-90 to 70-80, and you have no excuses for the other courses.
Now to dealing with your dad. There are some posters above who are definitely not of an Asian background and don't understand this process, so ignore those outrageous posts since those ideas and philosophies do not work in an Asian family. Usually Asian parents will quickly blame any activity that is not contributing to school grades, ie entertainment, and try to take that away from their kids for "less distraction". To be honest your dad has a point - he had let you do things your way (which is way better than a lot of asian parents already) and now your grades are slipping - now he wants to do things his way.
The best way of dealing with this type of situation is to show him results. Usually parents will back off when you can get good grades regardless of methodology since that's all they care about. Explain to him that this is an one-off event that won't be repeated, and you are willing to prove it. This is just an interim report so you still have time to improve. Get your act together and use this event as a motivator to get better grades, and hopefully this won't happen again.
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^
This man speak the truth, listen to him.
I am asian myself, so I went through the same things. Don't blame the teacher, that's just a poor excuse. Work harder and get better grades. He will let you do things your way again if you get better results.
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Yup, 100% agree with two above posters.
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It's high school so I won't comment on that much but in college, especially in tough classes like physics, class averages being around 50's is pretty normal. I once had a "bad" prof in college and his class averages were like 50's compared to the other prof's 60 averages. Kinda simiilar situation as the OP's. Like, it wasn't even becuz I was lazy, I went to a really good tutoring place and even the tutor looked at the tests and said "how do you guys pass". He couldnt even answer some of the questions on the test it was that bad.
You literally have to read every detail in the book, even the minor stuff and every caption underneath the picture if there are any. Pretty ridiclous stuff imo. Ended up getting a C. Learning concepts and applying them to solve the problem is more important than trying to memorize every detail in the book but I guess my prof just couldnt see that.
Well this was just for ur future reference, just try to avoid these prof's if you can otherwise ur life is gonna be misreable.
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I can't comment on your current situation, but let me tell you even extremely low grades do not keep you out of college. Me and my brother were both terrible in high school, rebelled all the time and did shit. I failed multiple classes and graduated with a 2.1 GPA. My brother dropped out of high school and got a GED. Even with that, I was able to get into the local community college, get above a 3.0 GPA there and got into the best college in my state. I graduated in December. My brother is currently going to the local community college to follow a similar path.
People make high school out to be the end all be all of everything, but honestly it's pretty much irrelevant unless you want to go to a top 10 college in the country. I see that you are from Canada so it's slightly different, but not by much. If you can't make top marks in high school, don't think its the end of the world and that you need to drop out and get a job immediately.
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From a logical standpoint your father is absolutely right, ideally you should only focus on what is important right now. Later in your life you will have ample opportunity to have fun, on the other hand you cannot undo your grades later on.
It would be best to find fun in studying hard and take pride in knowing that you gave it your best shot. From what i can read in your posts you seem to understand the situation perfectly and i am sure you will work it out just fine.
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HEY MAN this is exactly what I'm going through. I breezed through high school with a consistent 88-91 average with doing minimal work. 1st year university was pretty easy too, i had like a 3.87 GPA. then 2nd year 2nd semester hit and bam. I still did reasonably well, but that's only because panic mode set in and i started working hard but it was waay too late in the semester. but now I'm in 3rd year and it's even harder.
The same thing happened to this friend of mine. He was like one of the top in his high school, but ended up getting unsatisfactory standing after 1st year univ.
As you said... your marks aren't that bad. But the only reason why they're not really good is because you're not working hard enough. Grades may not be the secret to success in life but hard work can get you anywhere. Your parents know this. And you can argue that you don't want to work hard in school, but that you are still capable of working hard.... however usually the truth is you aren't.
As for what to do... cut the less important crap from your life. I'm not saying cut video games, but if you spend hours idly browsing TL (i'm guilty of this), there's really better use of your time. Don't procrastinate, find a good place to do your work. When you do work, work hard. When you have fun, have fun hard.
Also, to respond to what you want to do in life, most likely you'd want to go to university, then to med school/grad school/law school/business school (you do seem like the type). Can't really go wrong in any of those choices. Your parents will probably lecture you even more about how your grades are not good enough etc. but now you know it's because you're not working hard enough and once you fix that you're good to go.
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Welcome to the world of the gifted that schools don't know what the hell they are supposed to do anything about. It's a exciting hell hole and there is no easy way out of it.
From my own experience learning to study once you hit 17 years or so of age is alot harder than to do so when you are 7. However schools are not intressted in anyone being seperated from the pack so you simply don't get any challenge at all untill you hit higher education.
For example, I could allready read when we started reading classes at school, I could allready count using plus, minus, multiplication and somewhat functional division when I we started math, I was considered the best of my class. Because of this I rarely did any homework outside of school (Just didn't listen during class and finished them there) Aced pretty much all tests without any study time and never once took any school work home. I did this untill I was around 15, don't listen, finish asignment in class, ace tests. That's not someone you want to be. While it's fun when you are a kid and you get loads of time to play, when you then start hitting something you actually need to study for you do not know what to do. This barrier hit me in my last year of highschool, mostly because of picking up computer related subjects such as programming, 3D-animation and Webdesign, suddenly I had to study to keep my grades. Which I didn't know how to do, so they went down like a rock in water. By bruteforcing I managed to keep my grades at least decent getting mostly A's and some B's. Yet that's not something you can keep up.
When I hit higher education I faced a nightmare, other people knew how to study and just applied that to their new harder material. Me? I kept trying to bruteforce not knowing how to pick out the important part I could just read say a 600 page text book over and over and over again untill I knew it by heart. I was getting 3 hours of sleep and no free time at all each day and after 2 years I showed symptoms of being burned out... at the age of 20 and about 2 months after I hit a wall my brain shut down.
Why is this relevant? Because that's what happen if you don't learn how to properly study, and by that I mean you can hit A's in all classes and still have time to do the things you love. I'm not asian but that doesn't mean my parents didn't expect good grades.
My grandfather was one of the most respected engineers in the country and my dad was a engineer and a scientist. So yea, guess what I was supposed to be when I grew up... (and ofcourse anything less than a perfect score in school was unfathomable, not unacceptable they just never saw it as a possibility)
So take my advice cut down on the fun, talk to your dad and make up a plan to get a good study habit and then start to get a bit more fun in again untill you find a good balance. Pushing everything infront of you is not a good thing. It took me well over a year to become a functional human being after I hit the wall, that's a year of my youth I'm never getting back.
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EPT
