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| Lisa (mom) '82, Wayne (dad) '82, Jessica (me) '09 |
See the family resemblance? As you can see, school success runs in my
family.
Ever since I was
kid, I knew graduations were in my future – first from elementary school, then
from high school, and then from college.
I was a white
girl, growing up in Stillwater, Minnesota, attending one of the highest rated
high schools in the country – I was going to college.
Right around
report card time, my dad would go down into the basement and pull out his old
high school and college transcripts to compare GPAs with me. You don’t think that had an impact on me?
I'm not sure
when it started, but this competition has shaped my life. I constantly strive for the best. You see that “Honors” sash around my
neck? No, it’s not the 4.0 honors award,
but it’s pretty damn close – and boy was I jealous of those 7 kids who were
4.0s (I could have rubbed that all over my dad’s face!).
My dad was
offered a job at 3M basically out of college, and has worked their his entire
life, now employed as a Director of Engineering – very big shoes to fill.
The funny part
of this whole story is that although this is how I imagine my life, this is
what I picture it like – success, competitive, living up to my parent’s hope
and dreams – it does not run in my family.
In fact, I have 6 cousins, all considerably older than I am, and I will
be the 3rd of us to graduate from college. My 17 year old brother is a junior in high
school and he’s getting the grades to pass.
I can't pin
point what it was about my upbringing that shaped me in this way, but I'm glad
it did. Without ambition, without loving,
supportive family and friends, and without the pride of success, I would have
nothing.
Did you like comparing grades to your father? I didn't a hard time surpassing my parents but the stress was there to pass with high marks. I am not sure about you but I would have hated my father for comparing his grades to mine. But good for you that you have goals and have good grades!
ReplyDeleteI am an only child, so I can definitely understand this pressure to be as successful as possible and surpass your parents. I mean, I'm their only chance at success, right? I feel like children often use their parents as comparisons for their own success, I can tell that is something that fuels you as well. Also, the support of a family makes on aspire to achieve highly, and I also can relate to you on that level. Let's go, 4.0!
ReplyDeleteI can relate to this but the only difference is that i was compared to my siblings more than to my parents. Neither of my parents went to college, or did well in high school for that matter, so they were always so proud of us when we did well in school. My brother and I are only three years apart, and both of us have always been exceptional students. Him being older than me though, I found myself always being compared to the standards that he had set. When I was taking my ACT test I wasn't really concerned with the score I got, I just wanted it to be higher than his was! Even though we're completely different people and my parents were proud of my achievements regardless of whether they were greater than my brothers or not, I thought of the competition as a fun way to push myself to do better.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad there are other people whose grades were compared against what their parents got. Half of my goal throughout high school was just to have better grades than my dad. Thankfully, I think I did pretty good in that comparison. Not sure how well I'm doing on the college level though...
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