Following my family or following my dreams by Nicole

Following my family or following my dreams by Nicole - May 2021 Scholarship Essay

Throughout high school I was conflicted about my future. As a first generation immigrant in a family with eleven children, there was an absurd amount of pressure from my mom to do well in my education. Being the youngest, my options after college are limited. My mom always talked about the obvious jobs, ones that would bring glory and wealth. I was to become a lawyer, a nurse, financial expert, or something equally, if not more prestigious in her eyes. The last four years of my life in high school I spent exploring various classes around those jobs. I took classes I was not ready for, nor interested in. I took various business classes and science classes I thought would interest me enough to pursue a career in them. Nearly all my “electives” were actually extra core classes I took, thinking it would help me decide in the long run.
By the time my junior year came around, I was miserable, doing average in my classes, and stressed beyond belief. I had less than a year to decide my college and what career I wanted to pursue. During that time, I had a teacher who made his Psychology class so enjoyable, engaging the students and drilling information into our skulls so effortlessly that I was fooled into thinking that I actually wanted to become a Psychiatrist. I became hyper fixated on the subject, researching on my own and delving deeper into psychology than I ever thought I would. When the Coronavirus began to spread and school was shut down, I realized I didn’t really like psychology as much as I thought I did. During my time outside of the class, I didn’t find the same satisfaction in finding new information. While I still enjoyed learning bits and pieces, I understood that it was the people in the class, and how it was taught that I enjoyed, not the actual process. Realizing that devastated me. What was I going to do with my life? Was there no job that I could enjoy? I didn’t want to find a job that was only mediocre, satisfying me for a short period of time, only to later hate it when it’s too late to change my mind.
Amazingly, also thanks to the Coronavirus I was able to come to the conclusion that I wanted to work in the food industry. I had been doing multiple classes in culinary arts. I enjoyed and excelled in each one and even got two certifications relating to the food industry. During quarantine I baked and cooked various foods, even coming up with my own recipes. It relieved any restlessness I had from staying inside, stress from having to do all my classes online, and it kept my stomach full. Cooking was a constant in high school, and culinary class a sort of escape. I would wash dishes to avoid classes I hated, baked to temporarily forget about that math test I was worried about, or cut vegetables to pass time during free periods. Even during times when class was stressful, having to pump out food to consumers as fast as we could, I enjoyed it. I had a rush of adrenaline flow through my body and a smile would form on my face.
I found a field that I would love to be involved in, but my mom wanted something else. She wanted big things for me, something entirely different than what I had planned. I was terrified of what she would say. Becoming a pastry chef, or restaurant manager was not what she had in mind. I had no plans of telling her I was going to culinary school. But eventually I told her that I wanted to go out of state. We had a long talk and I discovered that she was okay with me going into culinary arts, even if it was an out of state college. She revealed that she never really had expectations for me to follow what she said, that she had only suggested those careers because she assumed I would be interested. Anything I did would be great in her eyes.
I was the only one putting pressure on myself to do all those things. For years I struggled internally between my mothers wants, and my own dreams. It was all fruitless in the end, all caused by a miscommunication. I had only needed to be honest with my mom and I would have saved myself years of internal struggle. Knowing that I could do what I wanted was liberating, and I was able to overcome my fear of letting down my mother and following my dream or doing as she said and feeling miserable.