Super big fight with parents over college 0_0

[scorchededge243]

I mean, wow. For months I've been telling my folks about online school, I mean I was crazy about it! And in a super big hurry. Now, I'm not in a hurry and also have no money for such a thing. That said, I want to work for a couple of years (GOD FORBID IT!) and this has pissed off my parents especially my mother. She's going around telling anybody and everybody what I loser I'm going to be and no goals and just like us (dad's a truck driver, she's a CNA so not much college) and my dad goes on "Why can't you just make it easy on us?" FOR WHO?? I thought this was MY life!? So I really just want to run away. I'm still 17 and have nothing, but that's what they think of me anyway, a loser, so why the hell not right?

[Sharpie]

Don't run away, that'll cause more issues.


Wait till you're 18, then do what YOU want and ignore their criticisms of it. It's your life, live it how you want.

[scorchededge243]

(05-11-2014 10:30 AM)Sharpie Wrote:  Don't run away, that'll cause more issues.


Wait till you're 18, then do what YOU want and ignore their criticisms of it. It's your life, live it how you want.

One thing I forgot to mention was when opening to my folks, they just want me to shut up and stop annoying them. So, if I talk I get yelled at, but get some choice words at me for not being super excited about what's happening with them :(

[Sharpie]

fuck em then, don't tell them what your plans are unless they specifically ask, once you're 18 you're an adult mang

[timf]

Quote:no goals and just like us

This might shed a little light on the subject. They consider your possible future similarity to their circumstance as a "failure" because they have high hopes for you and because they see themselves as "failures".

People who have to work hard to get by often exaggerate the importance of money and equate it with success. They often push their children to become "successful" without a full appreciation of the cost.

There is a joke about a man with ten children. He was talking with another man about his kids. nine of whom were doctors and one was a plumber. The second man asked the father if he was ashamed of the one who was a plumber, and the man replies, "How do you think the other nine got through medical school."

It is difficult to see someone you love, like your parents, bullied into believing they are failures. It is even more difficult when they insist on clinging to this view of themselves.

1. Doctors and lawyers make a lot of money but often work eighty hours a week and seldom have intact families.
2. A country that is $16 trillion in debt is not going to let people with money keep it much longer.
3. Working your way to the "top" is not as secure an achievement as it once was.
4. Being a truck driver, nurse, or even a plumber makes it easier to find work because these are useful fields. A corporate specialist in quality management may go years between jobs.
5. Your "success" in life should not be measured by money or the ease of your work, but by the happiness you achieve in the family you build.

You may not be able to get your parents to understand, but seeing them as wounded by the ideology that money = success may make you a little more understanding and help you to see through harsh words to the love behind them.

[brainiac3397]

Quote:Being a truck driver, nurse, or even a plumber makes it easier to find work because these are useful fields. A corporate specialist in quality management may go years between jobs.

And truck driver's make decent money. So do plumbers. Nurses are eh...(because some get paid crap, others don't)

Why? Because college doesn't teach you practical skills. I'm working as a data/operations/logistics manager at a growing small business, and the stuff I'm learning would never be taught in college. Hell, a college student might try to arrogantly apply the skills he or she learned in a controlled environment and fail miserably(and cost the business money).

That's why internships are so popular, because people know college won't teach you crap about real world skills. Your business school "project" won't be affected by sudden increase in shipping costs, a rebellion in the country of origin, a bad flood or any other unplanned disasters or events.

Course I'm anti-internship, especially if it's unpaid. I don't intend to do work for a business and not get paid my fair share of the job simply because I'm a "learning student". That's why I love my job at the moment, because my boss pays for the work you do, and with a raise lined up for sometime ahead, I'll be making 40k a year(though I won't be able to work full-time when classes start but still...) as a first year college student. With practical business experience, experience in excel, experience in Quickbooks and experience in operations,logistics and management. Not to mention learning to take advantage of the opportunities Amazon provides for making money on the side.

If people just stopped to think, they'd see that schools are controlled environments, a bubble in reality. College is the transition out of the bubble but you are still in it. There are obviously some who are sick of this bubble and decide to guide themselves out of it.

And never let money control you. Make money your bitch! That's how self-made wealthy folk generally make it there. Money just comes to them simply because they're good at doing what they do, and their ambition for the top isn't for the sake of money. Get rich doing what you love to do and are good at, not because you just want to be rich.

I'm saying this because only a year ago, my mother considered me failure. I do great in Highschool but my plans for college didn't meet hers. Then when I took a leave of absence for a semester, she practically just stamped me with an epic failure sign.

Now? She's borrowing money from me and listens to my financial advise. My boss is a great business man(the rare sort which I'm glad to have met. I've read the biographies of many 19th century capitalists who started from nothing and with nothing and became successful, and he's exactly like that. It isn't the money for him but rather just the success of his business venture). And I'm learning stuff I'd never learn in class.

Sometimes parents just suffer a sort of tunnel vision(with the tunnel being school). They see a bright light at the end and are ecstatic. Course of the bright light is just an illusion caused by the bright sun shining on the outside of the less illuminated tunnel. With realistic expectations, they'd realize this. Course all this propaganda about schools, especially on immigrant or low-income parents who work hard for their "child's future" or the brainwashing suffered by many college grad parents, it's a difficult fight.