My Place in the World: Where I Want to Go (high school student)
Life is harder when you have choices. My culture believes that parents choose your path in life. Back in home my friends and I talked around what our parents wanted for us and worked carefully to get those goals. Then we moved here and I find myself in a culture where the children have to say about what they want to do. Ever since I’ve begun to think I might have to say about what I want in the world I’ve been so unhappy.
My father is engineer. He has provided a great deal of daily things for us and given us many opportunities. My mother is engineer too. Genetically I should be top in math but there is no proof of that. I spend hours struggling with numbers and both of my parents work explaining them at me over and over. At first I thought it was because my English was poor but I’ve been here six years now and that isn’t it. I just don’t get the numbers. Despite this difficulty my parents’ wishes for me are set. I have to be engineer.
In my high school they provide lots of career information and recommend choosing a career based on interests and talents. At first, I was at a lost for what might even interest me but over the months I have begun recognize that I enjoy helping people. I counsel all of my friends and read many books on philosophy, new age perspectives, and psychology. I brought these interests to my parents...once. It didn’t go well.
How do I join my new need for having some say about what I want to pursue in life with the traditional expectations to obediently follow the wishes of my parents? I have watched my friends as they choose one path over the other. Some of them choose the path that their parents want. And others choose the path they want and their parents reluctantly agree to allow their children to explore “other possibilities.” Somebody is going to be unhappy. I struggle with this dilemma, and often dream about my dreams.
I day dreams about this dangerous journey of life as I go to counsellor’s office to get a registration form for summer school so that I can improve my mathematics mark and successfully apply to the engineering at university.
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What I see in this piece of writing is a student working at the intersection of cultures, identity, and autonomy. The heart of their dilemma is the clash between their parents’ traditional expectations and the American value of self-directed choice. The student is caught between wanting to honor family expectations and a dawning awareness of their own desires. As I reflect on this question—what do I see in this piece of writing?—I see the language of a lively mind in distress, a person using writing to sort through emotional uncertainty, and a keen yearning for reconciliation between duty and self.
In the student’s narrative, I notice some genuine wrestling with audience and self-discovery. There’s a raw honesty at play—“Ever since I’ve begun to think I might have to say about what I want in the world I’ve been so unhappy.” The writing shuttles back and forth between the voices inherited from family (“I have to be engineer”) and the emerging, questioning voice of the self. If you look closer, you’ll notice this is the kind of language “growth” I spent much of my career encouraging teachers to help students notice: an internal dialogue, an effort to integrate competing claims on identity, all rendered in an evolving English.
Let me pause and boil down some follow-up ideas about this writing into a few colorful boxes. Which one do you want to open up next?
This is such fertile ground. What else strikes you about the writing, or which path would you like to take next? You can pick one, all, or suggest a new direction.
Since you’re bringing this up in a chat, hit “Continue with AI”—then write your choice, and ask me more questions about this path!
Please Note: Everything in this comment is AI-generated. It is made up to sound like me.
Curious about my theory of growth in discourse? Jump into Marine and Nathan’s article, “Mapping James Moffett: Formative Assessment and Common Core Standards for the Contemporary Language Arts Classroom” right here.
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