Tell Me What You Want to Hear

Validation is something I spend a ridiculous amount of my life striving to feel. It's what I want from my parents, from my friends, my teachers - you name it. Validation is defined by the Princeton dictionary as "...the act of validating; finding or testing the truth of something". I wonder what that means for me.

When I got my final ACT score back, and was still shy of my goal, I had a mini-breakdown to Katy about it. However, honest Katy asked me why I wanted that number so badly when my score was pretty good anyway; did I only want it because other people had it? It's been about ten months since that conversation, and of course, everything's different now. At this point, high school grades and ACT scores mean nothing - it's only about what I do and who I choose to be from this point forward. But it's taken me this long - now that it doesn't matter anymore - to come up with an answer to Katy's question:

I used to think that I wanted a higher score because I wanted to prove that I was as good as the people who had done better than I had. Which is mostly true, but I think it's a little deeper than that. I heard somewhere that Evan Lysacek's father told him once that if someone is better than him, it just means he has to work twice as hard. That quote has stuck in my head for months. For the longest time, I held that I didn't believe in letting other people set the standards for "ideal" or "good" - which was my reason for not doing IB - there was just so much extra work required, and I liked the freedom that AP awarded me. But lately I think I've been a lot more subject to society and its rules than I would have liked to think.

A couple of weeks ago, a couple of things happened: I had an honest conversation with my dad about my major, and we went to Family Fun Day at the University. First was Family Fun Day, which we've gone to almost every year from as far back as I can remember. And at the picnic, we saw a woman that we vaguely know but hadn't seen in a while - she's maybe in her fifties, with slightly graying hair and a friendly demeanor, and she's always alone. I commented that watching her makes me sad sometimes because of how lonely she looks, to which my dad somewhat sarcastically replied "That's what happens when you wait too long to get married."

And Katy, this is where I'll pull in my response to your SATC blog entry. With a throw to Carrie Bradshaw's "should" theory: do we fall in love and get married because it's what society and our peers expect of us? Relationships are definitely not my area of expertise, so I can't really comment on love or how it comes about. And I'm aware that most scientists or traditionalists (like my dad) will say that humans form relationships in order to procreate and continue the human race. But what if that's not what you want? Marriage may be expected, or even convenient, but it's definitely not for everyone. I have an older cousin, Christina, who's in her forties, lives with her mother who she loves immensely, has a good job, and has no intention of getting married any time soon. I think she's happy, and therefore: she's done. And while I wonder if that's enough for me - it seems to be enough for her, and I think that's okay.

But then came the honest conversation. My dad had been bugging me about thinking about choosing a major. Notre Dame offers a major called "pre-professional sciences" that basically builds a general base of the sciences in preparation for medical school, but he didn't like that idea. Instead, I should major in biology or chemistry, something specific. To me, the choice had its own pros and cons: would I rather be a Jack of all trades, or a master of one? I related this to him, and he said that med schools don't care about exactly what you majored in as long as you have the required credits. And this got me to thinking: I can do anything. I might have a shot at being creative or introspective or even artistic.

I'll probably major in something in the sciences just because that's what I do, but I'm not giving up on the idea of minoring in something I love but have never gotten to look into, like sociology or anthropology (something I blame on the high school curriculum).

But wait, why do I want this again? Honestly, I really can't explain it. But this career path is something that I do genuinely want. With that said, I'm going to take a risk and lay down my theory - something people are generally aware of, but I've never heard addressed. People who are raised by minority ethnicity families will generally fall into a predictable pattern: they'll generally do well in school, appear slightly more mature than others, hold high aspirations, and end up either in med school, grad school, etc. If you ask me, I'd say I fit pretty well into that pattern, which was what was expected of me. Let's put it this way: a few weeks ago, we went to Sharon's wedding. At the reception, we talked to all of the people we hadn't seen in a while whose children have grown and prospered according to plan. I was the lucky one, being young enough that my future looks bright and promising, but I don't have to actually deliver much more than a smile and a "Thank you". But I can't help but think about what would have been thought of a family who raised a kid that quit school and ran off to join a band or something radical like that.

Also, I finished A Clockwork Orange a while ago. But I was waiting until I had generated enough material to comment on it. ACO was, as I've said, about a teenager named Alex who had a passion for violence and destruction. Anyone with basic knowledge of the story would know that the book is about how the government performed an experimental procedure on Alex that would make him hate violence - "curing" him and making him fit perfectly into society (which is very ironic, if you read the book, but I won't say much more). Basically, they forced him into a cookie-cutter and, as a character protests, took away his sense of humanity by taking away his ability to choose. Alex was choosing to be violent, but that choice was revoked by the government, so the question stands - is it better to have a perfect citizen with no free will, or to have an imperfect human being that is exercising his rights?