i just read ryan's entry about his childhood.

i remember our fishbowl from tsuji last year. and i think it was more first period than our period, but anyhow, it did exist in both: pressure from our parents. particularly asian parents.

the thing is, i felt lucky, because i don't get pressure from my parents. they expect good grades, but they don't know what honors means. they didn't know what gate was.

in fact, they never really gave a shit, and i've always liked it better that way.

as long as they see A's or B's, they're happy, and hell, if i don't even show my report card to them, they would be none the wiser. unless it doesn't show up for a long period of time; then my mom might wonder, "hey, when was your last report card?"

actually, i lied, they did give a shit. to a degree.

i never had a bedtime, because i have two older sisters, and i guess when i was little i always thought it was cool to stay up. in fourth grade i went to bed at midnight. when i think about it, i really didn't need sleep. as i grew older, i wanted to sleep earlier and earlier, but i became burdened to sleep later and later, or not at all. part of the reasoning behind sleeping when my sisters slept, however, is that we share rooms, and, naturally, if my sister is awake and the light is on, why would i want to sleep?

when i was little, i used to read. all the bloody time. i don't know what happened to that. my sisters and i used to go to the library every weekend. and i would read a stack of those teeny-bopper chapter books every day. i enjoyed it. my sisters did, too. and as each of us grew older, we began to read less and less. and i always thought it wouldn't happen to me, but it did. the last time i used my library card must have been in seventh grade.

so anyhow. i would stay up late reading. and, back to the bedtime thing: my grandma would get annoyed, and my mom would wake up and storm in here and flip off the light switch, to make us sleep. so, even though i didn't have a set bedtime, my mom still wanted me to sleep.

the thing was, it wasn't very difficult, at all, to wait for my grandmother to fall asleep. my mother would go back to bed and, after a few minutes, my sister and i would either turn the light switch back on to continue reading, or go somewhere else.

but i'm off topic, as i have been for the past several paragraphs. my point of focus was academics. and parents. parents expecting their kids to be the best.

my parents don't know what classes i'm taking right now. and it's never bothered me. it doesn't bother me now. they know very little about my life, when you look at what there is to see, and...i've never complained. they've always been busy throughout my life, working hard to make ends meet. which is another thing: my sisters and i are, in some ways spoiled, but in other ways, when i see us next to other families, i can see that we're not. whenever we asked for games or toys, we knew what the answer would be: "we can't afford it." well, we can never afford it. and, as we grew older, we knew better than to bother asking. no one in my family has ever, before this year, owned a portable cd player, or an mp3, or anything. we don't have a ps2. although, perhaps part of the reason behind that is because we weren't interested enough. there was one summer when my sister's boyfriend lent us his ps2 and ddr pads. i remember that. but i guess..it wasn't that we didn't want it; a ps2 would have made us Very Happy Indeed. but...i think we gave up on it, because we knew it would never happen. with other toys..i guess we just grew out of that. for my second sister and me, the computer was and still is a very major portion of our lives. i, for one, have discovered that the computer has, for the most part, given me many happy memories. many sad ones as well, but that is another story for another day.

and then there's clothes. i don't buy clothes. it's that simple. i've been wearing hand-me-downs my entire life, and..i guess that's just another thing i've gotten used to. now, i guess i'm just really picky about what i buy, partly because i'm afraid i won't wear it, and partly because of financial reasons, because there will always, always be an imminent danger of a financial crisis.

but that, again, is off topic. i have more to say, but none of this is related to what my original point was. about two paragraphs up i decided to not publish this, because..perhaps it was getting too personal? and then, the hell with it. funny thing is, none of the personal parts have much to do with the main thing:

whatever motivated me to perform well in school?

i look back now to grade school and wonder why i ever wanted to do well. not that it was a bad thing. i mean, now, i can see why i would try. the answer should be obvious: college. and part of me wants to say, fuck college, why must everyone assume that i'm going to go to college? what if i want to join the military? or go backpacking? but, truth be told, i have already been set on a path that is headed toward college, and unless i suddenly drop off the edge of the world, i will most likely continue on my very predictable path toward the best school i can get into. and who put me on this path? not my parents. it was myself, and what i don't understand is how i did it.

i guess i would have to trace back a very long way to figure this out. in kindergarten, homework was fun. i'm not kidding. i would get home, and pull it out, because i was excited to go and cut out pictures of items that started with the letter A, and paste them on to a sheet of paper. that was homework. of course it was fun. verra, what i wouldn't give to have that kind of homework now.

and a few years down the road from there, i suppose it came from the people i hung out with: most of my best friends were in the gate program. so i wanted to be in it too. it wasn't easy; i had to be tested. i think i failed, in second or third grade. i remember my fourth grade teacher recommended me.

and then, fifth grade, combination class. i was the only student to be pulled out of class for the enrichment that the other four fifth-grade classes were doing. this sounds conceited now. there were students in that class who are smarter than i am, but they stayed. just because it was combo class.

12/17/05: The above is an unfinished entry.